Posted on 06/15/2015 1:44:50 AM PDT by Cronos
So I write 'colour', and if a boy asked me how to spell it would spell it that way - but if he hands up an essay with it spelt 'color', I would not penalise him as having spelled the word incorrectly.
There is, I think, a growing class divide in Australia, between British and American spelling - British spelling is more prestigious in most contexts, and sends a subtle message that a person had a 'higher quality' education by Australian standards, while American spellings tend to be seen in the opposite way. It's even more pronounced when it comes to the use of different words, with a conservative backlash (and I'm saying that as a conservative) towards anything seen as an 'Americanism' - a local news site just yesterday referred to the idea of "Grabbing take-out and sitting down to watch television" and I knew immediately the following discussion would include numerous people saying "In Australia we say 'take-away' not 'take-out'."
Yay!
Me too...
And with English, you don’t have to worry about masculine and feminine agreement...kind of a “gay” friendly language, yes?
Years ago, a friend told me the reason we didn’t have a special name for chicken flesh, much like beef, pork, and venison, was because the Normans didn’t eat it.
“Centre” is the result of the French influence, non?
“There are even places where English completely disappears.
Over in America they haven’t used it for years!”
Etymology is interesting and all but I was distracted by the graphic thusly titled:Copper engraving after a late 16th-Century image of Dutch typesetters (Credit: Alamy)
The VERY well dressed typesetter in the center-left foreground is wearing a large sheathed knife at his waist and there is a BIG fighting sword propped against the front of his station. THAT office seemed to be expecting trouble.
The official language for the project was ...
...
...
ENGLISH.
Fie on the doofuses (doofi?) who proclaim English to be a "mess".
You know when we are screwed when a majority of our imbecilic youth believe that z’s and s’s are interchangeable.
There are few languages on earth as rich as English and as powerful in their ability to create an image. Confusing? Yes. So is calculus. But without them,we couldn’t reach the stars.
Assume you are aware that today is the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta and Thursday is the 200th of Waterloo? Almost every one of the of the significant persons involved in the former were descendants of William and his followers with John Lackland, the g-g-grandson of William the Conqueror (NB: French derivation).
You can see my thoughts on the significance of this event by my FR handle. Poor Harold, he fought off one invasion only to 'almost' win the second, except there is no second place in war!
Good point. One reason hearing Shakespeare in its OP (original pronunciation) form is so fascinating is that you have a snapshot of the great vowel shift in progress. Many rhymes and puns are uncovered that were lost when English pronunciation evolved to the current form.
Take two, too and to or there and their! For spelling, take the “I before E except after C” and then spell ‘Wierd!’ I can site many examples where spell-check will leave you in tiers!
_______________
this is what requires English users to use higher abstract skills. Good for the brain. And that ain’t nothin’ compared to formal Chinese symbols.
Fairly obviously, I thought I had typed Norman, not Normal.
I think auto-complete got me again.
Though Normal soldiers do want to have sex with the barmaids.
I am very much aware of today’s anniversary of this seminal event in history as I started a thread earlier in the month, posting the article written in the WSJ by Daniel Hannan (?) about said event.
The Battle of Waterloo is also of interest though more on the French side of things as one of Napoleon’s generals, Gen. Maximilian Foy, has the same last name of my family though, I believe, we are not related. Good thing too because he didn’t help old Boney very much in the battle.
May be true.
None of the poultry. Though I suspect “poultry” is French.
When India became independent, they wanted to reject English as the language of the imperial oppressor.
Problem was, that meant adopting one of the native languages as “official,” which would make all the others “unofficial” and second-class. Uproar including riots promptly broke out.
Now that some decades have passed, Indians of different languages can use English between them as a completely neutral language. It is gaining popularity all the time as a prestige language.
However, Indian English sometimes bears only a dubious relationship to that spoken by Englishmen and Americans.
It’s rather illuminating to see how that in many countries, particularly Britain, but even in the USA, the way you speak; pronunciation, grammar and inflection, can affect how people categorize you in society.
One of the most amazing examples to me of how the UK has evolved recently from adhering to this stigmatism is listening to Lord Sugar, a multi- millionaire who hangs with the Queen as well as other aristos. His accent is very “low class” and atrocious!
Probably just what a well-dressed guy needed to protect himself getting back and forth to work.
Something people seldom realize is how violent past times were. The average across Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries was higher violence than the most violent cities in America today, and right up there with the Central American countries that today have the highest murder rate.
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