Poor English

[crissdee]

That theory certainly agrees with the observed facts....

[tetsabb]

Radio Times has an interview with artist Nicholas Lyndhurst.
It mentions his status as Rodney in Only Fools, and goes on to say that  his star ascended with rôles in, among other things, Butterflies
Errr...the series with Wendy Craig was well before he was Del's little brother.

[jenny]

I liked him in that series "Goodnight Sweetheart" where he went back in time to World War 2.

[crissdee]

In one episode, he went back to Victorian London and encountered Jack the Ripper....

[amanda]

Not poor English here, but a clever way of wording things. Discussing on a post re the American hurricane and the need for bottled water, and some not-so smart alec asks 'why would a flood cause a boiled water notice?' (meaning boiled water is a requirement for everything)

The reply was 'because when the water system floods, and the clean water and waste water become one big water'.

(this has been the case in Australian floods too)

[crissdee]

Not a specific example, but I've just read a comment after a YT video, and the woman correctly spelled "postpartum psychosis" in the first sentence, and then went on to make 25 different spelling and grammar errors in the rest of the post.

As the young people say. "How does that work???"

[jenny]

I'm guessing somebody with specialist training in one specific field and general ignorance elsewhere.

[celebaelin]

Or that term was the only bit she bothered to look up.

[crissdee]

FB advert for a trailer....

i.gyazo.com/7727d734618f127738a035c8a91b3e06.png

[amanda]

FB post re a possum:
It keeps sleeping on the trellace.

And another comment on a photo of a firefighter on the roof of the cricket ground for yesterday's footy final: 

The police got the line's share (of the work) 

[amanda]

Soccer news report: Harry Kane picked up an ankle injury.

[crissdee]

A charming lady of our acquaintance might find this YT exchange......interesting.

"the country of Dutchy (or however it's called) is not known for having roundabouts."

"bruh what are you on about in The Netherlands we've got thousands of roundabouts. "The country of dutchy" 😂 fool"

"definitely not called the NetherLands like some minecraft world. But ok. And no, they don't have thousands of roundabouts. I recommend you visit the country and try to find at least one."

[amanda]

FB comment - how this woman could get both this words wrong defies my logic.

'I shopped hear a million years ago, it seams'.

[amanda]

Newspaper report: people should where lifejackets.

How someone thought that spelling was the right one, let alone how it got published, is beyond me. And they don't publish a correction anymore either.

[crissdee]

As I have said before, they either don't know or don't care, probably both...

[Bondee]

And as I have said before, could just be the fact the some people are fucking idiots.

[amanda]

FB comment - when in Rusha

[amanda]

FB comment - This situation applies to I.

[crissdee]

YT comment;

"Like as if even why?"

And it got 6 "likes". I can't even figure out what they are trying to say, how could anyone "like" that?

[celebaelin]

Oct 4, 2024 21:34:59 GMT amanda said:

FB comment - This situation applies to I.

It might be ignorance or pretence but it could be cultural (in which case, as you'd expect, it means 'me'). 'I and I' means we and 'de Is' means you pl.

Iyaric, also called Dread Talk or Rasta Talk, is a form of language constructed by members of the Rastafari movement through alteration of vocabulary.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iyaric

[ali]

I think 'I and I' is more complex than that. I have always regarded it as an inclusive form (roughly equivalent to the royal 'one') with additional religious connotations of unity. 'We' is just part of its usage.

[suze]

I have a memory that Bob Marley uses I where we'd expect me a few times.

What religion Bob Marley was is complicated.  Both Christians and Rastafari tend to think that he was the other, but he was raised Roman Catholic and was buried Ethiopian Orthodox.  Whether his supposed affiliation to Rastafari was just a front to "excuse" his use of ganja, well only he ever knew.

[celebaelin]

ali: 'I and I' can be used to to mean 'I', I've certainly heard it used that way (as far as I could tell), but the Wiki article says that use is rare so I decided not to fly in the face of that information.

[suze]

I wasn't really watching it, but TGH had a documentary on about the railway line that used to run between Scarborough and Whitby.  No Michael Portillo, in fact no on-screen presentist at all, just a voiceover as we saw aerial film of the route that the railway once took.

Ms Voiceover described (something or other) as the "very epitome of Scarborough", but she pronounced epitome as spelled ie with the final syllable rhyming with home.  Why didn't the producers notice?

[amanda]

That's how my German father said it and I thought it was at first.

[amanda]

FB comment - paylings re a fence.

[crissdee]

I have just had cause to point out, in a YT comment section, that "brakes" and "breaks" are not the same thing. For some reason, despite being set to "English (United Kingdom)", my computer is putting a wiggly red line under the first variant!!!! Has this word been expunged from the lexicon of the English language? I have written it several times before, and it has always recognised it previously, why does it not recognise it now? It only seems to recognise "brake's". WTAF??

[charliesdragon]

Sept 5, 2024 17:08:19 GMT suze said:

Debut is an unusual word, because it's one of rather few which are pronounced genuinely differently in Britain and Australia.

"DAY-bew" (IPA /ˈdeɪbju:/) is standard in Britain; "da-BOO" (/dəˈbu:/) is standard in Australia (and in parts of North America, but it's not universal).  The speaker that Amanda heard was using the British pronunciation.  Was she British?

The French pronunciation isn't quite either.  Stress works rather differently in French than in English, but English-speaking ears perceive French words as being stressed on the last syllable.  In IPA that gives us /deˈby/.  The first syllable is more like "de" (as if you were going to say debit and stopped two letters in) than "day", and the second syllable uses the /y/ vowel which is absent from English.  That's the one which is written <ü> in German.

Huh, one of those instances where Norwegian has kept close to the French pronounciation after importing the word. We often change the spelling instead, so the spelling reflects the way letters are used in Norwegian.

With "debut" we've kept the spelling, and you'll sometimes hear "de-butt" because that's the phonetic way to read it in Norwegian (and I might be guilty of reading it that way in my head), but "de-by" is the right way to pronounce it and used in TV and radio broadcasts.

One weird consequence of Norwegian changing the spelling of French words is that I can't spell "chauffeur" in English/French without googling it to look it up. The Norwegian spelling is the phonetic "sjåfør," which admittedly uses two letters English and French doesn't have, although French could do with them, having those sounds. It's more often pronounced "sjafør" with an "a" sound rather than an "å"/"o" sound now, so one (I) can still get tripped up by the spelling.

Edit: I should add that "chauffeur"/"sjåfør" is the common word for driver here. It's much more common than in English, where it's mostly reserved for posh private chauffeurs. "We all went to the beach; Adam was the driver." You'd use "sjåfør" in that sentence in Norwegian.

[charliesdragon]

I watched someone on Youtube playing a video game and they constantly said "over-cucumbered" instead of "overencumbered." It could just be an in-joke I wasn't part of, but they were also unfamiliar with words like "daft" or "barmy," which, okay, could be because it's a British expression and they're American. It just didn't fill me with a lot of confidence in their language abilities.

As for if people don't know better or don't care about spelling or using the right word, I have become a lot more understanding of poor spelling and grammar over the years. Partly I've realised my own limitations when it comes to that, especially grammar when I'm typing a quick reply. I still find it weird when I type the wrong word, like "where" for "were" because they're completely different concepts in my head. Sometime my brain just runs the wrong script to control my fingers, I guess.

Having done some proof reading for a dyslexic friend, I've also gained a bigger appreciation for the disconnect between spelling and sound of many English words. Sometimes I've had to voice out what they had written to work out what it was supposed to be.

Still, the point of language is to communicate, and if you can somehow understand what is being meant, it fulfills its purpose, even if it's not the book standard and may take more time to decipher.

[tetsabb]

Someone on FB reproduced an ad for a 'cheese lounge'. While I expect there are many folk who would love to have a room dedicated to the consumption of cheesy comestobles, the accompanying picture appeared to be a piece of furniture on which he one would sprawl langourously