Writing the caption and writing in general

Phil_F_NM said:
...It may be a pet peeve but the improper use of the apostrophe, turning many plurals into possessives, your/you're, its/it's, there/their/they're, etc....

Phil Forrest
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hmmm, respectfully, "you're", "it's" and "they're" are contractions for "you are", "it is", and "they are."
 
David Hughes said:
I blame spelling checkers too, they suggest alternatives and no one knows which one to pick.


Regards, David
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Many people here have likely already experienced several instances of having their written words “corrected” by spell check throwing up an alternate “spelling” which is in reality a completely different, completely unrelated word, simply because their own vocabulary is larger than the computer’s. This frustrating experience can feel like the outer world using its newly found power to dumb us down, er democratize us.
At such times, the resulting pounding of one’s head against the desk while screaming, “Doesn’t anybody know anything?!” might be legitimately considered to be an instance of “old man yells at clouds.” But, still.
 
All the trouble in the world. As a non-native English speaker, my comments are as follows:

I've worked internationally for some 30 years, including with many British and American colleagues -most of whom could speak and comprehend one language -English, only. Non-native English speakers find English a difficult language to learn. This article provides some insight as to why this is so: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/.../why-english-is-such-difficult-language-learn

On a beside, at present, some 100 million people living outside China are learning standard modern Chinese, often referred to as 'Mandarin'.

Cheers, OtL
 
Moto-Uno said:
^ Some may argue those points ! Peter
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I know professor from Ontario. It was him who told me about steady decline in education level after school he has to deal with.
Math education levels are terrible. It is fact.
But another thing he told me, people who are socialists do not accept facts as arguments anymore.
 
jvo said:
hmmm, respectfully, "you're", "it's" and "they're" are contractions for "you are", "it is", and "they are."
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Yes they are. My sentence structure here was not clear, just the thing I'm complaining about! I was meaning the improper use of apostrophes in plurals and possessives, as well as in the contractions. I should have been more clear.

Phil Forrest
 
Out to Lunch said:
All the trouble in the world. As a non-native English speaker, my comments are as follows:

I've worked internationally for some 30 years, including with many British and American colleagues -most of whom could speak and comprehend one language -English, only. Non-native English speakers find English a difficult language to learn. This article provides some insight as to why this is so: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/.../why-english-is-such-difficult-language-learn

On a beside, at present, some 100 million people living outside China are learning standard modern Chinese, often referred to as 'Mandarin'.

Cheers, OtL
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+1, I fully agree. If younger I would start to study 'Mandarin' too.
 
Ko.Fe. said:
But another thing he told me, people who are socialists do not accept facts as arguments anymore.
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It's not just socialists who don't accept facts. Any one from any group, across the spectrum of lived experience, may choose to ignore facts.

Phil Forrest
 
Degradation of language is present in Italy as well since years.

I think it is a common trend in the "modern" world.
As it is the trend to simplify everything at cost of quality.
 
Phil_F_NM said:
It's not just socialists who don't accept facts. Any one from any group, across the spectrum of lived experience, may choose to ignore facts.

Phil Forrest
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Absolutely. Catholic schools in Ontario gives higher credits than public schools.
But taliban in Afghanistan doesn’t want females at schools. Some caveman religious views are not accepting facts and basic human rights.
 
I think it is because people just don't care, especially young people. I've learned several languages in my life and I was always horrified when I made a mistake. I studied French so much by myself that people told me I spoke like an old book. Lol.

I still attempt to keep things right. For one, I don't use a spell checker. That just makes one lazy in my opinion. If I don't remember how to spell a word, I look it up. Same with reading. If I don't recognize a word, I look it up.

The one thing that bothers me is gross change. I've noticed quite often lately that people are starting to say things like "the car needs washed" which is a pretty severe aberration. With the way young people use language and the lack of strictness with language rules in school it will only get a lot worse for those of us that give a crap. But then again, I am not perfect anymore either so I can't exactly judge.
 
I just wish you American's would spell things correctly like color and what's the fascination with the Z (Zed) :p :D You did get the pronunciation of filet (filay) right though. Don't know how the hell we ended up saying 'fillit'. Oh, and Herbs has an H at the beginning and there is no reason for it to be silent.

And burglarized is not a real word. It might seem so but it isn't. It's a ridiculous word and an unnecessary Americanisation of a word that already does the job. Your home was not burglarized, it was BURGLED! :bang: Can you tell I dislike this particular word?

I think I went off on a tangent there. Sorry about that.

I have a copy of the New Testament written in Scots (not all of it a select part). Not Gaelic but Scots. It's representative of the language I spoke when I grew up in Scotland but not what I wrote. I wrote English and you can be sure we were schooled on spelling and grammar and writing style (Marion Richardson style if I recall it correctly). I feel like there was something more definite or purposeful about writing an apostrophe over simply typing one (or not). When we type, every key stroke is the same (except when choosing shift+key but you get my meaning I hope) so I just feel like there is less thought attributed to the action of including a comma or apostrophe.

Anyway, I am enjoying this discussion and especially the learned contributions from Murray (my clan by the way :cool: )
 
Reading this I was reminded of the Gary Trudeau "Doonesbury" series at that fictitious college where most of the first year students were doing remedial English or else remedial Maths and one poor lad was doing pre-remedial English. The trouble is that these jokes come true after a while but then good jokes have to be half true to work.


Can we add hospitalised and gifted to the list of horrors and spare a thought for those who still use colons and semi-colons?


Regards, David
 
CMur12 said:
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We have a lot of prejudices about dialects. People who say "he don't" aren't using lazy English. They're using a remnant of Early Modern English. The contraction for "he doth not" was "he don't." You can be sure that grammarians were once up in arms over the impertinent upstart of a grammatical feature that was "he doesn't."
...
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Perhaps I misunderstand - why would the contraction of "he does not" upset anyone? Were early grammarians upset by "does" instead of "doth"?

But there's a subtlety regarding "he don't". If I were somewhere in England and I heard "he don't", I could postulate the speaker's grammar follows a long chain of linguistic evolution back to early English and use of "he doth not".

But when I hear "he don't" from my father or grandmother or other immigrant living in the US, their choice of "don't" is more likely a mere simplification (to match I don't, you don't, we don't, they don't) . This latter case of simplification could explain much of the usage today - even though the modern use of "he don't" matches what may have been a valid contraction in early English.

Simplification of inflectional endings has been an ongoing trend for thousands of years. For example, if you were to compare the language spoken in Norway, Sweden, or Denmark in 1000 AD with Icelandic in 1000 AD, the languages would be essentially identical. However, over the last thousand years, isolated Iceland has retained its extensive noun and adjective inflections (four cases in both singular and plural) and its endings for verb conjugation. It has preserved the past. By contrast, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish - countries not isolated at all - have streamlined (reduced) their inflections greatly. English has done the same.

One charming aspect of British / Australian / NZ English is the treatment of an entity as a plural, whereas American English uses the singular form. Compare:

"Kodak have re-introduced Kodachrome..."

"Kodak has re-introduced Kodachrome..."
 
PRJ said:
...
The one thing that bothers me is gross change. I've noticed quite often lately that people are starting to say things like "the car needs washed" which is a pretty severe aberration...
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That, I believe, is not an aberration, but a dialectical form common in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and thereabouts.

I have a friend of Scandinavian heritage who was born in central Washington - he also uses that construct. His relatives lived in Wisconsin. That construct has been around for a long time.
 
Ko.Fe. said:
...
My wife asked one of those at public school, the answer was "computer, phone will correct the spelling".
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Today, the computer and phone try to correct our spelling. Tomorrow the computer and phone will try to correct the thoughts behind what we write.

Note: Pál K, the statement above has been flagged as being false / incorrect. Please delete or change your statement to a truthful one or you will not be allowed to post. Further statements of this nature will put you on the list for re-education.
 
David Hughes said:
Reading this I was reminded of the Gary Trudeau "Doonesbury" series at that fictitious college where most of the first year students were doing remedial English or else remedial Maths and one poor lad was doing pre-remedial English. The trouble is that these jokes come true after a while but then good jokes have to be half true to work.


Can we add hospitalised and gifted to the list of horrors and spare a thought for those who still use colons and semi-colons?


Regards, David
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And commas let's spare a thought for those you still use them too!
 
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