Language & Grammar discussion
Grammar Central
>
Spelling Demons
Same here. I think folks like us they call 'late bloomers':)
I hated school! It was so boring! You have to remember I went to a Convent School from 1950 to 1960, and while we didn't have any of the facilities they have now, nobody bullied us. (We had the nuns for that!)
Mod
Mod
Now, I'm lucky. The game is my life and I get assigned the same courses every year -- all English!
My parents moved around New England so much, I was always the new kid. The school bus in Forestdale, Vt. was a pick up truck boarded in, painted silver, and reeking of cow manure. The boys had to muck out the barn before school. My fourth grade teacher was "teaching" us about Native Americans. She said they were smelly and covered in bear grease, and she'd rather sleep with a rattlesnake than one of them. I told my parents the story, and they pitched a fit and went to talk to her. School daze.
Mod
Now, I'm lucky. The game is my life and I get assigned th..."
I loved it all the way through my third college degree. No small wonder I loved teaching.
I loved it all the way through my third college degree. No small wonder I loved teaching.I wholehartedly agree with you, Ruth. You would have been a wonderful teacher. The nuns, as far as I know, had to teach themselves to be teachers!?
Did you teach Art,Literature etc? I don't recall. (I don't recall a lot these days!)
Mod
I would have loved having Ruth as a teacher. I had wonderful art teachers in high school. I did not go to college. One wonderful lady taught at UCLA and treated her high school students as she did her college students. We had the same curriculum.
I'm still convinced that in spelling, as in other endeavors, consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. I believe that until Samuel Johnson started pushing conformity with his dictionary some latitude in English spelling was considered creative.
I generally accept and correct my misspellings using the spell checker built into the Chrome Browser but there are some words where I like my spelling more than their suggestions.
Of course I've added them to my browser dictionary and I can't seem to access them now in order to provide an example.
And thus, if you can convince others of your views, does the language change and evolve. Whether this is good or not is a matter of perspective.
Well, consistency of spelling is what the English language has evolved into, what with the printing press and Samuel Johnson. Who knows, we may evolve into 'anything goes' again. Or maybe it's about context - in formal essays and letters, consistency is expected, whereas in personal diaries, texts, and informal online chatting with friends, it's not so important, so long as the meaning is clear.
A prime example of this IMHO is the use of "It's" as a possessive. Drives me wild but it's seen everywhere--newspapers, learned and tabloid; blogs, letter, magazines, etc.
MissJessie wrote: "A prime example of this IMHO is the use of "It's" as a possessive. Drives me wild but it's seen everywhere--newspapers, learned and tabloid; blogs, letter, magazines, etc."Thanks! It's has always bugged me as well. Course the alternative (It's) seems a bit vague if it means both the contraction and the possessive.
It's another case of overworking the apostrophe.
Perhaps we should take a clue from the Spanish. They use a tilda as a sort of contraction... The town I grew up in was Corunna, named after the old way of spelling the city now known as Coruña
Course that would require a lot of keyboard changes...
I've not seen 'it's' used as the possessive pronoun in published works, nor even as a frequent error. It's an error I see sometimes though, and I can see why people do it - kids at school are generally taught that possessives must use an apostrophe before the 's', but are generally not explicitly taught that this only applies to nouns, not pronouns. With most possessive pronouns - such as 'her', 'my', 'your', etc. - you wouldn't even think of using an apostrophe, but with 'its', it seems to follow the same pattern as nouns - it means 'belonging to it', and you have both 'it' and an 's', so sticking an apostrophe in seems intuitive. Sure, it's confusing when 'it's' also means 'it is', but plenty of words in English have several meanings, so logically that is not a reason to discard it! I remember struggling as a kid to get my head around the logic of having no apostrophe in the possessive 'its'. An error I frequently see in published works is 'lead' instead of 'led' - as the simple past tense of 'to lead'. I can understand this too - because people are used to seeing the noun 'lead' being spelt as 'lead' while pronounced as 'led'. But at one point I was seeing the spelling 'lead' for 'led so often that I actually wondered if I was mistaken in spelling it 'led', and had to check the OED to make sure!
Mod
Even in places you might Hope would have some small clue--a frequent offender is the Daily Mail UK and the Telegraph. And blogs too numerous to mention.
Another real bug to me is "between the 3 (or 4,5,6 ..) of them, she was the best dressed.
I was taught "Between 2, among 3 or more."
Hi Miss jessie,I had forgotten that one completely, yes, so true.
The 4th estate has no specialities now, that stop these things creeping into the system. All they have is what we have; a spell check facility that can only work if, to begin with, someone has put in the correct spelling!
I had to turn off the spellcheck in my email, it turned into a ravening monster that wouldn't let you send unless you followed it's directions, quite apart from the fact that it didn't recognise ordinary names and refused any spelling except American.
Gabi wrote: "... it didn't recognise ordinary names and refused any spelling except American. "My brother has that problem in reverse. I'm a PC guy from the dawn of time but he is an Apple guy and all the genius at the Genius bar can't convince his machine that it's color not colour, etc.
I don't bother with the spellcheck. I've still got the dictionary habit.
I am a good speller(?) but some words I have used all my life, occasionally turn around and bite me. Like 'rhythm' and 'queue' and I still had to go back and check on rhythm and I had spelled it 'rythym'.
I have no problem with rhythm, but asthma confuses me.
MissJessie wrote: "Even in places you might Hope would have some small clue--a frequent offender is the Daily Mail UK and the Telegraph. ..."Ah, now that doesn't surprise me - those are two newspapers about which I wouldn't hold out any hopes!
LOL. Yes, their grammar is pathetic. I'm not commenting on news content, except to say that it's more inclusive and better than anything I can find in the US as a rule.(Discounting the tabloid aspects, of course, though those are frequently the most interesting.)
Joanne wrote: "I have no problem with rhythm, but asthma confuses me."I had forgotten asthma, that is right up there with rhythm!
Mod
Hmn. Spelled "rampant" correctly.
The Guardian is better than the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, content wise, but has also been nicknamed The Grauniad due to frequent typos!
Gabi wrote: "Joanne wrote: "I have no problem with rhythm, but asthma confuses me."I had forgotten asthma, that is right up there with rhythm!"
I think I should defend my country and inform you that those two words are of Greek origin and the confusing lettering is because of how they are pronounced in my language. For example, the h after r in rhythm shows that the vowel was overstressed in Ancient Greek.
Since we're onto medical/bodily stuff, 'diarrhoea' is a spelling that I always have to think about. Possibly easier for Americans, as they omit the 'o'.Another one is eczema. Again, possibly easier for Americans, as in the UK it is pronounced 'ex-ma'. I say the American pronunciation in my head when I need to remember how to spell it.
Mod
Newengland wrote: "Diarrhea is brutal, both in spelling and in all-too-real life."hahaha....Are all Greek-originated words difficult for you? I am curious.
Mod
I also see a lot of misspelled words as a teacher. A lot. It takes its toll...
Newengland wrote: "Some of them. I look up words from all over the globe. De rigueur, for instance. And perennial. Accommodate. Interrupt took me a while to figure. Canceling vs. cancelling. A lot of double with sing..."What classes do you teach?
Mod
Newengland wrote: "I teach 8th grade English. As it's one year before high school, we don't specialize so much as teach it all -- grammar, vocabulary, writing, reading, speaking, listening, and yes, ethics and manners."I teach from first graders to adults, but the educational system is different here.
Newengland wrote: "Diarrhea is brutal, both in spelling and in all-too-real life."Just ask Deb!
Mod
Catherine, that's quite a one-room schoolhouse, teaching 1st to Last Graders....
another word that might be of interest is : bourgeoisie :D
Mod
I don't know which has more rules, French or English, but French is more strict about following the rules, whereas English allows/accepts/adopts the breaking of rules left and right.
bourgeoisie; I do not think we have an American equivalent to that or it would be Un-American.
Mod
when I was a kid I always got the highest score in spelling.. :)"
I was like that Paulo, but the rest of my school days are best described as troubled:)! I passed my final exams, though!