Posted on 03/25/2005 1:24:59 AM PST by Robert Drobot
Ping
ping
Language evolves. We don't speak or write the English of 100 years ago and that's natural and to be expected. While school ought to teach grammar and insist on well-written papers we can't expect some higher authority to 'preserve the language'. They have one of those in France, and it doesn't seem to do much to hold back changes in how the language is really used....
...we need a William Safire column!
PING; PiNg; pinG; pIng; PInG.
The sad fact is government school college level 'graduates' do not know the components of a complete sentence.
WHEN ME USA COME I LEAN YOU SPEAK ENGLISH TO SCHOOL. TODAY GOOD ME SPEAK YUO EMGISH NOW.
You think that`s bad, you should see it here in NYC. They can`t even READ! Ten years ago I worked for one company in Brooklyn New York that one day decided they were going to have a required class on driver safety for all employees, bosses included. The teacher they hired came in and right away made the foolish mistake of having people take turns reading aloud from the safety manual.
These guys were NOT foriegners reading by the way, not someone in their teens, but grown men in their 20`s, 30`s and 40`s raised and taught right here in good old liberal NYC and hardly ANY of them could read. "D-dri-vay s-saf-tay..." This teachers face was as red as a stop light, Im` telling you, just total shock until he made the smart move of deciding to take over the reading himself.
The board of ed here in NYC is a total joke, they graduate kids no matter what. And it`s not just NYC, also in Long Island. They no longer teach kids to write in script. My mother got a thank you letter from her friends son a few years back when he was 15 after she sent him a present for his birthday, and she couldn`t understand why he wrote the letter in block letters. It`s because they did away with penmanship and script in the schools. Isn`t that lovely? So when he grows up and wants to impress that girl or that boss, he`ll be writing personal letters that will look like they were written by a psychopath.
And superfluous suffixes...
Orientated
Ironical
Graphical
--Boot Hill
The correct word is homo-nauseated, not homophobic.
--Boot Hill
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship. LAZARUS LONG
Two bee oar knot too be ... [Spell checker software at work]
Only if the job was a gift. :-)
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you busy, Suzy
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!
Between you and I, the contruction "between you and I" is like fingernails on a blackboard to I.
I remember this from a previous post: "Heteronormative"
Shakespeare wrote in Modern English. He did not write in Old English, which is the language of Beowulf. I love to see signs that begin "Ye," as a sign of old English. That letter "Y" comes to English from the Vikings and Danes taking over England. It is normally drawn with a line through it, and pronounced like "th". Hence, "Ye" rightfully should be pronounced "The"
Shakespeare did not write in Middle English, which is the language of Chaucer.
Shakespeare's English was our English, with a few rules changed a bit and before all the great Shakepearean usages and axiom had entered the language.
However, "All hope abandon, ye who enter here" doesn't make much sense read that way.
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