River Cruising Water Cooler

[d9704011]

8 minutes ago, pontac said:

 

I was taught 'I before E except after C' which is not only good but rhymes. 

 

The rest, on months, I do remember

It's not an exact science.

[Canal archive]

Just thank your lucky stars that at least the use of Fs and Sss has been sorted out.

They were still being transposed just over 100 years ago. Try reading a middle Victorian document.

A bit of an example.

 

Thif if  sinifhed sor now. It’s difficult to read and hilarious to read aloud.

 

[notamermaid]

When I learnt English there was always an exception to the rule - when there was a rule. Then you get to sixteen and they tell you that over the pond the English is slightly different, with different words. And then you get to speak British English in Britain finally and the British do not all sound like your teacher...

My teacher never called me "Love", what that shopkeeper in London did.

 

notamermaid

 

[jpalbny]

My dear grandmother taught me:

 

I before E,

Except after C,

Or when sounding like "A,"

Such as neighbor or weigh.

 

And even that doesn't cover all of the exceptions. Weird, isn't it? I don't want to seize the opportunity to get feisty with our foreign friends about their leisure activities, but it would be the height of laziness to forfeit this opportunity. 

[Canal archive]

Visiting the states some years ago in a restaurant near Death Valley our waitress had recently returned from visiting London, when she realised we were English she asked my DH to call her Love as the London cab driver had called her. He of course complied and she called all the kitchen staff out to hear him much to our daughters amusement.

 

Both my daughters have been told that their French learnt at school is not correct.

 

Were always told it’s mam as in jam, not marm as in harm. Or is it the other way round. 

Edited January 13 by Canal archive

[Kristelle]

I once did the minutes of a staff meeting and accidentally typed a sentence up as " Afternoon staff need to make sure all external doors are licked"

 

Since there was no spelling error and the sentence was grammatically correct - neither my spell checker nor my grammar checker picked it up. 🙃🤪

[Host Jazzbeau]

"When in the course of human events it becomes necefsary for one people to difsolve the political bands..."

[pontac]

13 hours ago, d9704011 said:

I'm gonna have to quibble about your use of the word homonym:  1.  words spelled the same with different meaning, or 2.  words pronounced the same with different spelling.  I don't think either of these are spell checker and/or proof reader weaknesses in the context of your thesis.

 

I didn't say it was a fault of computer spell-checkers, just pointing out that a writer cannot rely on a spell-checker.

 

Not spotting a homonym is a fault of a proof reader though, who should see that the wrong word has been used within the meaning of the sentence/paragraph, such as my uses of rote, sea and red. They are proper words, correctly spelled but used in the wrong circumstance

[pontac]

13 hours ago, jpalbny said:

And even that doesn't cover all of the exceptions.

 

The English language has darned weird spelling. There is no consistency. It can be explained by being very old, and a mongrel taking in words from other languages, and being modified by fashion, and by changes in pronunciation over time. I wonder that any foreigner manages to write it,

 

You wrote neighbor, I write neighbour. I understand those extraneous 'u's in words like neighbour and colour were added in admiration for the French, at a time when French was fashionable.

 

But when the US attempted to simplify English spellings, they didn't get very far. Why change neighbour to neighbor for example? Why not Naybor?

 

It also puzzles me that American English changed ise endings to ize except for advertise...

[Canal archive]

My eldest daughters best friends father was, believe it or not, considering he was as English as they come a Professor of Ancient French at an English University. He was regularly consulted by the French about their language. The French are super cool about the quality of their language.

 

On the other hand we as a nation absorb words from across the world it’s wonderful, why not, bungalow from India for example. The list is endless it adds colour to our language and why  not every year the dictionary is extended, onwards and upwards I say.

[notamermaid]

I can still hear that sentence in my head after all those years, of my colleague phoning from New York. I would pick up the receiver, two seconds silence then that sound of wind going over the ocean and coming to your ear - typical of long distance phone calls then - and then the words: "Hi, this is Jim, I have gotten a faaax." Fax really sounded that long of a word.

 

notamermaid

 

[Canal archive]

The worst was when the phone rang, you picked up and it was from a faxxxxxx machine, ohhhhhh B. Been there done that!

[gnome12]

22 minutes ago, pontac said:

 

The English language has darned weird spelling. There is no consistency. It can be explained by being very old, and a mongrel taking in words from other languages, and being modified by fashion, and by changes in pronunciation over time. I wonder that any foreigner manages to write it,

 

You wrote neighbor, I write neighbour. I understand those extraneous 'u's in words like neighbour and colour were added in admiration for the French, at a time when French was fashionable.

 

But when the US attempted to simplify English spellings, they didn't get very far. Why change neighbour to neighbor for example? Why not Naybor?

 

It also puzzles me that American English changed ise endings to ize except for advertise...

And we Canadians have a hybrid of UK and US English. We keep the "u" in neighbour and colour, but use the American "ize" endings.

[Canal archive]

Go Canada!

Edited January 14 by Canal archive

[sharkster77]

I remember reading somewhere how many different pronunciations there are for -ough words.

 

Rough, though, through just to name 3.

[gnome12]

How do you pronounce "ghoti"?

fish

"f" and in enough, "o" as is women, "ti" as in nation.

[CPT Trips]

6 minutes ago, gnome12 said:

How do you pronounce "ghoti"?

fish

"f" and in enough, "o" as is women, "ti" as in nation.

Dagnabit, you beat me to it. 
 

Friend who learned English as an additional language always said the English has more exceptions than it has rules. 

[Canal archive]

According to many the only rule that has to be observed in the English language is the comma significantly the - I think the Oxford. You want to start a discussion go for it!

[pontac]

19 minutes ago, Canal archive said:

According to many the only rule that has to be observed in the English language is the comma

 

I'll disagree with you; spelling is important in conveying meaning. There is a difference, for example, between bell and belle 😉

[jsn55]

5 hours ago, pontac said:

 

The English language has darned weird spelling. There is no consistency. It can be explained by being very old, and a mongrel taking in words from other languages, and being modified by fashion, and by changes in pronunciation over time. I wonder that any foreigner manages to write it,

 

You wrote neighbor, I write neighbour. I understand those extraneous 'u's in words like neighbour and colour were added in admiration for the French, at a time when French was fashionable.

 

But when the US attempted to simplify English spellings, they didn't get very far. Why change neighbour to neighbor for example? Why not Naybor?

 

It also puzzles me that American English changed ise endings to ize except for advertise...

I gradually realized how weird American English is over the years.  My hat's off to anyone who grows up elsewhere and learns English later in life ... it's got to be complicated and frustrating.  

[gnome12]

51 minutes ago, CPT Trips said:

Dagnabit, you beat me to it. 
 

Friend who learned English as an additional language always said the English has more exceptions than it has rules. 

And I got it backwards, it should have been "gh" as in enough, not 'f".

[TheKingD]

A much more fun word to talk about is Dagnabit!  Or Pshaw!

[Canal archive]

Okay this wonderful discussion is about English in its multitude of forms I really wish I was multilingual I bet the Latin and Germanic tongues have similar examples, I’m beginning to feel really sorry for anyone who has English as a second language.

[notamermaid]

I'm tellin' ya, German is much easier than English as regards spelling! Few things that are a hassle, like Kirche and Kirsche, which is a challenge if you are a Rhinelander like me. The ss and ß are still awkward but learnable and there are a few other annoying things. A few homonyms that differ in spelling like Leib and Laib, wieder and wider, but nothing like in English. Okay, some rules are annoying and have changed since I was at school. We have this problem with capital letter or not... The real challenge remains der die das, that is the definite articles, for foreigners. Always fun to get your own back with the English for the spelling challenges when you tell them it is "das Band" but it can be "der Band", just depends on what you mean. Ha! [Sorry, my mean streak].

 

After trying to figure out English and giving up on French (for a few years), learning Spanish was a welcome relief, as the spelling is so consistent.

 

notamermaid

 

[Canal archive]

I learnt Spanish from a really yummy young man when I was in my teens my mum and myself went to classes. This young man told us that before he learnt Spanish he hitch-nicked through France to the Spanish border where he was offered a lift by a priest luckily they were both heading for Madrid but one spoke Spanish and one spoke English but luckily they both spoke what is now considered a dead language - Latin, this is how the conversed from the Spanish border to Madrid (by the way a one of the most beautiful of European cities.