Spelling/grammar lesson

[Alan]

Another one is the use of the word "bare" meaning "very" or "a lot". I give you an example from school. There had been an accident on the main road leading up to my school, one person walked in late and said to my teacher "there was bare traffic". I then wondered if he meant "bear traffic" which I believe is much like normal traffic but furrier. Apparently I was wrong. Innit

Blimey, are kids still saying this? I think my generation are to blame for that. Sorry folks.

[Holders]

Surely "barely" means not much.

[Alan]

Surely "barely" means not much.

Not "barely", but just simply "bare". It's what all the cool kids used to say when I was young. A rough translation is "a fair amount".

[jarv]

Don,
I thought UNinterested was just anotehr "Americanism" to the English language. (replacing DISinterested). I guess I should have (not of) looked it up.
As someone else said, you learn something new every day.

[Vinnieffc]

Did you know that 00101 people don't understand binary code ?

[ToodlesMcToot]

Oh, and "disinterested" means NEUTRAL, as in "They sought arbitration from a disinterested source."

UNinterested means not caring, as in "Dempsey looks uninterested out there."

Been bugging me for years, and don't get me started on gauntlet and gantlet.

Ain't that, like, some sort of small chart?

[sipwell]

This thread reads like 'women over 40' but considerably less visual. Grumpy old men and all that :)

[Berserker]

I thought the women  one was better, gave me something to aspire to ;-)

[CorkedHat]

I think good grammar comes by listening and reading those who know what good grammar is. In my case it has nothing to do with education. I left a comprehensive school on my fifteenth birthday without an examination pass to my name. It certainly wasn't inherited, as my father was a painter and decorator and my mother was a cleaner.
When I was a messenger boy I had to take a parcel from Holborn Kingsway to Osterley on the tube. Somebody had left a copy of Somerset Maugham's Cakes and Ale on a seat and with nothing better to do I picked up the copy and started to read. By the time the train had reached Ealing I was captivated and I knew I wanted to be a writer.
I then read works by Hesse and Hemingway, Steinbeck and Camus. I listened to Alastair Cooke's Letter from America and I became in effect, self- educated.
If words attract you then you will want to use them correctly. If they are simply a means of communicating, and so long as you can make yourself understood, you will be quite happy to say "could of" even though you mean "could have"
I believe grammarians can get carried away with such issues a split infinitives, or whether it is permissible to commence a sentence with "And" or "But", but hanging participles should always be avoided and the use of "literally" is overused and usually incorrect. "I literally threw my hands in the air."
Really? How high did you throw them and did you manage to catch them on the way down?
English is a beautiful language and for an old codger like me it is sad when it is butchered almost beyond recognition, but that is the way of the world and there is nothing that I can do about it. Each to their own as the saying goes.

[Holders]

Nice to see you back, CH.

I think a lot of bad grammar is just ignorance, maybe poor teaching, but not intentional.*

It can only be a generation or so before "should of", "if I was", "a criteria", "snuck" and the other horrors mentioned above become accepted or even the norm. Just look back a generation ago, we'd never have started a sentence with "However" but it's actually useful business-speak that I've recently come to use myself. Not the best grammar, but clear communication of a complex point. How long before "whom" disappears? Not long, I reckon. And how many people still say "five-and-twenty past" when telling the time, as we were taught at school? 

Like it or not, and I don't particularly, grammar evolves.   

* Is a comma before a conjunction still frowned upon? They used to be known as "Oxford commas".

[McBridefan1]

Let's clear up the double consonant as well. the vowel preceding a double consonant has a short vowel sound while a vowel preceding a single consonant has a long vowel sound... it makes a difference when you are typing, for instance mr. Hatter Don becomes someone else entirely when you call him Mr. Hater Don... just my tuppence.

Precisely, like travelling, dialling, programming etc etc.

americans don't double up on their endings before adding ing, but I was always taught to do so.

[Shredhead]

I love this thread.
One of my pet hates at the moment is people saying 'impacting on' instead of 'affecting'. Grrrr.

[ron]

Each to their own as the saying goes.

Totally agree about not needing to frown on split infinitives, because  I believe that crticism started with Latin scholars claiming that it is wrong because it looks ugly in that language ( when not necessarily so in others) .

However the mixing up of there, their and they're, to and too, your and you're stands out like a sore thumb, as does it's instead of its.



PS   CH ...Shouldn't  that be "Each to his own", seeing as it is a singular case, and English grammar defaults to masculine gender if the actual gender is unknown...?    086.gif    093.gif

[CorkedHat]

I was merely using the vernacular, Ron, although you raise a moot point.
We often see the comment that "Fulham are doing well" when grammarians would argue that Fulham being a single entity in that there is not more than one Fulham, it should be "Fulham is doing well."
It is like the pronunciation of Moet and Chandon. Do you pronounce Moet correctly and be thought to be wrong or do you pronounce it wrongly so that the hoi polloi think you are educated?

[NogoodBoyo]

I always turn a deaf ear when someone writes "That's a mute point."
Nogood "great to see Crickhowell Hat back in print, itis" Boyo

[Holders]

I was merely using the vernacular, Ron, although you raise a moot point.
We often see the comment that “Fulham are doing well” when grammarians would argue that Fulham being a single entity in that there is not more than one Fulham, it should be “Fulham is doing well.”
It is like the pronunciation of Moet and Chandon. Do you pronounce Moet correctly and be thought to be wrong or do you pronounce it wrongly so that the hoi polloi think you are educated?

Also Kabinett and Riesling...

[ron]

I was merely using the vernacular, Ron, although you raise a moot point.
We often see the comment that "Fulham are doing well" when grammarians would argue that Fulham being a single entity in that there is not more than one Fulham, it should be "Fulham is doing well."
It is like the pronunciation of Moet and Chandon. Do you pronounce Moet correctly and be thought to be wrong or do you pronounce it wrongly so that the hoi polloi think you are educated?

Life must be good down under CH...I don't think I've ever had to say Moet and Chandon !

[HatterDon]

I was merely using the vernacular, Ron, although you raise a moot point.
We often see the comment that "Fulham are doing well" when grammarians would argue that Fulham being a single entity in that there is not more than one Fulham, it should be "Fulham is doing well."
It is like the pronunciation of Moet and Chandon. Do you pronounce Moet correctly and be thought to be wrong or do you pronounce it wrongly so that the hoi polloi think you are educated?

Life must be good down under CH...I don't think I've ever had to say Moet and Chandon !

They had so-so individual careers, and did fairly well as a duo, but they didn't really take off until they joined the New Christy Minstrels.

[Scrumpy]

I always turn a deaf ear when someone writes "That's a mute point."
Nogood "great to see Crickhowell Hat back in print, itis" Boyo

Alright Boyo?

Does the welsh language have any punctuation? Do they have commas, question marks etc? It seems unlikely to me when most of their place names mean 'Town with a church on the mouth of the river ystwyth' - or something similar. Single Welsh words are effectively sentences in themselves!?

[CorkedHat]

I was merely using the vernacular, Ron, although you raise a moot point.
We often see the comment that "Fulham are doing well" when grammarians would argue that Fulham being a single entity in that there is not more than one Fulham, it should be "Fulham is doing well."
It is like the pronunciation of Moet and Chandon. Do you pronounce Moet correctly and be thought to be wrong or do you pronounce it wrongly so that the hoi polloi think you are educated?

Life must be good down under CH...I don't think I've ever had to say Moet and Chandon !

When people ask why a working class bloke like me is drinking champagne, I repeat what MP, Aneurin Bevan, once said when he was asked the same question. "Why not – forty million working class people drink it every day in France."
Whereas I believe that Australian wine is far superior to anything the French can produce, they still beat us when it comes to Champagne. Mind you, Moet was Flemish, a fact that I am surprised Mr Sipwell hasn't pointed out.