"versus"

[they'reHISchickens]

Online, I usually write the way I talk...very colloquial and ungrammatically. Sigh.. Payback is DD scolding me and being a grammarNazi. I made her into what she is today. I have only myself to blame. oh heck.. I'm proud of her At least one member of the next generation knows proper spelling and punctuation.

 

[gryeyes]

Isn't that rubbish a by-product of cell 'phone texting? The laziness of it is offensive, even in a text message.

Oh, it started way back on AOL in Instant Messaging before cell phones were in everyone's hands. I can't communicate in that fashion - I spell out words even in text messages. Laziness is right and offensive is exactly what it is.

Yet the practitioners think nothing of it. It appears to be normal and acceptable to them. That's what bothers me.

But it doesn't bother me enough to take the time and effort to rail against it Perhaps because I "text" with folks who are literate and don't demonstrate the behavior...... Or, again, the sentiment in my signature line makes such text conversations quite short.

I am enjoying this exchange immensely.

 

[thaiturkey]

Agreed. It's always good to make an effort to use English (or any language, for that matter) well.

Any language!

Leaving aside Western languages, there are three where I live. The main ones are Thai and Isaan, the latter being peculiar to our region and, I believe, a result of migration from Laos many generations ago. My neighbours mix the two in their conversations.

The third language we call 'Tinglish'. It's English with something similar to the Thai language grammatical construction. We use it so that our wives and other locals who speak some English can understand our English. Thais find English grammar very difficult and, after all, we should be speaking their language. Some locals are more or less fluent in good English and will stop foreigners in the street to practice and show off a little. There are some amusing encounters. Verbs in Thai aren't conjugated and many people ignore even the rudimentary tenses, everything being in the present tense. So, you can imagine what Tinglish is like. When I go back to the UK, I still speak Tinglish for a while without realising it. With that and forgetting the denominations of UK coins, I get some odd looks in the shops!

 

[KristyHall]

I am not a grammar Nazi. I tend to be a terrible typist and speller. I do have problems with people who type in all caps all the time, or can not bother to type beyond "text Speak"

I admit I am on a dating site that is also a fun social site. I keep my profile up so I can continue to play the games and take the crazy tests, I have gone on the occasional date, and have met some great people who are now good friends from this site.

What drives me crazy is the number of people who message me in all caps, text speak, or in an incomprehensible jumble of words. Most of the time I do not answer back. It does not matter if I answer back or not because either way most of these people get mad and start spamming my message box with a string of lazily typed insults that are so crazy I have no idea if they are trying to insult me or tell a story about a knight charging a castle gate.

edited for... typos

 

[bamachicks8]

Any language!

Leaving aside Western languages, there are three where I live. The main ones are Thai and Isaan, the latter being peculiar to our region and, I believe, a result of migration from Laos many generations ago. My neighbours mix the two in their conversations.

The third language we call 'Tinglish'. It's English with something similar to the Thai language grammatical construction. We use it so that our wives and other locals who speak some English can understand our English. Thais find English grammar very difficult and, after all, we should be speaking their language. Some locals are more or less fluent in good English and will stop foreigners in the street to practice and show off a little. There are some amusing encounters. Verbs in Thai aren't conjugated and many people ignore even the rudimentary tenses, everything being in the present tense. So, you can imagine what Tinglish is like. When I go back to the UK, I still speak Tinglish for a while without realising it. With that and forgetting the denominations of UK coins, I get some odd looks in the shops!

Examples please

 

[thaiturkey]

Examples please

You mean Tinglish?

By the way, I should have said also that Tinglish as used by foreigners includes a mix of Thai words as well as modified English ones.'I go poo yai ban' - 'I'm gong to see the village head man/woman'.

'I go shopping' could mean, 'I went shopping', 'I am going shopping now' or 'I will go shopping'. No conjugation and no tense. You need to understand the context to work out which tense.

'Where you go?' You work that one out according to whether you've just arrived home, are picking up the SUV keys or are sitting on the sofa but reaching for your mobile 'phone.

'Where are you?' That's rather different and, I hasten to add, never applies to me. A Thai wife who doesn't trust her foreigner husband, and some have very good reason, will call him to say those words. Wives have a very good bush telegraph here. The question means, 'My friend called me to say that you are in X lady bar with a girl sitting next to you'.

Vocabulary is, as one might expect, an issue. Thais in general don't use English enough to develop an extensive vocabulary. Added to that, they are often not into precision. So, 'relative' and 'family' are probably not the same in some conversations. 'Family' usually means blood relative or in-law. 'Relative' usually means a close and long term friend of the family. However, they seem to be interchangeable and overlapping.

We learn to use our inner ear as well as the physical one!

We're lucky that the locals are so accommodating. They could justifiably tell us not to be lazy and learn more Thai.

 

[Chick N Haus]

My dad was a physician who could spell any medical term, but when it came to everyday spelling, he was a mess. His excuse was something he attributed to Mark Twain. "I have never had any respect for a man who can't spell a word at least two different ways."

Among my pet peeves are: anyways, unravel, to and too.

I went to pick up my great granddaughter at pre-school. On the door was a note written by her teacher. "The children didn't go outside today because its to wet." I took her aside and explained the its, it"s and to, too, two." She thanked me and told me that I was the only one who had noticed. I thought to myself, you hope.

 

[gryeyes]

I went to pick up my great granddaughter at pre-school. On the door was a note written by her teacher. "The children didn't go outside today because its to wet." I took her aside and explained the its, it"s and to, too, two." She thanked me and told me that I was the only one who had noticed. I thought to myself, you hope.

At a pre-school, huh? Where impressionable little minds develop? Dang. I started to read at age three, but that was a million years ago and before pre-schools. My habit of reading everything I saw in Kindergarten, though, would have had my mother or father take notice and correct the mistakes. Call me an apple; apparently I didn't fall far from that tree.

 

[thaiturkey]

Do you notice the poor English on the TV these days?

The BBC was once a stronghold of correct English. Nowadays, the newsreaders and link people use split infinitives and poor grammar without a thought. Then there are the fashionable words and phrases that they feel obliged to adopt. The current favourite on both sides of the Atlantic is 'multiple' when 'some', 'a few', 'several' and so on would be better and more informative.

Just after WWII, the British government commissioned a book called 'The Complete Plain Words' by Gowers. It's still available in, I believe, an updated form. The aim was to encourage civil servants to write in a more informal but still correct style. The book is a real gem and packed with the most hilarious errors as examples of how not to write.

Here's a link to one of the websites about the book:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Plain_Words

Here's another website with some good tips:

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/06/plain-english/

 

[newfoundland]

Many American English words have different spellings to spellings used in the UK. A typical example of this is the use of z in such words as realise. Every time I type these or such words as neighbour, my computer underlines them in red. Both ways of spelling these words are correct of course depending which side of the Atlantic you are on. The thing that seems to have vanished from common use is the comma. I hardly ever see these used anymore. People seem to prefer to use several sentences instead. As language is a constantly evolving thing I suppose we must accept changes that are adopted by the majority of the population. The dot that denotes the end of a sentence and is commonly called a period in the US, will always be a full stop to us in the UK. Or will it?