News:

If they treat education like a product, they can't very well bitch when you act like a consumer.

Main Menu

Trip's spellings and cunning linguisticisms

Started by Triple Zero, August 25, 2010, 10:16:41 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Triple Zero

So I just got a new OS install on my netbook (I got Ubuntu Netbook Edition now but that's another story), and for the first time in my life I didn't switch off the auto spell-check feature in my browsers.

I set them to UK English btw, and I believe that Opera and Firefox use different dictionaries. In fact I'm pretty sure because Opera just put a red dotted line under the word "Firefox" :lol:

Aaaaanyway, since way too often I place footnotes or parenthesized thoughts into my posts about proper spelling or wordage, I figured I might make a thread for it. Even if people already say I write very good for a non-native speaker. This also means you are allowed to correct my grammar or spelling ITT ;-)



So, first question.

I typed "alright" and it was wrong. So I typed "allright" and it was also wrong. I thought "WTF" and then I looked it up and apparently it's not even a real word?? :?

Or, at least, it seems controversial whether it is? Ok maybe the real question is, as far as I can tell, that either way, "allright" is definitely wrong. Yes?
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

BabylonHoruv

you are using UK English, the rules are different there.  By UK standards, no, alright is not a word.  By US standards it is (since our standards are based on common usage)  UK English is defined by Oxford dictionary (I believe) I think they have a board that gets to decide what is in there. 
You're a special case, Babylon.  You are offensive even when you don't post.

Merely by being alive, you make everyone just a little more miserable

-Dok Howl

LMNO

Quote from: Triple Zero on August 25, 2010, 10:16:41 AM
Even if people already say I write very good for a non-native speaker.

I can't tell if you meant to do that.

But that's all right.

Nephew Twiddleton

Quote from: Doktor Alphapance on August 25, 2010, 01:46:58 PM
Quote from: Triple Zero on August 25, 2010, 10:16:41 AM
Even if people already say I write very good for a non-native speaker.

I can't tell if you meant to do that.

But that's all right.

FYI Trip, if it wasn't intentional, the proper word is well instead of good. But no one really observes that in casual conversation anyway.
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

LMNO

True, but when the topic is specifically about so-called "proper" grammar, such things amuse me.


As well as when people post things like, "it is always neccessary to spell things correctly."

Nephew Twiddleton

Quote from: Doktor Alphapance on August 25, 2010, 05:12:09 PM
True, but when the topic is specifically about so-called "proper" grammar, such things amuse me.


As well as when people post things like, "it is always neccessary to spell things correctly."

Yeah, that does make it funny
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Jasper

Yes it is!  Usually it's all right to spell it wrong though, since few know the difference and fewer still care.

I wouldn't know if my 5th grade english teacher didn't constantly shame us and drill things like this into our heads.  She also taught us a bunch of root words so that we could guess what some new words meant, and to make us better at neologisms.  :lulz:

Triple Zero

Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Jenne

If you're doing academic writing, then knowing things like alright (conversational) vs. all right is necessary.  Not that you'd USE all right in a journal paper, but you catch my drift.

As for the difference in dictionaries, the OED is what academicians will use to write papers they want accepted for publishing.  Other dictionaries are fine in America, but anyone who wants you to publish and not perish will use the OED.  Americans just need to make sure they check against Merriam Webster if they fear the "ou" and "re" business.

NWC

You can pass for a native speaker easily on the internet, and native speakers use "alright" (which my spellcheck didn't catch there) all the time. When it comes to writing university papers I clean up my act of course, except that I don't write uni papers in English anymore, but otherwise you can always pass for a lazy native speaker.

I type "cos" instead of because, even though I'm generally disturbed by bad grammar, and I don't give a fuck. It's shorter.

Anyway there's no organization like l'Academie française which definitively says which is and is not a correct usage of a word, and because English is spoken in SO many places right now (which is a problem, linguistically, for English), many alternate spellings can be considered correct! However, for official things, they usually ask you to chose one type of English and stick to it (if you say "trousers", you should write "organisation", if you say "pants" you should write "organization").
PROSECUTORS WILL BE TRANSGRESSICUTED

Triple Zero

"carryable" is apparently not a word. says my spellchecker. what is the right word?

fuck, "spellchecker" is not even a word ... :(

oh and also Badge told me that "demention" is not a word, either.

English language needs more words, obviously. It's got holes.
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Cain

'i' before 'e' except after 'c' is the only English language grammar rule worth remembering.

Don Coyote

Quote from: Cain on August 30, 2010, 04:01:54 PM
'i' before 'e' except after 'c' is the only English language grammar rule worth remembering.
:lulz:

LMNO

Quote from: Triple Zero on August 30, 2010, 03:58:49 PM
"carryable" is apparently not a word. says my spellchecker. what is the right word?

fuck, "spellchecker" is not even a word ... :(

oh and also Badge told me that "demention" is not a word, either.

English language needs more words, obviously. It's got holes.

"portable" or "able to carry"

Are you trying to say "dimension" as in "The three dimensions of hight, length and width", or "dementia" as in "you are clearly suffering from dementia"?