brexit

[David Herrick]

That book sounds interesting, Howard.  I am a fan of the “Strine” accent.  I found a similar book when I lived in Rhode Island, full of quasi-phonetic transcriptions of the local accent.  I was quite proud of myself when I went to a grocery one day and someone said to a cashier, “Suh vye see uh?”, and I was able to understand it as “Do you serve ice here?”

I must defend Mr. Webster and spelling reform, though.  It can’t be a bad idea to bring the spelling of words more in line with how they’re actually pronounced.  English is hard enough to learn as it is.

By the way, I say it’s “bastardization”, spelled (and pronounced) with a “z”, which is “zee” and not “zed”.

 

[Jung Roe]

I vote we revert back to the King James english:

“All these things must come to pass”….”Be fruitful and multiply”…”Eat, drink and be merry”…”Left hand know what thy right hand doeth”…”The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak”…

Don’t understand half the time what they tried to say, but it sounded Shakespearean and cool!

[Howard]

Well Jung, I still have my copy of the King James Version of the Bible that I was awarded in 1964 as Dux of my Sunday School, believe it or not!

For you doubting Thomas’s:

[Howard]

As you can see, it came with pictures for a young twelve year old in his first year of High School.

[Jung Roe]

Wow Howard, that is impressive you still have that King James Bible.  It’s almost as old as me.  I got my first bible when I was about 12 too, and it was a little red King James Bible, that I had a hell of a time understanding, until I finally got a NIV Bible (New International Version) later in my teens (which I still have) that contained english I was familiar with.

[Howard]

I’m not suggesting I understood everything I read, far from it. However, I could recite the names of every book of the old and new testament in their biblical order and this was probably enough to impress my teachers at the time!

Note that James was King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland. The way they’re going, soon we may have a Queen or King of England and Wales only

[Michael Thompson]

Somehow my little post about if Brexit will affect MLT has morphed into a discussion about the differences between the King James bible vs. the NIV! #Whaaa? #Ooops!

[Howard]

LOL David! Languages can be strange beasts and English is no exception. It has evolved progressively from a language we’d find very difficult to understand and is continuing to change. This is both good and bad. English has managed to assimilate many words from many languages, including German, French, Latin, and Norse.

However, I find it particularly galling how some millennials are changing the language, but not for the better. This I put down to modern technology and the (over)use of abbreviations when texting.

Unfortunately, this is leading to very poor grammar, which is a sore point with me. One thing in particular that really grates with me is the misuse of the past tense.

For example, for hypotheses, wishes and conditions in the past, we use the past perfect:

• I would have helped him if he had asked.
• This can be abbreviated to, I would’ve helped him if he had asked. 
• Many people, and not just millennials, write this as I would of helped him if he had asked. Yuk!

However, the news is not all bad and there are many millennials whose English is excellent. In this regard, we are fortunate to have as our Patrons of this club, Mona and Lisa, whose English spelling, grammar and pronunciation never cease to amaze me. For me, English is my first and only language, while for them it is their second language. I wish my diction was as good!

I know this was a topic about Brexit, but as I’ve already stated, Brexit is about England and England is about English. Being the pedant I can be, I couldn’t let this one go.

David, when it comes to your zee’s and your bastardization of the English language, you are incorrigible!

[Jacki Hopper]

I’m guilty of not always being the best in Grammar throughout my school years and now, I believe I had a learning disability back then to what is probably more common now and has a name…

I will say though, that Spelling for me, was my joy… I loved being great at Spelling and even won a class Spelling Bee one time… But from Grades 7-9 and Grade 11…Spelling was not really emphasized as important to know but I had a teacher in both Grades 10 and 12(yes same teacher both grades), who was old school and insisted on importance of Spelling and properly knowing how to spell… Once more Queen Speller arose from her dormant past Spelling Ashes to become one of the top class spellers in both  those Grades… Lol… Prior to that in Grades Kindergarten – Grade 6 we always had a Spelling/Phonetics Workbook which we learned from as well the teacher’s own plans for classroom teaching in those areas of education.

Canadian /USA have different spelling variations on words.

I guess my petpeeve amongst the English language is when when I hear people pronounce “route/schedule” differently then how I say and was taught as it  is pronounced , I pronounce both as  “route” – to sound like “root”   whereas the annoying variation to me is  the “about” sound pronounciation” and “schedule” – to sound like “sc” type sound, the “sc” being prominent as opposed to the annoying variation of it being pronounced as “sedgeule”, kinda like the “Schweppes Gingerale brand”…

Also what annoys me, though I don’t speak fluent or understand much of the Quebec French, is their sloppy slang they use, they speak half French/English combo, and what French they do speak, it not like the true Parisienne France French of what I was taught in my school years during the French classes we had in school.  I guess I have my petpeeve and not perfect quirks too, like everyone else… Lol

[David Herrick]

I totally agree with you, Howard, except for the “incorrigible” part.  (My wife corriges me several times a day.)

My general feeling is that language change is good if it decreases the number of exceptions to the rules, and bad if it increases them.  Pronunciation always evolves much faster than spelling, so the number of exceptions naturally tends to grow.  You can’t force people to talk differently, but spelling reform every century or so would be like a reset button for the language.  It has the disadvantage of making older writings progressively more unreadable (like Middle English), but one can always get a modern translation.

That “would of” business actually predates millennials by quite a bit.  As a teacher I saw it in my first class of students, who were born around 1973, and I suspect they were far from the first.  It makes you wonder whether they’ve ever read anything, or contemplated the structure of words and sentences.

Kudos to you, Jacki, on your spelling prowess!  A lot of folks these days think that spelling and facts and figures are not things you need to know, since you can just “Google” them.  What they fail to realize is that thinking and learning involve forging connections between pieces of knowledge that are already in your head.  Google can’t do that for you, and you can’t do it for yourself if there are no pieces in your head to connect.

I had a student a few years ago who I thought might have a British accent, but I wasn’t quite sure.  Eventually she mentioned that she had one British parent and one American parent.  I immediately pounced, probably a little too gleefully, and said, “Okay, ‘skedule’ or ‘shedule’ (pronunciation)?  ‘While’ or ‘whilst’?  ‘Aluminum’ or ‘aluminium’?”  She refused to commit one way or the other.

 

[Howard]

Well David, it’s schedule and aluminium for me.

The official name “aluminium” was adopted to conform with the -ium names of most other elements. In 1925, the American Chemical Society (ACS) decided to go from aluminium back to the original aluminum, putting the United States in the “aluminum” group.

In recent years, the the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), had identified “aluminium” as the proper spelling, but it didn’t catch on in North America, since the ACS used aluminum.

I’m glad to hear your wife corriges you regularly. You definitely need it!

 

 

[Howard]

Well done with your spelling Jacki. I understand your frustrations with people’s strange word pronunciations. We pronounce route as ’root’ too, but for some people this creates problems with the verb form of ’routed’ as it also sounds like a rude slang term! For example, to send by a selected route: routed along the scenic shore road.

You are lucky with your grammar as you can claim ’poetic licence’ and, dare I say it, you are Canadian!