another O/T - spelling

[AdamM]

I thought you were cracking a subtle Magnum PI joke TE

[TightEnd]

you see thinking about Latin "O" levels gets me cross, he says quickly changing the subject having lost the argument!

The exam paper involved the translation of Latin text back into English, from one of a number of set texts

Because I had such a good memory, and because of the work ethic of the school, I basically achieved an A grade in the exam merely by learning by rote the whole of texts by Pliny and Homer and spewing the translation out

I have nothing against learning Latin, though of course it's teaching is these days dying out, because it's a fantastic grounding in the derivations of the English language. However as life moved on and the outside world beckoned how much more useful would it have been for me to do metalwork or DIY or home economics or childcare?

To this day I struggle to put a set of shelves up for example, yet can talk b*ll*cks about all sorts of subjects of absolutely no use to me in day to day life!

[AndrewT]

Magnum calls his agent about his upcoming opera.



"By the way, what's this you say about my long-lost brother posting on some poker forum and cracking silly jokes all day?"

[jammer]

but that was covered earlier in the thread. I use te correct there/their and the right to/too because I think they're very easy to get right. however there doesn't need to be different spellings because context takes care of it.
its there fault
and
It's their fault
are just as clear if you let go of the traditional spelling. it can only mean one thing.

No, !

 They're not just as clear. I read the second one instantly, but the first one took a few seconds to work out what the hell it meant. Honestly, dead set, it took more of the old brain processing to understand the first. Now if I had to read a book, or a long post like that, well it'd be a nightmare.

Now I'm thinking that because you don't connect with spelling, to you it is probably just as clear. But to most people, the second line is much easier to read. (and I don't have to work out who "fault" is), and unfortunately you are stuck in our world

[danmonkey]

Adam, you may not like "their", "there" and "they're" but they are three entirely different words.  Combining the three into one just would not make any sense.

Just imagine this passage without the distinction:

Jane ran crying into the kitchen, "Mother! I've lost the puppies".
"There, there dear, don't cry.  Look in the garden, they're over there with their mother".

[Bongo]

The exam paper involved the translation of Latin text back into English, from one of a number of set texts

Because I had such a good memory, and because of the work ethic of the school, I basically achieved an A grade in the exam merely by learning by rote the whole of texts by Pliny and Homer and spewing the translation out

Oh, this happened at university too. Annoyed me greatly that people who knew nothing about the subject could get good marks.

[matt674]

i agree with you TE, for the first two years at my school Latin and French were compulsory then you got the choice of a third language, either German, Russian or Greek - but only if the school thought you were good enough at both Latin and French (not that we were told this when we started). At the time i thought it was a waste of time learning Latin as it was a dead language and didnt really show much of an interest and because of this i was never given the opportunity to learn an extra language.

I complained that this was unfair and that i'd rather learn German than Latin as at least it could possibly serve some purpose in later life (not that i've since used French in any form since i left school but thats beside the point!! ) I can see sometimes where words in the english language derived from because of my Latin studies but unless i wanted to graduate into becoming a doctor or Alan Titchmarsh the words "less" and "point" are two that spring to mind.

now i just wish i'd been taught how to play poker profitably at an early age instead

[AdamM]

you're not concentrating. what I'm saying is we're conditioned to recognise the different words and if a single spelling was agreed me and you would probably always struggle.

what I'm saying is
"There, there dear, don't cry.  Look in the garden, they're over there with there mother" is just as understandable. They're is obviously two word abbreviated so is a slightly different case. Context guys, context

[TightEnd]

I built a career around a good memory, and absolutely no common sense.

 

[AdamM]

if you tried REALLY hard I'm sure you could come up with sentances that are ambiguous because of spelling but their can't be many 

[AdamM]

incidently it's nice to se Blonde back to it's old self. polarised views on a subject and a nice friendly intelligent debte on it. can you imagine what his contribution would be like to this

[luckyblind]

you see thinking about Latin "O" levels gets me cross, he says quickly changing the subject having lost the argument!

The exam paper involved the translation of Latin text back into English, from one of a number of set texts

Because I had such a good memory, and because of the work ethic of the school, I basically achieved an A grade in the exam merely by learning by rote the whole of texts by Pliny and Homer and spewing the translation out

I have nothing against learning Latin, though of course it's teaching is these days dying out, because it's a fantastic grounding in the derivations of the English language. However as life moved on and the outside world beckoned how much more useful would it have been for me to do metalwork or DIY or home economics or childcare?

To this day I struggle to put a set of shelves up for example, yet can talk b*ll*cks about all sorts of subjects of absolutely no use to me in day to day life!

This is exactly why I spent most Latin lessons in the pool hall attaining my only 'U' grade.  I managed to write a short story about Postman Pat and some aliens from Mars in on the exam paper. I often wonder the thoughts going through the markers head as they read it. The one line I always remember for some reason is 'Caecelius est in urto'.

[matt674]

I built a career around a good memory, and absolutely no common sense.

 

works pretty much as well for my online poker exploits!!!

[jammer]

you're not concentrating. what I'm saying is we're conditioned to recognise the different words and if a single spelling was agreed me and you would probably always struggle.

that's a bit patronising ....

what I'm saying is
"There, there dear, don't cry.  Look in the garden, they're over there with there mother" is just as understandable. They're is obviously two word abbreviated so is a slightly different case. Context guys, context

And again, no, that is harder to understand. The word's are different specifically to make it easier to understand (words sounding the same are by chance), so that you don't have to use any mental processing to work out context. There's a huge amount of linguistics research on this if you wanna go looking for it...

[jammer]

by the way great topic