Sooo... Some so-and-so says so this, or so that so much that you're not able to understand... So what...
Or how about the difference between "borrow" and "lend". I cringe when I hear 'He borrowed it to me'. Or 'sale' instead of 'sell' and vice versa. 'How much are you willing to sale that for?'. 'Car for sell'
I'm convinced that 99% of those who post on the internet do not know the difference between "lose" and "loose".
It is now an official law that all plural words must have an apostrophe before the s. Sorry, I was supposed to say "word's" there.
This one gives me a hard time. I am a terrible speller. It's just the way my brain works. My memory is like an over-compressed jpeg image - it holds a lot of data but the details are fuzzy. Short vowel sounds are a killer for me. I am constantly groping between short "e" and short "i" when spelling. The good news is that I realize that I am a bad speller and try to compensate. Spell check is a life saver. I also have a dictionary applet on my launch bar, so I can quickly check words. Thank the gods of technology for computers. Tom
Those are great, but wearing one would be pointless. Very few people would get it. It's much like the "There's no place like 127.0.0.1" joke. Tom
I agree, from FHOPP: "Probably because McBush is just another looser like Bush, everyone is tired of all the ignorance that comes out of his mouth. "
I studied English Language and Linguists for two years in college and found it fascinating. I enjoyed the study of Etymology, Dialectology, and other studies of why words mean things (and sometimes different things to different poeple). Of course, other students found it offensive when I would insist that language is nothing more than a series of sounds with mental images attached. But it advanced my argument that a dog will come running to the sound of the word "food" just as it will to the sound of the food can opening. It's just a sound associated to a mental image. Anyway, one of my favorite Linguistic professors used the phrase, "so long as information has been transferred communication has occurred." Though he was well versed in many languages and dialects, he was not one for holding firm to every official rule. I suppose it's one thing to know the rules but something else to follow them. He also taught us another phrase. This one pertains to the fact that we were learning the "proper" way to speak. Too many times people use their higher knowledge of any subject to point out the lack of knowledge or accidental misstep of others. Either because they feel that their correction will have a lasting affect on the way the other person speaks or simply because they like to point out that they are superior people. With that, I present one of the best pieces of advice I've received to date: "There are those who correct others because they know what's right; there are those who bite their tongues because they know what's best."
I think your numbers are low here... True. Let's not even discuss there/they're/their! And then, if that isn't enough, it's the its/it's issue! Dammit, it's enough to make a grammar nazi crazy!!
I once bought a t-shirt that said: NUKE A GODLESS COMMUNIST GAY BABY SEAL FOR CHRIST I wore it twice. The first time, a perfectly normal, intelligent person, stared at it for a while and then asked me what it meant. The second time I was sitting on a park bench when an elderly couple came slowly along arm-in-arm. They stopped, looked at my t-shirt for a long minute, and then the lady said, "Oh! You love the lord. That's nice." I never wore the shirt again. I gave it to my mother, who took it to Nicaragua as a donation, where it was probably worn by someone who knew no English.
