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.....and why can you spell lose, loose or lose?? Always a mind boggler
I was always taught that when you borrow something you should always return in the same condition, or better, than when you got it. Does that not apply anymore?
yes, i'm sure the 8th is the result of general acceptance due to usage -- one of the things i actually like about american english. it can become frustrating, though, when you know the origin of words and phrases that are seldom used in their original sense anymore. for example, "agenda" and "begs the question" are two that bother me. "agenda items" is a phrase i hear at least weekly and nobody seems to know that it is redundant (curse the nerd that pointed this out to me and ruined my bissful acceptance of the phrase).
How about putting all these comments into its own thread????
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I'm very torn on this. Text language annoys me, but so does "standard" English. Text message is more logical, so I like that. But I'm just too used to normal (ha!) spellings.
I got into a little bit of trouble recently reading a book to a friend's kid. My wife didn't think I should be pronouncing both l's in "llama" while reading Llama Llama Red Pajama. She seemed to think it would teach the kid the wrong way to read that word. My defense was that the "right" way was wrong and stupid to begin with.
Those who are married will know how far that argument got me. . .
Last edited by inudesu; 09-10-2009 at 02:15 PM.
Obviously you don't have kids yet. Once I had my own I got over that sort of thing real quick. Didn't want my kids to sound like idiots just because their dad had an intellectual bone to pick with the English-speaking world.
Didn't get over that, however. I do, as much as I can, try to use the native pronunciations for most imported words, except for those that, in my subjective estimation, are so assimilated into the American lexicon that the foreign language origin has been all but lost.
Also reminds me of a friend who was always annoyed with the whole "Pierre Bossier" mall thing. In his view, if you are going to pronounce it as "Bozure" then you should call it the "Pete Bozure" mall. If you are going to insist on "Pierre," then you should pronounce it "Pierre Boss-i-ay." Hard to argue with his reasoning.
Your argument falls apart at the "English is English" proposition. There is nothing English about English at all. I would go so far as to say that the "English language" is neither.
Question: Do any other countries with sound-based (obviously English is not really "phonetic") alphabets have spelling bees? That right there should tell you something is wrong with our language! It would be hard to crown a winner of a Spanish spelling bee, as long as your participants were basically literate.