Spelling anomalies

[GA Russell]

By far the most common error I see on internet boards is the spelling of "loses" as "looses".

[JD Gumby]

Originally Posted by plib

with the end result that English is considered to have the largest vocabulary in the world, and enables shades of meaning that are difficult to encompass in other languages.

Only because English has this nasty habit of mugging other languages in back alleys and stealing all their useful words.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

I feel sorry for people learning English as a second language because it's SO inconsistent. Heck, I feel sorry for my 7 year old, learning how to spell!

eP

When I taught English in Germany, my (German) students tended to think it was the easiest language to learn. I.e., "You just have to learn a little bit of grammar and then all you do is learn words."

Originally Posted by plib

...with the end result that English is considered to have the largest vocabulary in the world, and enables shades of meaning that are difficult to encompass in other languages.

The nuances in English aren't any more complicated than the nuances in the language of any other developed country. Here's a link to an interesting Geoff Nunberg article:

http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/payack.html

Originally Posted by Quelch

When I was young, single and happy

The plural of roof was rooves, now it's roofs (either is correct according to Wikipedia)

and the plural of hoof, hooves, now it's hoofs

English is changing all the time

In the future we may be writing, not just m8t but l8t and f8t etc.

With millions of Asians learning English we're sure to have lots of Asian words becoming part of English !

My non-wikipedia reference works tell me that "rooves" has never been the correct plural of "roof." But that "hooves" and "hoofs" are both correct.

"Dwarves" is purely Tolkien...although he's pretty influential; I don't think you ever see "Dwarfs" used in post-Tolkien fantasy literature. (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs predates him.) So the descriptivist in me says that the proper plural for a fantasy dwarf (but not a white dwarf!) is "dwarves."

[emellaich]

In a similar vein, I was recently reading a book by an independent author. It wasn't bad plotting and dialogue, but I finally couldn't take anymore. Every couple of paragraphs the author had to throw in a five dollar word where everyday English would do just fine.

What made it jarring was that the words were often wrong. For example, there was one place where the correct word would have been 'order' to indicate that something was sorted a certain way. The author used precedence instead. While precedence does strictly speaking imply an order, it is usually used to signify that something in an order is higher ranking or came before others. This is the only instance that I explicitly remember, but it was actually on the the more correct examples. It's like the writer thought you had to be 'erudite' to be recognized as a good writer. It appeared they got their words and definitions from a word of the day calendar, and they didn't have any practical experience with using them.

I was torn on what to do. Except for this habit, the book was OK. I'd like to leave feedback on Amazon, but my goal is to encourage the writer to step it up, not to kill their chance at writing. Unfortunately, there is no way to leave a polite note to the writer without it being an open criticism (review) that encourages the public to shun the writer.

[sabredog]

Reading some of my 18 years old daughters friends comments on Facebook, they cannot spell or punctuate either.

Welcome to the age of the SMS, instant messaging and Twitter

c u l8r

[plib]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

The nuances in English aren't any more complicated than the nuances in the language of any other developed country. Here's a link to an interesting Geoff Nunberg article:

http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/payack.html

An opinion ( assessment, assumption, attitude, conception, conclusion, conjecture, estimate, estimation, eye*, fancy, feeling, guess, hypothesis, idea, imagining, impression, inclination, inference, judgment, mind, notion, persuasion, point of view, postulate, presumption, presupposition, reaction, say-so, sentiment, slant, speculation, supposition, surmise, suspicion, take*, theorem, theory, thesis, think*, thought, view, viewpoint) piece based on his own belief ( acceptance, admission, assent, assumption, assurance, avowal, axiom, certainty, conclusion, confidence, conjecture, conviction, credence, credit, deduction, divination, expectation, faith, fancy, feeling, guess, hope, hypothesis, idea, impression, intuition, judgment, knowledge, mind, mindset, notion, opinion, persuasion, position, postulation, presumption, presupposition, profession, reliance, supposition, surmise, suspicion, theorem, theory, thesis, thinking, trust, understanding, view) and conjecture (conclusion, fancy, guess, guesstimate, guesswork, hunch, hypothesis, inference, notion, opinion, perhaps, presumption, shot in the dark, sneaking suspicion, stab in the dark, supposition, surmise, theorizing, theory) which comes to no firm conclusion ( agreement, conviction, corollary, deduction, determination, illation, inference, opinion, ratiocination, resolution, resolve, sequitur, settlement, verdict).

(Cheat sheet courtesy of FF and thesaurus.com)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sabredog

Reading some of my 18 years old daughters friends comments on Facebook, they cannot spell or punctuate either.

Welcome to the age of the SMS, instant messaging and Twitter

c u l8r

But in fairness, you're not using punctuation correctly either. Both "daughters" and "friends" should have an apostrophe in the above sentence.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But in fairness, you're not using punctuation correctly either. Both "daughters" and "friends" should have an apostrophe in the above sentence.

Funny enough Harry, I just knew you would correct me, so I did not go back and edit my omission.

[HarryT]

I believe you .

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by Apache

Just be glad that we do not have a written language like Japanese. You have to know1,006 Kanji by the end of the sixth grade. When writing Kanji you have to know stroke order and direction. Makes learning your ABCs a piece of cake.
Apache

Once you reach a "critical mass" it's not as hard as you might envision. Problem is that "critical mass" differs from person to person.

[Rob Lister]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But in fairness, you're not using punctuation correctly either. Both "daughters" and "friends" should have an apostrophe in the above sentence.

4. Skitt’s Law
Expressed as "any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself" or "the likelihood of an error in a post is directly proportional to the embarrassment it will cause the poster."

If I point out the error you made in pointing out the error he made while pointing to the error his daughters made, I will make some sort of error.

So I won't.

[StephenM]

Originally Posted by Quelch

When I was young, single and happy

The plural of roof was rooves, now it's roofs (either is correct according to Wikipedia)

and the plural of hoof, hooves, now it's hoofs

English is changing all the time

In the future we may be writing, not just m8t but l8t and f8t etc.

With millions of Asians learning English we're sure to have lots of Asian words becoming part of English !

As well, the plural of goose is geese, but the plural of moose is most definitely not meese. The plural of mouse is mice, but the plural of house is not hise.

I often feel sympathy for non-native English speakers who have to learn the language. Heck, most native English speakers have trouble with the language.

[RHWright]

And in many cases, I've found non-native speakers to know it better because they actually had to pay attention and learn it, whereas the native speakers "larned it gooder" through immersion and just getting by in grade school. (I was going to say "grammar school," but, well...)

[Conor]

Originally Posted by StephenM

As well, the plural of goose is geese, but the plural of moose is most definitely not meese. The plural of mouse is mice, but the plural of house is not hise.

I often feel sympathy for non-native English speakers who have to learn the language. Heck, most native English speakers have trouble with the language.

There's also children and oxen. But against that, English doesn't have masculine, feminine, or neuter nouns. And as a result, only one definite article and one indefinite article.
If you want hard, try Gaelic.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Conor

There's also children and oxen. But against that, English doesn't have masculine, feminine, or neuter nouns. And as a result, only one definite article and one indefinite article.
If you want hard, try Gaelic.

But English does have precisely ONE adjective which changes its form with gender. Do you know what it is?