On 01/09/2020 09:47, NY wrote:


As a communication exercise, it was a complete waste of an otherwise
productive day. It would have been so much better if the British heads
of department (people who we actually *knew* and *trusted*) had given
the briefing at a local departmental level, with their added emphasis

When I was at work there was a workplace survey and one of the
complaints that emerged was a lack of communication between the top of
the company and the rest of the workforce. Unfortunately this resulted
in a 2 hour "death by Powerpoint" briefing by senior management that for
many in the company further confirmed that senior management were poor
at communication


--
mailto : news {at} admac {dot} myzen {dot} co {dot} uk

jon wrote:

Newscasters have trouble with 'H' saying 'istory, 'istoric etc

It's better than saying "cool hwhip".

On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 22:13:32 +0100, Pamela
wrote:

On 21:04 31 Aug 2020, S Viemeister said:
On 31/08/2020 20:35, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...

And news readers refer to nearly all events in the present tense.

And many people begin both questions and answers with 'so'.

"So" is annoying. Presumably starting a sentence with "so" is seen as
some clever broadcasting segue but to me it is grating.

Has there been some self-help guide or communication guru who started the
current craze?

"So" has supplanted "Well" at the start of a sentence.

--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

On 01/09/2020 10:38, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 20:35:49 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...

You may be interested in a US perspective on British Engish

https://notoneoffbritishisms.com

As I age, I notice some oddities creeping into "English" that are I
suspect imports. Two examples:

1) are bands plural or singular ? I've always used the plural : "The
Beatles *were* an English pop band" as opposed to *was* an English pop
band. (Wikipedia is especially annoying for this).

This is the point. Unless a collective noun has all its members acting
in total unison, it's plural. The police is not looking for a man in his
30s, some of the police *are* looking, not all of them.

The default these days is the singular form of the verb. It's
significant that you are the *only* poster who even knew to what I was
referring...




2) in England, things are named *after* someone. Not "for" someone -
that's Yankee all the way (as the NOOB blog notes).

If nothing else, the NOOB blog is fun when the Yanks get a Briticism
wrong.



--
"Corbyn talks about equality, justice, opportunity, health care, peace,
community, compassion, investment, security, housing...."
"What kind of person is not interested in those things?"

"Jeremy Corbyn?"

On 9/1/2020 3:14 AM, Peter Duncanson [BrE] wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 22:13:32 +0100, Pamela
wrote:

"So" is annoying. Presumably starting a sentence with "so" is seen as
some clever broadcasting segue but to me it is grating.

Has there been some self-help guide or communication guru who started the
current craze?

"So" has supplanted "Well" at the start of a sentence.

With a brief side trip to "Basically"....r

On Tue, 01 Sep 2020 01:36:06 -0700, fred wrote:

On Tuesday, September 1, 2020 at 7:32:05 AM UTC+1, Brian Gaff (Sofa)
wrote:
When the US started to redesign English, you do the Math.
Brian

--
--
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...
Blind user, so no pictures please Note this
Signature is meaningless.!
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...


--
"Nature does not give up the winter because people dislike the cold."

? Confucius

But ISTR if you tell a policeman to **** off he can do you for
abusive/foul language.

And why is Brian Gaff on a sofa?

There was a law that came out in the sixties called 'insulting behaviour'
because in those days the police were classed as (non persons) and were
supposed to be impervious to insults, but the lawmakers got fed up with
Teddy Boys giving them a mouthful.

On 01:59 1 Sep 2020, Jerry Friedman said:
On Monday, August 31, 2020 at 3:14:03 PM UTC-6, Pamela wrote:
On 21:04 31 Aug 2020, S Viemeister said:
On 31/08/2020 20:35, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single
correct verb in the plural form...

And news readers refer to nearly all events in the present tense.

And many people begin both questions and answers with 'so'.

"So" is annoying. Presumably starting a sentence with "so" is seen as
some clever broadcasting segue but to me it is grating.

Has there been some self-help guide or communication guru who started
the current craze?

I have noticed it a lot, and I wonder whether it's a Jewishism (a
Judaism?). When I started teaching, in the mid '90s, I noticed myself
saying "So" or "So OK" to move to a new subject or at least a new step
in a problem.

Here are a couple of early hits.

[...]
Libby: About seven, seven-thirty. (/She finishes typing her letter./)
So tell me, how did your meeting go? Did they like your presentation?

[...]
"So listen. So fife-six wikks ago Mrs. Shapiro, she got by her on the
side a pain.

I hope I've given enough context to show that the "so" doesn't indicate
any connection. (In the second quotation, at least the one before
"fife-six" doesn't.)

Those are not examples of what I mean. I mean "so" when used by some tv
and radio interviewees as the first word of their reply to a question.

For example an interviewer may ask, "Why has the economy slumped?"

The reply is, "So, there's been a lot of inflation ..."

On 01/09/2020 11:30, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Tue, 01 Sep 2020 11:16:11 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 01/09/2020 10:38, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 20:35:49 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...

You may be interested in a US perspective on British Engish

https://notoneoffbritishisms.com

As I age, I notice some oddities creeping into "English" that are I
suspect imports. Two examples:

1) are bands plural or singular ? I've always used the plural : "The
Beatles *were* an English pop band" as opposed to *was* an English pop
band. (Wikipedia is especially annoying for this).

This is the point. Unless a collective noun has all its members acting
in total unison, it's plural. The police is not looking for a man in his
30s, some of the police *are* looking, not all of them.

The default these days is the singular form of the verb. It's
significant that you are the *only* poster who even knew to what I was
referring...



For a techie my English is stellar. As is my spelling and handwriting.

But then I did Latin at (comp) school, and there's rarely a day when it
isn't useful. (I would have been able to understand the Popes resignation
as it was read too). As a tooklit for picking other European languages
apart, it's indispensable.

For a while I had my homepage at work set to the French MSN site.

(I've also picked up some Hindi).
In hindisight, a spellchecker would be a handy addition to one's toolkit.

On 01/09/2020 09:36, wrote:
On Tuesday, 1 September 2020 07:57:00 UTC+1, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
I mean when did Television get coined and why did radio and Television often
get followed by the word Set, as its one item not a set of items, like a
canteen of Cutlery, after all??

An interesting idea.

Stackechange has discussed this and come up with two suggestions:

1. the word "television", by itself, referred to the medium, not the box, so "television set" was used to refer to the box.

2. A TV is actually composed of many components with specific functions: a radio receiver, a tuning control, a pre-amplifier, an amplifier, a video processing unit, a display screen. ... So the term "TV set" refers to all those components, housed in a single cabinet.

https://english.stackexchange.com/qu...v-and-a-tv-set

Noted in stackexchange, but I think the main reason, is the term is carried over from radio sets, when in the early days the radio, loudspeaker, HT battery and LT accumulator were in separate boxes, before being brought together in one box.

As an aside, on a Sarah Beeny tart-up-your-house repeat the other night, a young couple mentioned they had upgraded their "sideboard" to be a bluetooth speaker. Thee and me would know it as a "radiogram".

Owain


A sideboard could be a number of different things, like a dresser or a
chest of draws, but it was not generally a radiogram.

In article ,
Scott wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 21:56:55 +0100, S Viemeister
wrote:

On 31/08/2020 21:37, Scott wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 21:30:07 +0100, S Viemeister
On 31/08/2020 21:15, Scott wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 21:04:20 +0100, S Viemeister
On 31/08/2020 20:35, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...
And news readers refer to nearly all events in the present tense.
And many people begin both questions and answers with 'so'.
And the younger generation try to get an expletive into every
sentence.
'An' expletive??? There are people who scatter them liberally through
every sentence. Not just youngsters, either.
Maybe I was underestimating the ingenuity of the younger generation.

I remember being told in my youth that the real skill was to fragment
polysyllabic words in order to insert a swear word (eg tele - f****g -
scope). He also said that the fine and noble English word c**t was
sadly becoming extinct and it was our moral duty to use the word where
possible to keep it alive. I think that problem has been resolved.

I had a sheltered childhood. I didn't learn those words until I met
people from Glasgow.

My mentor came from Greenock, which is even better :-)

Great character. He was a minister. He said that because his
parishioners were to be found in the pub on a Saturday night it was
his moral and spiritual duty as the parish minister to be there too..

Now a great many years ago, I was in the hotel bar on one of the Western
Isles, talking to the Parish Priest. As somebody new came into thenbar he
acalled our 2 Hamish - why do we only ever meet in this bar?" This
presumably meant "why aren't you in church on Sundays?"

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

On 01/09/2020 09:02, John Armstrong wrote:

I think it started in the US, but I could be wrong. Possibly as an
appalling example of "management newspeak" to which many people
subscribe. One person uses it, another hears it, and it spreads like a
rash. Other examples are "going forward", "deep diving", and the
perennial "blue sky thinking".

I refused to use these nonsensical expressions at work, (I am now
retired) and had little time for those who did. This did my promotion
chances no good. But when I saw that many of those above me had little
idea of singular and plural, the correct use of tenses, the use of
aspostrophes, the difference between their, there, and they're, and
even to, too, and two, I had no desire to be among them.

I've been reading quite a bit during lockdown, and it seems that even
book editors don't know the language. I've seen references to laundry
'shoots', door 'jams', 'discrete' being used where 'discreet' is meant,
site, cite, sight, being misused.
Perhaps I shouldn't be blaming book editors. They probably are an
endangered species, with writers depending on spell-check, which can
result in correct spelling - of the wrong word.

On 01/09/2020 11:23, RH Draney wrote:
On 9/1/2020 3:14 AM, Peter Duncanson [BrE] wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 22:13:32 +0100, Pamela
wrote:

"So" is annoying.Â* Presumably starting a sentence with "so" is seen as
some clever broadcasting segue but to me it is grating.

Has there been some self-help guide or communication guru who started
the
current craze?

"So" has supplanted "Well" at the start of a sentence.

With a brief side trip to "Basically"....r

To which the response is 'Absolutely!'...

On 01/09/2020 09:01, Syke wrote:
On 01/09/2020 05:46, jon wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 20:35:49 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...

Newscasters have trouble with 'H' saying 'istory, 'istoricÂ* etc. I know
the French can't pronounce it.

Â*English people also seem to have difficulty pronouncing the "w" in
"whales"
(I'm Scottish).

My mother would have threatened me with a damp dish towel if I'd
mispronounced that word - or wheel, or whip, or when, or what, or where.

In article ,
Farmer Giles wrote:
On 01/09/2020 09:36, wrote:
On Tuesday, 1 September 2020 07:57:00 UTC+1, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
I mean when did Television get coined and why did radio and Television often
get followed by the word Set, as its one item not a set of items, like a
canteen of Cutlery, after all??

An interesting idea.

Stackechange has discussed this and come up with two suggestions:

1. the word "television", by itself, referred to the medium, not the box, so "television set" was used to refer to the box.

2. A TV is actually composed of many components with specific functions: a radio receiver, a tuning control, a pre-amplifier, an amplifier, a video processing unit, a display screen. ... So the term "TV set" refers to all those components, housed in a single cabinet.

https://english.stackexchange.com/qu...v-and-a-tv-set

Noted in stackexchange, but I think the main reason, is the term is carried over from radio sets, when in the early days the radio, loudspeaker, HT battery and LT accumulator were in separate boxes, before being brought together in one box.

As an aside, on a Sarah Beeny tart-up-your-house repeat the other night, a young couple mentioned they had upgraded their "sideboard" to be a bluetooth speaker. Thee and me would know it as a "radiogram".

Owain


A sideboard could be a number of different things, like a dresser or a
chest of draws, but it was not generally a radiogram.
^^^^^
or even: drawers

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

On Tue, 01 Sep 2020 11:14:04 +0100, "Peter Duncanson [BrE]"
wrote:

On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 22:13:32 +0100, Pamela
wrote:

On 21:04 31 Aug 2020, S Viemeister said:
On 31/08/2020 20:35, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...

And news readers refer to nearly all events in the present tense.

And many people begin both questions and answers with 'so'.

"So" is annoying. Presumably starting a sentence with "so" is seen as
some clever broadcasting segue but to me it is grating.

Has there been some self-help guide or communication guru who started the
current craze?

"So" has supplanted "Well" at the start of a sentence.

I still remember Brian Clough - 'We-e-e-ll, D-a-a-a-a-vid'.

On Tue, 1 Sep 2020 03:23:41 -0700, RH Draney wrote:

On 9/1/2020 3:14 AM, Peter Duncanson [BrE] wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 22:13:32 +0100, Pamela
wrote:

"So" is annoying. Presumably starting a sentence with "so" is seen as
some clever broadcasting segue but to me it is grating.

Has there been some self-help guide or communication guru who started the
current craze?

"So" has supplanted "Well" at the start of a sentence.

With a brief side trip to "Basically"....r

Or as the late Brian Walden said,' Bicycle-lly'.

On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 20:35:49 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...


alt.usage.english

--
AnthonyL

Why ever wait to finish a job before starting the next?

On 01/09/2020 10:35, Tim Streater wrote:
On 01 Sep 2020 at 09:47:57 BST, "NY" wrote:

"John Armstrong" wrote in message
...
Has there been some self-help guide or communication guru who started the
current craze?

I think it started in the US, but I could be wrong. Possibly as an
appalling example of "management newspeak" to which many people
subscribe. One person uses it, another hears it, and it spreads like a
rash. Other examples are "going forward", "deep diving", and the
perennial "blue sky thinking".

I refused to use these nonsensical expressions at work, (I am now
retired) and had little time for those who did. This did my promotion
chances no good. But when I saw that many of those above me had little
idea of singular and plural, the correct use of tenses, the use of
aspostrophes, the difference between their, there, and they're, and
even to, too, and two, I had no desire to be among them.

I was the same: I never let "blue-sky thinking", "thinking outside the box"
etc pass my lips. The worst is "leveraging" - always pronounced
"levveraging" (American) rather than "leeveraging" (British) even by Brits.
I still have not idea WTF it means.

I think it means that f'rinstance if you have some skill or experience in some
area that is not being used at the moment because your business does not need
it, you can "leverage" (i.e., use) that skill by taking over some other
company where you can employ that skill. But someone else may have a better
definition.

Why not lever? That's the verb, and leverage is the noun. (I know that
there's no noun that can't be verbed.)

--
Max Demian

On Tue, 1 Sep 2020 09:25:16 +0100, "NY" wrote:

"alan_m" wrote in message
...
On 31/08/2020 21:15, Scott wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 21:04:20 +0100, S Viemeister
wrote:

On 31/08/2020 20:35, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...

And news readers refer to nearly all events in the present tense.

And many people begin both questions and answers with 'so'.

And the younger generation try to get an expletive into every
sentence.


The ****ing ****er's ****ed!

The Irish are legendary swearers. I was once working in Dublin on business,
and a computer was playing up. The Irish guy I was with yelled "Ah feck it!
The fecking feckers' fecking fecked!" which I think uses "feck" (the Irish
form of "****")

AIUI, most Irish people would disagree and insist that they are
separate words. Here's Mrs. Doyle's take on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLTnacYvvg4

On 01/09/2020 11:54, S Viemeister wrote:
On 01/09/2020 09:02, John Armstrong wrote:

I think it started in the US, but I could be wrong. Possibly as an
appalling example of "management newspeak" to which many people
subscribe. One person uses it, another hears it, and it spreads like a
rash. Other examples are "going forward", "deep diving", and the
perennial "blue sky thinking".

Â* I refused to use these nonsensical expressions at work, (I am now
retired) and had little time for those who did. This did myÂ* promotion
chances no good. But when I saw that many of those above me had little
idea of singular and plural, the correct use of tenses, the use of
aspostrophes, the difference between their, there, and they're, and
even to, too, and two, I had no desire to be among them.

I've been reading quite a bit during lockdown, and it seems that even
book editors don't know the language. I've seen references to laundry
'shoots', door 'jams', 'discrete' being used where 'discreet' is meant,
site, cite, sight, being misused.

At University I did a course on "Discrete Mathematics". On hearing of
it, an arty fellow student would always reply with "Pssst".

--
Max Demian

On Tue, 1 Sep 2020 10:30:08 -0000 (UTC)
Jethro_uk wrote:

As a tooklit for picking other European languages
apart, it's indispensable.

Tooklit? Which European language is that?!

--
Davey.

On 01/09/2020 08:08, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:

I think one of the issues as I said in another similar thread that we
inherit words from other languages.
I mean you don't say Sheeps nor fungusses do you?
However where did pair or scissors come from?, there are lots of those,
and not just pliers, cutters etc, but also clothing like trousers, when
clearly they are just one item.

If you work in a clothes shop, you might sell a "trouser" or a "pant".

"Bedclothes" aren't clothes worn in bed, they are "nightclothes". You
have a "nightdress" or "nightshirt" and even a "nightcap" (which is also
a drink). But if you have cold feet, you wear "bedsocks". (It's a
shibboleth to tell whether someone is foreign or not.)

--
Max Demian

On 01/09/2020 12:03, S Viemeister wrote:
On 01/09/2020 09:01, Syke wrote:
On 01/09/2020 05:46, jon wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 20:35:49 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...

Newscasters have trouble with 'H' saying 'istory, 'istoricÂ* etc. I know
the French can't pronounce it.

Â*Â*English people also seem to have difficulty pronouncing the "w" in
"whales"
(I'm Scottish).

My mother would have threatened me with a damp dish towel if I'd
mispronounced that word - or wheel, or whip, or when, or what, or where.

It's regional. I never pronounce W in an aspirate way. I wouldn't know how.

--
Max Demian

On Tue, 1 Sep 2020 12:03:18 +0100, S Viemeister wrote:

On 01/09/2020 09:01, Syke wrote:
On 01/09/2020 05:46, jon wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 20:35:49 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...

Newscasters have trouble with 'H' saying 'istory, 'istoric* etc. I know
the French can't pronounce it.

*English people also seem to have difficulty pronouncing the "w" in
"whales"
(I'm Scottish).

My mother would have threatened me with a damp dish towel if I'd
mispronounced that word - or wheel, or whip, or when, or what, or where.

The origin (Anglo-Saxo, Norse) of all these words had the spelling hv... rather than wh...



--
Regards, Paul Herber
https://www.paulherber.co.uk/

On 1 Sep 2020 13:34:41 GMT, Tim Streater wrote:

On 01 Sep 2020 at 14:13:21 BST, Custos Custodum wrote:

On Tue, 1 Sep 2020 09:25:16 +0100, "NY" wrote:

"alan_m" wrote in message
...
On 31/08/2020 21:15, Scott wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 21:04:20 +0100, S Viemeister
wrote:

On 31/08/2020 20:35, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...

And news readers refer to nearly all events in the present tense.

And many people begin both questions and answers with 'so'.

And the younger generation try to get an expletive into every
sentence.


The ****ing ****er's ****ed!

The Irish are legendary swearers. I was once working in Dublin on business,
and a computer was playing up. The Irish guy I was with yelled "Ah feck it!
The fecking feckers' fecking fecked!" which I think uses "feck" (the Irish
form of "****")

AIUI, most Irish people would disagree and insist that they are
separate words. Here's Mrs. Doyle's take on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLTnacYvvg4

Is that the famous Mrs Doyle of "Mrs Doyle's Doiry"?

and her daughter, Emma.


--
Regards, Paul Herber
https://www.paulherber.co.uk/

On 1 Sep 2020 13:34:41 GMT, Tim Streater
wrote:

On 01 Sep 2020 at 14:13:21 BST, Custos Custodum wrote:

On Tue, 1 Sep 2020 09:25:16 +0100, "NY" wrote:

"alan_m" wrote in message
...
On 31/08/2020 21:15, Scott wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 21:04:20 +0100, S Viemeister
wrote:

On 31/08/2020 20:35, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...

And news readers refer to nearly all events in the present tense.

And many people begin both questions and answers with 'so'.

And the younger generation try to get an expletive into every
sentence.


The ****ing ****er's ****ed!

The Irish are legendary swearers. I was once working in Dublin on business,
and a computer was playing up. The Irish guy I was with yelled "Ah feck it!
The fecking feckers' fecking fecked!" which I think uses "feck" (the Irish
form of "****")

AIUI, most Irish people would disagree and insist that they are
separate words. Here's Mrs. Doyle's take on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLTnacYvvg4

Is that the famous Mrs Doyle of "Mrs Doyle's Doiry"?

I'm rather worried about Tim...

On 01/09/2020 12:41, Tim Streater wrote:
On 01 Sep 2020 at 11:48:25 BST, Farmer Giles wrote:

On 01/09/2020 09:36, wrote:
On Tuesday, 1 September 2020 07:57:00 UTC+1, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
I mean when did Television get coined and why did radio and Television often
get followed by the word Set, as its one item not a set of items, like a
canteen of Cutlery, after all??

An interesting idea.

Stackechange has discussed this and come up with two suggestions:

1. the word "television", by itself, referred to the medium, not the box, so "television set" was used to refer to the box.

2. A TV is actually composed of many components with specific functions: a radio receiver, a tuning control, a pre-amplifier, an amplifier, a video processing unit, a display screen. ... So the term "TV set" refers to all those components, housed in a single cabinet.

https://english.stackexchange.com/qu...v-and-a-tv-set

Noted in stackexchange, but I think the main reason, is the term is carried over from radio sets, when in the early days the radio, loudspeaker, HT battery and LT accumulator were in separate boxes, before being brought together in one box.

As an aside, on a Sarah Beeny tart-up-your-house repeat the other night, a young couple mentioned they had upgraded their "sideboard" to be a bluetooth speaker. Thee and me would know it as a "radiogram".

A sideboard could be a number of different things, like a dresser or a
chest of draws, but it was not generally a radiogram.

Were the draws in a drawer?


Oops!

On Monday, 31 August 2020 20:35:53 UTC+1, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...


They often get nouns wrong.

"The death of three people."

On 01/09/2020 11:30, Jethro_uk wrote:
For a techie my English is stellar. As is my spelling and handwriting.

But then I did Latin at (comp) school, and there's rarely a day when it
isn't useful. (I would have been able to understand the Popes resignation
as it was read too). As a tooklit for picking other European languages
apart, it's indispensable.

For a while I had my homepage at work set to the French MSN site.

(I've also picked up some Hindi).

I used to work with a guy who'd lived in Germany for several years. And
not learned German. My reaction wasn't "Why" but "How".

I too suffered Latin in school (Latin is a language, as dead as dead can
be. It killed the Ancient Romans, and now it's killing me). But some
sank in. It's useful for church inscriptions, and I was surprised to
find myself wandering around Pompeii and reading plaques in Latin with
no real trouble. The Italian, OTOH... but I feel I'd have been better
off spending the time on a modern language. Say German.

Andy

On 01/09/2020 14:48, Paul Herber wrote:
On Tue, 1 Sep 2020 12:03:18 +0100, S Viemeister wrote:

On 01/09/2020 09:01, Syke wrote:
On 01/09/2020 05:46, jon wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 20:35:49 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...

Newscasters have trouble with 'H' saying 'istory, 'istoric etc. I know
the French can't pronounce it.

English people also seem to have difficulty pronouncing the "w" in
"whales"
(I'm Scottish).

My mother would have threatened me with a damp dish towel if I'd
mispronounced that word - or wheel, or whip, or when, or what, or where.

The origin (Anglo-Saxo, Norse) of all these words had the spelling hv... rather than wh...





I've never been a fan of the name and sound of Arthur. That is until I
heard it used when being spoken in ancient dialect. I heard, Art-Ur and
Ar-Tur.

On Tuesday, September 1, 2020 at 9:26:31 PM UTC+1, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 01/09/2020 11:30, Jethro_uk wrote:
For a techie my English is stellar. As is my spelling and handwriting.

But then I did Latin at (comp) school, and there's rarely a day when it
isn't useful. (I would have been able to understand the Popes resignation
as it was read too). As a tooklit for picking other European languages
apart, it's indispensable.

For a while I had my homepage at work set to the French MSN site.

(I've also picked up some Hindi).

I used to work with a guy who'd lived in Germany for several years. And
not learned German. My reaction wasn't "Why" but "How".

I too suffered Latin in school (Latin is a language, as dead as dead can
be. It killed the Ancient Romans, and now it's killing me). But some
sank in. It's useful for church inscriptions, and I was surprised to
find myself wandering around Pompeii and reading plaques in Latin with
no real trouble. The Italian, OTOH... but I feel I'd have been better
off spending the time on a modern language. Say German.

Andy

Many years ago we stopped at a small cafe in Finisterre, Northern Spain. The proprietor managed to tell us he lived in Manchester for a long time and never learnt english as he lived within an Italian community.
My sister-in-law married a spaniard (nicknamed Sadam)and ran an English language school yet her husband refused to let her teach her boys english

On 01/09/2020 14:48, Paul Herber wrote:
On Tue, 1 Sep 2020 12:03:18 +0100, S Viemeister wrote:

On 01/09/2020 09:01, Syke wrote:
On 01/09/2020 05:46, jon wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 20:35:49 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...

Newscasters have trouble with 'H' saying 'istory, 'istoricÂ* etc. I know
the French can't pronounce it.

Â*English people also seem to have difficulty pronouncing the "w" in
"whales"
(I'm Scottish).

My mother would have threatened me with a damp dish towel if I'd
mispronounced that word - or wheel, or whip, or when, or what, or where.

The origin (Anglo-Saxo, Norse) of all these words had the spelling hv... rather than wh...




It shows up in Doric. Fit like and furry boot.

--
Brian

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On 01/09/2020 07:32, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
When the US started to redesign English, you do the Math.
Brian


Most of the time they mean "Do the arith"

B

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Brian

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"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 02 Sep 2020 01:00:47 -0700, fred wrote:

On Tuesday, September 1, 2020 at 9:26:31 PM UTC+1, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 01/09/2020 11:30, Jethro_uk wrote:
For a techie my English is stellar. As is my spelling and
handwriting.

But then I did Latin at (comp) school, and there's rarely a day when
it isn't useful. (I would have been able to understand the Popes
resignation as it was read too). As a tooklit for picking other
European languages apart, it's indispensable.

For a while I had my homepage at work set to the French MSN site.

(I've also picked up some Hindi).

I used to work with a guy who'd lived in Germany for several years. And
not learned German. My reaction wasn't "Why" but "How".

I too suffered Latin in school (Latin is a language, as dead as dead
can be. It killed the Ancient Romans, and now it's killing me). But
some sank in. It's useful for church inscriptions, and I was surprised
to find myself wandering around Pompeii and reading plaques in Latin
with no real trouble. The Italian, OTOH... but I feel I'd have been
better off spending the time on a modern language. Say German.

At my first secondary school, each year was divided into two forms: the A
form was supposedly more clever and did Latin and German; the B form did
Biology and Ancient History. My parents asked whether there was any way that
I could do Biology instead of Latin, and yet remain in the A form to stay
with people of my ability. Answer: not possible.

So I endured Latin for six years: four at that school and then another two
at the later secondary school after we moved house. The new school was quite
happy for me to do biology, but felt that I had missed too much of the
syllabus to get up to O level standard in just two years. Grrr.

Latin was by several orders of magnitude the hardest subject I ever did. I
had a complete mental block, mainly because the lack of pronouns (I, he),
articles (a, the) and prepositions (of, from), coupled with the random word
order, meant that I had the greatest difficulty in identifying the nouns and
verbs in a sentence - in French and German, you get a lot of help
(subconsciously) from those auxiliary words as pointers to "this is an
article, so a noun follows; this is a pronoun, so a verb follows", and from
a slightly more rigid word order (*). German even gives nouns capital
letters, which makes it very easy. I still have no idea how I managed to
scrape a C in Latin, when I was expecting to fail it.

I wish I'd done biology: I feel I've missed an important part of life. If
Latin had to be taught, it should have been "Latin as the derivation of some
English words", not as a grammatical language and not as a history of life
in Roman times.


(*) At least French and German tend to group all the words from one clause
next to each other, and don't deliberately put the adjective from one clause
next tot he noun of the other clause, as was considered "clever" in Latin
poetry (the "chi-rhoic construction") - effectively "the blue dog sat on the
black car" instead of "the black dog sat on the blue car" - which could only
be unpicked if the gender of the two nouns happened to different so it was
"obvious" (for some value of "obvious"!) that the adjective and its adjacent
noun didn't agree and so had evidently been swapped.

On 02/09/2020 13:59, NY wrote:
"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 02 Sep 2020 01:00:47 -0700, fred wrote:

On Tuesday, September 1, 2020 at 9:26:31 PM UTC+1, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 01/09/2020 11:30, Jethro_uk wrote:
For a techie my English is stellar. As is my spelling and
handwriting.

But then I did Latin at (comp) school, and there's rarely a day when
it isn't useful. (I would have been able to understand the Popes
resignation as it was read too). As a tooklit for picking other
European languages apart, it's indispensable.

For a while I had my homepage at work set to the French MSN site.

(I've also picked up some Hindi).

I used to work with a guy who'd lived in Germany for several years. And
not learned German. My reaction wasn't "Why" but "How".

I too suffered Latin in school (Latin is a language, as dead as dead
can be. It killed the Ancient Romans, and now it's killing me). But
some sank in. It's useful for church inscriptions, and I was surprised
to find myself wandering around Pompeii and reading plaques in Latin
with no real trouble. The Italian, OTOH... but I feel I'd have been
better off spending the time on a modern language. Say German.

At my first secondary school, each year was divided into two forms: the
A form was supposedly more clever and did Latin and German; the B form
did Biology and Ancient History. My parents asked whether there was any
way that I could do Biology instead of Latin, and yet remain in the A
form to stay with people of my ability. Answer: not possible.

So I endured Latin for six years: four at that school and then another
two at the later secondary school after we moved house. The new school
was quite happy for me to do biology, but felt that I had missed too
much of the syllabus to get up to O level standard in just two years. Grrr.

Latin was by several orders of magnitude the hardest subject I ever did.
I had a complete mental block, mainly because the lack of pronouns (I,
he), articles (a, the) and prepositions (of, from), coupled with the
random word order, meant that I had the greatest difficulty in
identifying the nouns and verbs in a sentence - in French and German,
you get a lot of help (subconsciously) from those auxiliary words as
pointers to "this is an article, so a noun follows; this is a pronoun,
so a verb follows", and from a slightly more rigid word order (*).
German even gives nouns capital letters, which makes it very easy. I
still have no idea how I managed to scrape a C in Latin, when I was
expecting to fail it.

I wish I'd done biology: I feel I've missed an important part of life.
If Latin had to be taught, it should have been "Latin as the derivation
of some English words", not as a grammatical language and not as a
history of life in Roman times.

You could have learnt it in evening classes. I didn't do any biology at
school (as it was an "arts" subject and I was on the science side), but
I got O level biology in one year of evening classes, one lesson a week
- I suppose the lessons must have been about two hours a time. Then I
got A level biology in two years of evening classes, again one lesson a
week. Then I did a biology degree. (I got the other A level subjects
through evening classes as well - fortunately I was unemployed most of a
time, so had plenty of time for study.)

--
Max Demian

"Brian Howie" wrote in message
...
English people also seem to have difficulty pronouncing the "w" in
"whales"
(I'm Scottish).

Do you mean the "h" - that's the one that I (as an ignorant non-Scot)
usually omit.

My teachers (I started school in the late 60s) tried to drum into us that
whales and white were pronounced hwales and hwite - not even w-h-ales and
w-hite: the letters were actually pronounced in the *opposite* order.
Likewise, suit had an intrusive y sound: syoot.

My great aunt was proud that she spoke correctly. She was from a
middle-class Leeds family and her brother and sister (my grandpa and my
other great aunt) had a standard educated-northern accent (like Alan
Bennett). But Great Aunt May (*never* call her "aunty") had had
electrocution (!) lessons. She is the only person who always referred to
"lun-shee-on" - not "lun-shun" and definitely not that horrible abbreviation
"lunch". Shortly after my parents got married, they were writing Christmas
cards and dad happened to write Great Aunt May's card although GAM was
*mum's* aunt. Since he'd be posting her card through her letter box (they
lived close by) he addressed it to "Aunty May and Uncle Robert" rather than
"Mr. and Mrs. R. Smith" with their postal address. Apparently GAM collared
mum in the middle of the grocers and told her that she had evidently married
an ignorant peasant who didn't know how to address an envelope properly.


Thinking of conventions that have changed, I have "fond" memories of how to
write an address on an envelope:

- two finger-spaces to indent each line from the one above it
- a full stop after every single abbreviation (eg "Mr.", "Mrs." and "R." in
the above example)
- a comma after the house number or name. before the street name
- a comma at the end of each line
- a full stop after the county (to show that it's the last line of the
address) - or two full stops if it is an abbreviation ("Yorks..")

Mr. and Mrs. R. Smith,
37, Any Street,
Any District,
Leeds,
West Yorks..

And do I do that now? Do I f*ck!

It comes over almost as pedantic and anal as the electronics magazine that I
used to get which insisted on putting a full stop after every letter in an
initialism or acronym ("r.o.m." rather than "ROM"). I think it did accept
"laser" rather than insisting on "l.a.s.e.r." ;-)

In article , NY writes
"John Armstrong" wrote in message
.. .
Has there been some self-help guide or communication guru who started the
current craze?

I think it started in the US, but I could be wrong. Possibly as an
appalling example of "management newspeak" to which many people
subscribe. One person uses it, another hears it, and it spreads like a
rash. Other examples are "going forward", "deep diving", and the
perennial "blue sky thinking".

I refused to use these nonsensical expressions at work, (I am now
retired) and had little time for those who did. This did my promotion
chances no good. But when I saw that many of those above me had little
idea of singular and plural, the correct use of tenses, the use of
aspostrophes, the difference between their, there, and they're, and
even to, too, and two, I had no desire to be among them.

I was the same: I never let "blue-sky thinking", "thinking outside the
box" etc pass my lips. The worst is "leveraging" - always pronounced
"levveraging" (American) rather than "leeveraging" (British) even by
Brits. I still have not idea WTF it means.

Then you get all the financial jargon that creeps into management
briefings. I worked for a company that had "merged with"
(management-speak for "been taken over by") a Finnish company.
Pedant alert Big difference in practical implications between taken
over and merged.

If we take over you, you do as you're f**** told. A merger is more a
battle between equals.

Snip
--
bert

On Monday, August 31, 2020 at 9:04:22 PM UTC+1, S Viemeister wrote:
On 31/08/2020 20:35, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...

And news readers refer to nearly all events in the present tense.

And many people begin both questions and answers with 'so'.

"Well" seems common.

On Monday, August 31, 2020 at 10:34:24 PM UTC+1, Custos Custodum wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 21:56:55 +0100, S Viemeister
wrote:

On 31/08/2020 21:37, Scott wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 21:30:07 +0100, S Viemeister
On 31/08/2020 21:15, Scott wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 21:04:20 +0100, S Viemeister
On 31/08/2020 20:35, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...
And news readers refer to nearly all events in the present tense.
And many people begin both questions and answers with 'so'.
And the younger generation try to get an expletive into every
sentence.
'An' expletive??? There are people who scatter them liberally through
every sentence. Not just youngsters, either.
Maybe I was underestimating the ingenuity of the younger generation.

I remember being told in my youth that the real skill was to fragment
polysyllabic words in order to insert a swear word (eg tele - f****g -
scope). He also said that the fine and noble English word c**t was
sadly becoming extinct and it was our moral duty to use the word where
possible to keep it alive. I think that problem has been resolved.

I had a sheltered childhood. I didn't learn those words until I met
people from Glasgow.
According to the OED, the earliest record of the word "****" was in
Scots. It's our gift to the world :-)


Not a chance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/****ing,_Austria

On Monday, August 31, 2020 at 3:35:53 PM UTC-4, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Listening to the radio and the TV there has not been a single correct
verb in the plural form...


--
"Nature does not give up the winter because people dislike the cold."

ۥ Confucius

A common error is to use the most recent noun in the sentence to choose singular or plural for the verb, disregarding the number of the actual subject of the verb, which occurred earlier in the sentence. I find this particularly annoying.