Comments on: Serious Question

By: Araxie

Araxie — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 04:50:02 +0000

During my obligatory college English 2 course, after students had handed in their first essays of the semester, the professor actually had to- on the board- tell us the difference between “there” and “they’re”, because she had noticed this error on some of our assignments. When I later told people how much I couldn’t stand that class (or, for that matter, its precursor English 1), they assumed it meant I wasn’t fond of writing. This was hardly the issue.

By: meerkat

meerkat — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:59:08 +0000

People are often, er, failed by the education system like that, but also sometimes just tired!

By: CIDU Bill

CIDU Bill — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 03:20:26 +0000

What’s kind of scary, padraig, is how many commenters on that site thought the original signs were correct.

By: padraig

padraig — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 03:07:16 +0000

Jumping in late, but I just saw this on the Fail Blog and had to share:

http://failblog.org/2010/03/10/grammar-fail/

I thought lefties were supposed to be better spellers.

By: Mark in Boston

Mark in Boston — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:54:05 +0000

Samuel Johnson visited a school for the deaf, and noted that people who can’t hear at all generally don’t make spelling mistakes. They don’t know that “bear” and “bare” sound alike. They don’t write “bare” for “bear” any more than you would write “back” for “best”.

By: Tullia

Tullia — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:52:58 +0000

@John S. B.: Yeah, it does vary quite a lot, but I’ve never heard anyone say “aboot” (American, lived in Toronto for seven years, work at a university and so hear a lot of accents). The BCers I’ve heard have had the most extreme “ow-oo” version I’ve heard. It’s quite unusual to my ears, but my husband, a Scot, says he heard similar vowels back home — I think in Glasgow.

Now, Glasgow, that’s English that I can’t understand until they put their tourist voices on. The only words I can reliably pick up are the f-word and “crrrrrrrrap!”

By: John Small Berries

John Small Berries — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 18:13:15 +0000

@Tullia: The pronunciation isn’t identical throughout Canada. In New Brunswick, I heard it as a quick “eh-oo” diphthong (the way they said “house” was very similar to the Dutch word “huis”), but someone I knew from further west (Saskatchewan, if I remember correctly) pronounced it as a long ‘o’ (”a boat”). In British Columbia, though, it was definitely indistinguishable from “a boot” to my (admittedly American) ears.

By: mkilby

mkilby — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:20:00 +0000

@ Keera - Thanks for the Scandinavian slant on V/W and the S’s.

Both German and English use both S sounds. The difference is that the “sharp” S (as in “Sing” or “thiS“), and the “soft” S (as in “theSe” or “Zebra”) are strongly positional in German: an initial S is always soft, whereas a final S is always “sharp”. This is why a German who wants to say “I like to sing” will sometimes end up saying “I like to zing”, whereas I myself often forget to use the “Z” sound when I say German words starting with S, such as “singen“.

By: Tullia

Tullia — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:00:42 +0000

@Andrea — okay, I laughed, but I would be surprised if no Canadian ever scolded you on this one. It’s a matter of national pride that they do NOT say “aboot,” but a specifically Canadian pronunciation of the word. It’s true, too. The way I think of it is saying “a bough oot,” and speeding it up into one word. It’s not “oot,” more like a very focused “ow.”

By: Andrea

Andrea — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:57:23 +0000

All of this talk about V and W reminds me of a joke my husband likes to tell about a Canadian trying to pass as an American. The Americans are asking questions, trying to trip him up, and say, “What’s that on your foot?”

“A boot! I mean about! I mean…. arrrrgh!”