Job Discussion Forums

[Duffy]

Oh no, not that old subject again you say? Old Duffy's off again

Did you notice that used an apostrophe?? I have always done and will always do so.

A great Britsh wartime leader once said "There are certain standards below which we must never allow ourselves to slip".

The apostrophe has and always will be a part of British English. I accept that some do not use it but I personally find it inexcusable not to. The general standard of true spoken or written English is slipping into "lazy English" and yes I blame other countries outside of the UK for that. Though not wholly to blame because even inside the UK there are people, mostly immigrants, who bastardise the worlds most popular language. Please do not promot such a thing on this forum.

Duffy

[lall]

[Duffy]

Lall,

To paraphrase an old saying "Written in haste, repented at leisure"

I sit before my computer shamefaced. But stand by the spirit of the thread.

Duffy

[lall]

[Duffy]

Read the book, dissapointed as I thought it was about an intelligent Panda!!

Perhaps it should be required reading for the anti-apostraphe brigade!

Stick with the Forum, we need level headed people here.

Duffy

[eha]

Now this is the kind of thing I expect to read on an English Teaching forum! So much more civilized than calling each other names and engaging in unpleasant sniping.

[lall]

[veiledsentiments]

This is one of my pet peeves too, but hey Duffy... how many times do we notice that what our brain knows, our fingers don't type? That damned apostrophe sneaks about or disappears...

I expect that... ahem... poor proofreading is something that we are all guilty of when we are pounding off messages here.

Unfortunately the internet is making the deterioration of grammar even faster... disappearing punctuation... and u no wht i mean...

VS

[lall]

[veiledsentiments]

But, I am a texting 'virgin' and I love vowels...

I don't even own a mobile/gsm/cell phone...

VS

[Duffy]

Reminds me of three years back when we were all told to teach the North Star Intermediate English book.

I refused to teach my students "gotta-gonna-gonna" and lots of other Americanisms. In fact all but two American teachers stopped using that book and produced material from British English books. I think the students benefited from that.

Duffy

[lall]

[veiledsentiments]

tsk tsk lall... we are speaking of texting... you men just have one track minds. I guess you never flew on Virgin Airlines or shopped at Virgin Records (or whatever it's called...). We have a TV show here in the US called "Property Virgins" about people buying their first home.

As to the 'gonna gotta getta hafta oughta' they only have a place in listening class. Since they all watch American films and crappy TV shows, a cursory explanation is not unacceptable. The students understood the process once you pointed out that similar things happen in spoken Arabic (I hated North Star almost as much as I hated Headway...)

VS

[flutterbayou]

Guess I'm slow on the draw.

I thought Duffy was making a double entendre to the apostrophe as a literary device, as in addressing the absent... which seems most fitting in view of recent appraisals.

Guess only literature majors would have thought of it.

On the side, someone pm'd to ask me about getting a diploma notarized before being able to get a visa to Oman for Dhofar Uni. This make no sense to me.

Have any policy changes come up?

[veiledsentiments]

Nope Duffy was just complaining about the usual problem of putting the darned thing in the wrong place. On another thread someone had used it in the plural... the "I have three dog's" problem.

As to the notarization of documents, I guess you are saying that the recruiters (or at least your late beloved recruiter ) are bypassing the law that says that all diplomas and certificates of all teachers most be certified. A process I have done twice in Oman since I had two jobs there (even though the docs were the same).

But that is off topic and there have been threads here on certifying docs if people search.

VS