Do you say A HUNDRED EURO or A HUNDRED EUROS?

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 5:24 am

Or even add "the" before "thin air".

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 12:00 am

Fluffy -

"Convergance" is my genuine spelling mistake, "english" I couldn't be bothered to correct, "the thin air" I consider to be stylistically consistent with the general (annoying) tone of my post.

As I have said before, despite being a relatively educated chap, I make a number of mistakes in my attempt to communicate with clever people. Most mistakes are spelling mistakes and blunders with the correct usage of unusual items (malapropisms, for example!) - because formal English, standard English, as I have pointed out, is partially a language we study, rather than precisely the one we used at home.

People do sometimes get told off for such mistakes on this forum. Stephen himself is the rascally prescriptivist who does the most telling off!

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 11:11 am

I find the nitpicking of the English in other people's posts rather tiresome, to be frank. I suspect it's sometimes used as a diversionary tactic - why engage with someone's arguments when it's so much easier to berate them for misspelling a word as though that somehow invalidated anything constructive they might have to say. I detect a clear insinuation of "if you can't even use English properly (read "in the same way I do") then why should I listen to anything you have to say?".

It's pathetic.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 12:07 pm

Strong words, lolwhites, and hopefully not aimed at me. I debated issues like this with woodcutter at some length on the "one of..." (="Harzer's"!) thread a while back. I'll maybe add some comments to the thread that Larry recently began, but generally, our better (more accurate) descriptions cannot but become the best available prescription for our students; probably no better cure-all, no better mix of ingredients will be found to express the rough intended meaning. We teachers are not just doctors (to borrow SJ's metaphor), but also pharmacists, apothecaries, alchemists, and in the classroom is "where the magic happens" (unless you happen to be somebody like SJ giving a sixteen year-old schoolgirl "private lessons"

).

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 1:35 pm

Not aimed at you, fluff, as your corrections tend to be good natured and accompanied by an appropriate smiley!

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 5:41 pm

coffeedecafe · Post by **coffeedecafe** » Sat Dec 25, 2004 5:35 am

wood cutter states that shakespeare wrote his name 10 different ways? well clinical boredom is one of the lesser signs of genius:
1.woodcutter
2.cutterwood
3.cutswood
4. wuddencutzen
5. cutsomewodden
6.sawlogs
7.woodsplinter
8.sawemwud
9.hewsome
10.handsumcut

i do think the discussion may become frivolous or even all wet, as euro phonetically is 'you row'
anyway, merry christmas to all, and on earth peace, goodwill to al from those who exist outside the limitations of time[facesmiley]