DJBrenton

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Posts posted by DJBrenton

  2. Chapel Bar

    in Nottingham City Centre

    Posted

    At one time Chapel Bar went as far as the toll bar area,it was one road- from the ABC,say.

    Was this a city entrance point when Nottm was walled?

    Good guess. The wall went down Park Row and along Parliament St with a gate at Chapel Bar.

    edit They uncovered part of the wall at Chapel Bar once. The gate was apparently demolished in 1743

    https://sixtiespixnottingham.wordpress.com/nottinghams-medieval-town-wall/

    http://www.gatehouse-gazetteer.info/English%20sites/2891.html

  5. Very Sad. Jo Cox

    in Obituaries

    Posted

    This puts in question whether or not MP's need to take security measures when meeting members of the public for surgeries. Unbelievable. I'd forgotten about these stories

    Liberal Democrat Nigel Jones, now a peer, was wounded and his aide Andrew Pennington was stabbed to death in a sword attack at the party's office in Cheltenham in 2000.

    In 2010, Labour MP Stephen Timms was stabbed twice in the stomach by a woman who tried to kill him for voting for the Iraq war.

  7. Changes in our lifetime.

    in General Chat about Nottingham

    Posted

    The first figure, i.e. spending on the elderly can't be compared to years ago as central government devolved £5 billion Attendance Allowance from the DWP to local governments last year. The 1989 and 2004 Children's Acts also moved responsibility for safeguarding children onto the LA's, so it's not necessarily more being spent ( on an inflation adjusted basis) but that it's now down to Local Authorities rather than central government.

    • Upvote 1

  11. Standard of English on BBC

    in Owt' Abaaht Nowt !

    Posted

    Sorry to be a pedant Chulla but I do think grammar is important enough not to just leave a misunderstanding on ttable.

    It is not a modern interpretation but a fine point. The reason swimming pool and thousands of other compound nouns don't appear in your dictionary is because it just isn't big enough. Your copy (unless you have the Complete Oxford, you know the one that fills a whole shelf) will only include common compound nouns when they ARE hyphenated, not every possible combination of words that could become compound nouns without a hyphen. Does yours include coffee table, television stand, car porch or any of the other compounds that follow the same rule as swimming pool?

    The BBC ( bang on topic)

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv58.shtml

    When compound nouns function as adjectives, they are normally hyphenated. Compare the following:

    • 'The afternoon was so hot that I decided to go to the open-air swimming pool. I love to eat in the open air in the summer.'
    • 'Air traffic was so dense that afternoon that air-traffic control could hardly cope.

    I could go on and on with examples from all different sources but I can't find a single one that suggests you should always hyphenate compounds such as swimming pool. Every single one I can find says exactly the same. Time to possibly review a long-held belief?

  13. Standard of English on BBC

    in Owt' Abaaht Nowt !

    Posted

    Sorry but I disagree. It only needs hyphenating when it becomes a compound adjective. On it's own it is a verb and noun i.e a pool for swimming. Out of interest I've just confirmed my belief on several grammar guides.

    https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/nouns-compound.htm

    http://www.gsbe.co.uk/grammar-the-hyphen.html

    http://www.edufind.com/english-grammar/compound-nouns/

    All say the same and use swimming pool as an example.

  14. Standard of English on BBC

    in Owt' Abaaht Nowt !

    Posted

    Hyphens are a really interesting (or maybe dull) case. For example dining room is not hyphenated but it should be when combined with another noun as it becomes a noun-adjective compound, so dining-room furniture. Similarly the examples Chulla gave do not take hyphens when on their own but do if attached to another noun as they become nouns describing other nouns so need to become compound.

    Swimming-pool lane

    Laughing-gas cylinder

    and

    Washing-line post

    would all be correct but without the last noun they don't need hyphenating. Like I said, interesting or dull? You decide.

    • Upvote 1

  15. Standard of English on BBC

    in Owt' Abaaht Nowt !

    Posted

    I've recently started to notice the use of verbs instead of nouns for some teaching roles, so at David Lloyd we have a 'Swim Coach' which really grates every time I see it.

    The page below refers to 'swimming skills courses' yet they make 'swim skills easier to understand'

  16. Standard of English on BBC

    in Owt' Abaaht Nowt !

    Posted

    This is another odd one in that the American pronunciation is technically the correct one as it comes from the Greek. Our pronunciation comes from French and is newer, the hard k being the pronunciation here until the 19th century. As alluded to earlier, many words, their spellings and pronunciations travelled to America and stayed the same. The same words have changed here over time so in a sense it's our spelling or pronunciation that could be said to be incorrect. It's also regional in that skedule is a more common pronunciation further north anyway, the newer pronunciation having come from 'received English' from London and the Home Counties.

    • Upvote 2

  19. Standard of English on BBC

    in Owt' Abaaht Nowt !

    Posted

    There's also the question of the point where something wrong, through usage, becomes acceptable. You used one of my 'pet hates' there DJ, 'reign it in'. The correct usages are 'rein it in' and 'free rein', both coming, quite obviously from horsemanship. Over time, the incorrect 'reign' has become so common that it may eventually just be considered an alternative.

    http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/03/rein-or-reign/

    Similarly, a 'wake' was originally only the night spent with the body before burial but now is acceptably used to include the 'party' afterwards.

    Often we grow up using a word incorrectly but because the meaning is clear, no-one ever points out the error so it can come as quite a surprise to find a meaning or spelling is not what we always thought it was. I would give you examples of words I use incorrectly but of course I'm unaware of them, even the gredacious ones.

    • Upvote 1

  20. Standard of English on BBC

    in Owt' Abaaht Nowt !

    Posted

    Is anyone else finding their spelling becoming less certain as they get older? I used to be top of the class for spelling at school but I find myself more and more having to check relatively common spellings or being uncertain about double 's's etc. I suspect it's because we often write less after a point in our lives and now maybe because predictive text takes care of much of it.

    • Upvote 2

  23. The Commodore

    in General Chat about Nottingham

    Posted

    I wonder what the General's sons are doing now.

    Of all coincidences I ran into Alan Stevenson today. Apparently he spends half his time near Estepona and the other half at the hotel he still owns next to the Commodore (as was). His brothers still live locally, one in Clifton and the other on Aspley Lane. The General is now 93, still lives in Nuthall and drops into the hotel every day for coffee. The family have leased the p7b at Castle Donington out and are probably selling it next year.

    Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

  25. You know you're losing it when ......

    in Owt' Abaaht Nowt !

    Posted

    One of the staff at David Lloyd managed to set the fire alarm off doing the 'double toasted' thing a while back. They evacuated the building but eventually had to give up trying to persuade me (and others) to get out of the outside pool and go to the car park for safety. I mean just how much more safe from fire can you be than in a swimming pool outdoors?

    • Upvote 2