The English Language


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#27 catfan, Many thanks for the Link. My son has just followed the instructions and I now have Spell Checker. (Red Squiggles), but of course I will not see many. yada Thank you for your help everyone.

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There have been several topics recently, whereby mention has been made regarding the correct use of the English language, especially punctuation which certainly gets people baffled at times. I mentio

Yes, it's good when people's posts are spelt correctly but if they aren't then I couldn't care less. I'm more interested in what they have to say than if they've missed an apostrophe off or misspelt a

Why is everyone going on about grammar?  I suspect that  it's often predictive text or twitchy fingers that cause any mistakes on here anyway.   As long as the.post  is clear and unambiguous,  does it

Then there is the confusion between I and me - especially when talking about two people including oneself (he said carefully!) - thus : "My wife and I are going shopping." [not my wife and me] BUT "They sent my wife and me a card." [not my wife and I] How to tell? Try it without the other person. You wouldn't say "Me am going shopping..." nor would you say "They sent I a card..." Of course, there is a grammatical reason too!

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Waht deos tihs maen?

Aoccdrnig to a rscheeachr at an elingsh uinervtisy,it deosnt mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are.Tihs is bcuseae we do not

Raed ervey lteter by istlef but the wrod as a wlohe.

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The I before E has caused me problems all my life and still does. Michael Booth once took the time to put me right.Thanks Michael thumbsup But true to form, I have forgotten what he taught me, and back to square one! thumbsdown .

I did look it up on the Internet once, but it got so complicated that I couldn't understand it. So it seems that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I rely on my spell checker now to put me right if I am unsure. :)

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I don't know when "shortened forms of words" came on the scene, like didn't, won't etc, but I'll bet sometime in the mid 20th century.

How many words defy the "i before e" rule??? I'll bet not many.

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Ain't got Katy . Tut, tut.

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Having a great interest in the word games, and having predictive text on my iPad, I notice a great many words in current usage have been bastardised solely to appease foreigners and the downright dim.

Words that used to end in 'full' now only have one l. Words containing a z are now used with an s .

Cheque as in cheque book is now regularly spelt check as well.

Where've we gone wrong ?

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Really !!!! I sincerely hope not !!!!!

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I'm not sure that's true. You're confusing Shakespeare's use of language with that of the typical man. Shakespeare used more different words than any other known author, around 15,000. Milton, for example, used just over 8,000 and the Old Testament, only 5,642. In Shakespeare's day, a typical labourer apparently only used about 300 words and a well-educated man around 3-4,000 peaking with about 10,000 for a noted orator. From Shakespeare's day onwards, the number of words in the English language and the average vocabulary has exploded to the point where there are (depending on definition) between 750,000 and 1million words in our language.. Today, David Crystal, a linguist and world-renown expert on the English language, provides these estimates of how many words people know: a person starting school: 500-6,000; a person without a formal education: 35,000; a high-school educated person: 50,000; a college-educated person 50-75,000.

https://atkinsbookshelf.wordpress.com/tag/how-many-words-in-the-average-persons-vocabulary/

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Interesting reading. There are a few english speaking italians here and one thing that gets me is that the english teachers were taught american english. "A" in english is pronounced "a" as in cat. But "A" is pronounced here as in bleck. When my grandchildren come out with a wrong pronuciation, I correct them. They usually say we've been taught like that. I tell them to tell the teacher that its wrong. Some like it , some don't . But oh.....we are English and proud of it.!

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Crankypig #63, funny thing you mention the fact we read the whole word, it's the same with Morse Code, those proficient at copying speeds of 20 words per minute or faster copy words not characters.

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