""Wet" THIS!!!" Topic

OK, I know it really doesn't do any good to complain about the decline in literacy throughout the English-speaking world. It's demonstrated daily here on TMP and other fora. But this one always bugs me:

link

One does not "wet" an appetite. There is no intent to dampen or moisten. One "whets" the appetite, as in sharpening or putting a fine edge on it.

Thank you for your time. But I don't feel any better, because I know that if I go check the Flames of War forum now, someone will have posted about a "Strum" company, or "Fallschrimjager". I suppose I should understand that these are "foreign" words to them, and thus a greater challenge…

Allen

ah spelling. that supposedly useless subject while you are taking it. yet so appreciated later in life as a sign of relative intelligence =P
To, two, and too, get my undies in a bind.

Me tue!

I once had to advise a college educated ad-exec that there really was a difference between the words DUEL and DUAL.

She didn't believe me and consulted three other people before finally accepting my point.

GGGRRRRRRRRRR

Pernosally I find tpyeing nca sometmies be a rpoblme on odl fngeirs.

What about a shot of Ouzo as an apartif? That is wet.

Sturm/strum?

link

Funny, I was just thinking this morning that I needed a Quad Flak gun for one of the Skirmish Campaigns Eastern Front games I wanted to run, and here they are. I'd like it to be BF because all the rest of my skirmish stuff is. Consider my appetite "wetted". 8)=

Although, my appetite is sometimes dry.

THRU….no, no, no, no, NO – it's THROUGH.

Aaron

Good one, Allen, and one mistake I would have made myself. English is not my first language, but that is no excuse for not at least trying to get it right.

Sometimes I tire in my onerous duties as the official TMP Speling, and, Grammer Facscist ™ and grwo weary.
At my advanced age, sometimes my fingers fail me, and I type adjacent characters. "Let he is without sin among you cast the first stone."
However, the fact that sometimes I fail is no reason to NOT demand perfection. Does the fact that I cannot dribble deprive me of the right to hoot at an NBA star who flubs a dunk? NO!

So, Allen, this is for you. Carry on! Fight the good foght!

To dream … the impossible dream …
To fight … the unbeatable foe …
To bear … with unbearable sorrow …
To run … where the brave dare not go …
To right … the unrightable wrong …
To love … pure and chaste from afar …
To try … when your arms are too weary …
To reach … the unreachable star …

This is my quest, to follow that star …
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far …
To fight for the right, without question or pause …
To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause …

And I know if I'll only be true, to this glorious quest,
That my heart will lie will lie peaceful and calm,
when I'm laid to my rest …
And the world will be better for this:
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach … the unreachable star …

homophone.com

*singing*
Homophones! Homophones! Everybody loves… Homophones!

Im go 2 teh liberry 2 c if u rite.

"At my advanced age, sometimes my fingers fail me, and I type adjacent characters."

You are not alone. But we have lived long lives, and if our faculties fail us now, that's just to be expected.

The younger generation can honor and show their appreciation for the elderly by helping to maintain our standards.

Yeah, right…

Allen

It's like the presentation I once sat through where a "business expert" admonished us to "Have the audacity to doubt their voracity" when making deals with people.

The worst part is, nobody else in the room seemed at all amused.

Then again, I don't doubt at all that corporate lawyers are voracious. ;)

It only really works in Russian, but an audience of US Army folks were once subjected to a State Department translator interpret a former Afghan Army colonel's explanation that RKKA stood for "Workers' and Christians' Red Army". (krestyanin'/khristya'nin, with different syllable emphasis)

Allen

My favourites:

Rouge and Calvary

This just came up on another TMP thread.

I am tired of my college students writing "could of" instead of "could've" or "could have." BTW I mark them down one letter grade if I even see one contraction in an essay!

Yes…calvary and cavalry, and motor and mortar…

There, their and they're also cause problems for folks that I teach. I also down grade for spelling on papers that get turned in to me. You have spell check and a dictionary, no excuses.

There's also "lead" instead of "led" …

Don't get me started on 'less', and 'fewer'

A few points came up when reading this thread.

1) Allen is appreciative enough of the Classical heritage of some of our English words, to use "fora" instead of the more common, but colloquial "forums". I wonder if he applies this to "aeroplanes" and "airplanes" also.

2) By the way, my American spell checker just informed me that it doesn't like "fora" or "aeroplanes". In fact it suggests the alternatives, "hydroplanes" and "monoplanes" instead of aeroplanes. I wonder if that is part of the problem?

3) Some of the writers on TMP do not have English as their primary language. That could be considered.

4) I understand Raynman marking papers down for spelling mistakes, but I don't understand CPBelt marking the essay down if it contains a contraction. (Maybe I should have written, " I do not understand…….")

5) Some things in English should be just left to wither. How about the difference between "whom" and "who"? I suggest we banish "whom". Whom's with me?

Ralph

Those who make a point of using "whom" usually tend to use it exclusively. As in "Whom is it?"
Calvin Trilling said it best: "Whom" is a word designed to make us all talk like butlers.

The one that bugs me is "phase" for "faze". As in "I wasn't phased by the huge unpainted lead pile in front of me,; I just got stuck in and painted them". Grrr.

"He waited with baited breath" Only if he ate fish for lunch.

But the English language is an everchanging polyglot. Words come and go. When was the last time you heard someone referred to as being "spry"? And with the internet and text messaging how we spell things may be changing. Language is meant to convey meaning, and if someone "waits with baited breath", that, because of context, is as meaningful as "waits with bated breath". It conveys the meaning even if the spelling isn't there. Heavens, we've only had conventional spelling of English for about a hundred years. Prior to that folks spelled pretty much phonetically. Yes, improper spelling grates on the nerve of the older generation, but we are passing into history, and the shorthand of the internet and the text message may make up the dictionary of tomorrow. And it will be as understandable as "proper" English which is the goal of the written word. And it is most creative.

L8tr.

I no longer acknowledge the existence of aeroplanes. The process of employing them has just gotten silly, and I will not use them.

I am quite spry for my age. I have known many spry people. "Spry" is a good word, and far from shuffling off into disuse.

English is not Russian (thank you, Ms. Krupskaya). We have been spelling English with an eye to one or more standard references since long before Dr. Johnson.

In any case, there is no good excuse in this automated world not to teach a standard language, and not to insist on the use of one. Faults in spell checkers simply point out the problem.

Allen

Not one kid in ten can read a 19th century novel for comprehension. By the end of the 21st century, Stephen King will be just as indecipherable as Charles Dickens or James Fennimore Cooper is today….

Try the Bard in the orginal Elizabethan.

Oh, and courtesy of Andrew Beasley in this thread TMP link , "horde" vs "hoard".

"By the end of the 21st century, Stephen King will be just as indecipherable as Charles Dickens or James Fennimore Cooper is today…"

I look forward to the day Stephen King leaves the language, but since when is Dickens indecipherable?

People read Shakespeare in versions other than the original?

Grief….

Here it's always taught in the original – albeit with copious notes to get the meaning across. Notes which are, in my experience, often a tad coy about what a phrase really means.. :)

There are a few oddities local to us here in Wales. Welsh has the same word for 'lend' and 'borrow' hence you often get asked 'Could you borrow me a pen?'.

Hey Bangorstu, doesn't the context tell you which meaning they are using, or is the pronunciation slightly different?

People read Shakespeare in versions other than the original?

Yes, I would assume Shakespeare is translated into many languages. However, in English, it is still in the original Elizabethan era English.

That's why we have, "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?" instead of, "Hey Romeo, where are you, man?".

:^)

I no longer acknowledge the existence of aeroplanes. The process of employing them has just gotten silly, and I will not use them.

Airodynamic, then?

Another :^)

Ralph

Little Miss Muffet felt it was whey too much trouble to way her weigh.

JW

Mihhael – in a lot of cases the vocabluary is different, which kind of leaves you floundering.

I mean it requires explanation to know that 'Slid' is a blasphemous saying, being an abbreviation of 'Gods eyelids'…

That said any true born Englishman can get the gist of Henry V easily enough… :)

Yes, it is, Bangorstu, and so is the spelling. But badly speled as it is, it still conveyth the mening.

An F grade for Mr Krebs. "Where fore art thou" asks 'Why do you have to be be a Montague ('Why do you have to be Romeo, and not someone else?').

Bangor Stu- when you say in Welsh re borrow/lent, did you mean Welsh dialect of English. It annoys me that people don't know the difference when I hear it.

Also there is a diffence between EFFECT and AFFECT. Learn it.

I like irony :)

Last Hussar, nope I mean Welsh. Most people speak it around here. And since Welsh only has the one word for the two concepts, they tend only to use one when speaking English as well.

Hmmm…

Buy more than ten 28 mm scale brothels and we might say you hoard a horde of the d.

The one I like is when people say 'That'll learn you' instead of teach you.