Cycling UK Forum

patricktaylor wrote:

reohn2 wrote:... If you can't see beyond someones spelling and gammar then God help you!

Mrs Tortoise is talking about "supposed professional writers."

She is yes, others aren't.

Mick F wrote:My pet hate is mispronunciation of place names. It's not Glarsgow, it's Glasgow! There isn't an R in it! Also Barth instead of Bath!

You've hit a nerve, Mick - why have all those Middle Eastern '.....stan' countries suddenly developed the same affliction - '....starn'.
Another one, that may be particular to the general area in which I live, is the use of 'of' instead of 'have' eg. 'I should of done that.'

Anyway, now that the weather has warmed a little, I'm going to my garridge (I don't have a garrarje)

Steve

irc wrote:Numerous people at my new workplace use "on route" instead of "en route". Including one with a recent university degree.

Maybe their degree was in something useful then where they had much more important things to be learning!

I do remember one of my fellow students correcting the lecturer's spelling during a lecture.

Greybeard wrote:You've hit a nerve, Mick - why have all those Middle Eastern '.....stan' countries suddenly developed the same affliction - '....starn'.

Arf-garn-is-tarn ?????

Here's a poem, please read it out loud and see how you pronounce it.

Father's car is a Jaguar, and it can go quite fast,
Castles and farms and draughty barns we go charging past.
Arthur's cart is far less smart and can't go half as fast,
But I'd rather ride on Arthur's cart than in my papa's fast car.

meic wrote:Maybe their degree was in something useful then where they had much more important things to be learning!

Well, yes, I'll agree teachers are useful. I prefer my teachers to be able to spell though.

I wonder if it's how we hear things being said rather than how words are actually spoken. When I moved to the north of England over 25 years ago I found the accents harsh, yet the people here found my accent 'posh' even though it's an Essex/East London accent which is very far from cultured. When I say grass people here hear grarss but the sound I make isn't any more drawn out than the 'a' sound that they use, it's just a difference in the way I make an 'A' sound. People from the south east say it as if there was an umlaut, they don't say 'ahhh' but 'ӓ'. Certain American accents would sound like grairss to our ears. I have friends from Skelmersdale (or Skem as they call it) and they are horrified that all I can hear in their accents is scouse which they find harsh.

I suspect that the reason that people get irritated by pronunciation variations is the fault of the media as the BBC used a cultured accent for it's TV and radio broadcasting for decades. It created the idea that there is a 'proper' way to speak which was offensive to anyone living beyond the grounds of Windsor Castle. It's interesting that there's now a backlash here about the media going too far the other way by adopting colloquialisms. Us older people have a different perception of what we want from the media. We grew up when TV and radio were special and had a far more paternal role in the world. Nowadays TV and radio are more of an open source optional extra competing with other communication methods and they have to move with the times. For correct usage of language we have to look elsewhere.

(Incidentally, the dictionary pronunciation is grӓss )

In the media etc., I agree that standards need to be upheld and every effort should be made to spell correctly and to use grammar appropriately.

On forums like this, I think we all have to remember that whilst some people may be able to spell correctly, not all may have the ability to do so, and indeed some may be hindered by dyslexia or other issues that prevent them from doing so. I would hate to think that people with interesting tales and opinions to share felt unable to do so if they feared ridicule or censure.

+1, dewi1.

Mrs Tortoise wrote:... Policing Today talks about Police peddling their way to fitness ...

Perhaps they really do mean "Peddling." Did anyone read the article? Maybe it's a deliberate pun.

I agree.

As for pronunciation, I speak with a "lapsed" Wigan accent. I form my words and vowels like I used to, but my accent has been 'softened' over the years.

As a kid, I had an Anty Mury, now I have an Aunty Mary. I used to say, "Loook in yor coooking booook". Now I say, Luck in your cucking buck." (If you see what I mean!)

Also, when I joined the RN, people asked me my name. I would say, "Fur-urst". I was greeted with blank stares and had to say, "Fair-hurst".

I still say GRASS and not GRARS as to pronounce it like that is daft IMHO. (DAFT, not DARFT!) and I still sound Northern and proud of it too. More and more I find that some Cornish expressions creep in, but I say them with a northern accent!

As for Skelmersdale, yes they do speak Scouse. When the town was built in the mid 60s, it was filled with overspill from Liverpool. The old village was swamped, and other villages around and about too. We lived in Newburgh back then and the Skem border was just a mile up the road from us. People in old Newburgh spoke 'northern', but three miles further out beyond Tawd Vale to Burscough or Ormskirk, and there's definitely a Scouse twang.

Isn't the English language wonderful? All this variation in ways of speaking it! There's no excuse for bad grammar though, especially in the media.

Must admit I hate bad grammar and poor spelling, but then I always used to be top of the class in spelling tests, due mostly I believe to my voracious appetite for reading.
I do however have a dyslexic keyboard, and sometimes it cannot keep up with the speed of my typing

I am also conscious when criticising spelling that not everyone was taught properly. A pal of mine, 1 year behind at the same school was in a class experimentally taught phonetic spelling. At senior school no one could understand the reason for her poor spelling, and she was told if her spelling improved it would mean the difference between 'o'level or cse English, eventually it was realised just what the problem and it was felt it was too ingrained certainly to be corrected in time for her English exam.
So her future prospects were damaged by experimentation...

A few years ago there was a load of media coverage re-spelling, and people were very blase due to the presence of spell check, that's all well and dandy if you do really know the spelling or apllication of the word, if you do not can you really be expected to know which spelling is required by spell check?

The amount of times you see professional mispelt with a double f is quite remarkable especially on websites where " we offer a proffesional service" On ebay I have seen a laddies bike for sale and click for lagar image and once received the plague for the best stand at a show.

Mick F wrote:There's no excuse for bad grammar though, especially in the media.

Bad grammar rubs me up the wrong way too, but I'm aware that grammar is just convention rather than a set rules. Ultimately poor grammar is only poor if it prevents someone from clearly stating what it is that they mean and the same can be said for a limited vocabulary. Language is constantly changing and it seems as if English becoming the de facto world language is not going to stop that continual change. We must show tolerance, if language didn't change we'd have to show forþyldigung which is old English for tolerance!

We had a paper shop in the village. It's still there, but closed. Emblazoned on the front is the name of the shop:
"Doyle's Daily's". How do signwriters do it? Surely they know about plurals? Why can't they get things right?

There's another shop in Callington with huge posters in the windows advertising the space for advertising. I can't remember the exact wording, but they end with etcetera abbreviated to ECT instead of ETC.

Well i dislike it when they leave the postreffy out in "aint". Like in "i ain[']t bovvered" and also when people use little i's instead of bigguns when talking about thereselves!