Showing posts with label grammar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grammar. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Wretched wretch retching after chemotherapy
I wish people would learn how to pronounce English properly. The word 'retch' is pronounced 'reach' and it means to heave as if to vomit. It is not pronounced 'wretch' nor is it spelled the same way.
Monday, November 09, 2009
A woman without her man.
I have just finished reading "My Grammar and I (or should that be 'Me'?)" by Caroline Taggart and J.A.Wines. I have always liked grammar because it is full of little jokes.
Take the section on tautology, for example. What could be funnier than 'honest truth'? Dishonest truth? Similarly what nonsense are 'PIN number', 'HIV virus', 'new innovation', 'free gift', 'skin rash', 'unconfirmed rumor', '8 p.m. in the evening', 'climb up' and 'fall down'!
Indeed, the examples scattered through the pages make us want to laugh out loud.
The longest sentence in English literature is spoken by Molly Bloom in James Joyce's Ulysses. It contains 4,391 words, which makes it far too long to be quoted here, even if the subject matter were not a bit dodgy (but it is).
Note the use of the subjunctive!
As far as I am concerned, whom is a word invented to make everyone sound like a butler.
A college professor wrote on a blackboard: A woman without her man is nothing.
He then asked the class to punctuate it. All the men in the class wrote: A woman, without her man, is nothing. All the women wrote: A woman: without her, man is nothing.
A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English class.
"In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language where a double positive can form a negative."
"Yeah, right," piped a voice from the back of the room.
But my main purpose of this article is a plea in favor of retaining the semi-colon, which is going out of fashion.
It is there to connect two or more independent clauses that don't quite justify being sentences in their own right. For example: 'I have tickets for the match. I bet it rains.' This is correct, but an immature, jerky style makes it unattractive. 'I have tickets for the match, but I bet it rains' is clumsy. Far better is, 'I have tickets for the match; I bet it rains.'
Semi-colons can also be used to break up items in a long and complicated list. An example from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol illustrates this.
'... there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeeper's benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they past; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were...'; I am sure you get the idea. It is especially useful when a list has too many commas for comfort.
The semi-colon is in danger of being usurped by the dash (an en-dash in British English and an em-dash in American English).
Finally, readers always like to catch out grammarians at their own game. I have found an error in this book. When talking about the apostrophe, they say that it's is only correct when it is short for it is. Not quite right. In the sentence clause 'it's been said' it's is short for it has.
Take the section on tautology, for example. What could be funnier than 'honest truth'? Dishonest truth? Similarly what nonsense are 'PIN number', 'HIV virus', 'new innovation', 'free gift', 'skin rash', 'unconfirmed rumor', '8 p.m. in the evening', 'climb up' and 'fall down'!
Indeed, the examples scattered through the pages make us want to laugh out loud.
The longest sentence in English literature is spoken by Molly Bloom in James Joyce's Ulysses. It contains 4,391 words, which makes it far too long to be quoted here, even if the subject matter were not a bit dodgy (but it is).
Note the use of the subjunctive!
As far as I am concerned, whom is a word invented to make everyone sound like a butler.
A college professor wrote on a blackboard: A woman without her man is nothing.
He then asked the class to punctuate it. All the men in the class wrote: A woman, without her man, is nothing. All the women wrote: A woman: without her, man is nothing.
A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English class.
"In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language where a double positive can form a negative."
"Yeah, right," piped a voice from the back of the room.
But my main purpose of this article is a plea in favor of retaining the semi-colon, which is going out of fashion.
It is there to connect two or more independent clauses that don't quite justify being sentences in their own right. For example: 'I have tickets for the match. I bet it rains.' This is correct, but an immature, jerky style makes it unattractive. 'I have tickets for the match, but I bet it rains' is clumsy. Far better is, 'I have tickets for the match; I bet it rains.'
Semi-colons can also be used to break up items in a long and complicated list. An example from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol illustrates this.
'... there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeeper's benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they past; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were...'; I am sure you get the idea. It is especially useful when a list has too many commas for comfort.
The semi-colon is in danger of being usurped by the dash (an en-dash in British English and an em-dash in American English).
Finally, readers always like to catch out grammarians at their own game. I have found an error in this book. When talking about the apostrophe, they say that it's is only correct when it is short for it is. Not quite right. In the sentence clause 'it's been said' it's is short for it has.
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Phrases that upset.
Today's Telegraph has a list of phrases that upset that has been compiled by researchers at Oxford University. The top ten are:
1 - At the end of the day
2 - Fairly unique
3 - I personally
4 - At this moment in time
5 - With all due respect
6 - Absolutely
7 - It's a nightmare
8 - Shouldn't of (instead of shouldn't have)
9 - 24/7
10 - It's not rocket science
What is interesting is that the article to date has attracted 1477 comments. A lot of people are upset.
My own personal hate is 'fulsome praise'. Most people seem to think that it means extravagant praise when it means quite the opposite. 'fulsome' derives not from 'full' but from 'foul'. 'Fulsome praise' means praise contaminated by a sneer. If you like, it is a snide remark that seems at first to be praising but when you think about it has a rotten core.
1 - At the end of the day
2 - Fairly unique
3 - I personally
4 - At this moment in time
5 - With all due respect
6 - Absolutely
7 - It's a nightmare
8 - Shouldn't of (instead of shouldn't have)
9 - 24/7
10 - It's not rocket science
What is interesting is that the article to date has attracted 1477 comments. A lot of people are upset.
My own personal hate is 'fulsome praise'. Most people seem to think that it means extravagant praise when it means quite the opposite. 'fulsome' derives not from 'full' but from 'foul'. 'Fulsome praise' means praise contaminated by a sneer. If you like, it is a snide remark that seems at first to be praising but when you think about it has a rotten core.
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