The joys of Tripadvisor reviews

Remember the earlier conversation about brush vs broom…and bun to roll to bap to butty…

In my case, I can neither write correctly nor talk correctly.

One thing I find amusing here, French like to look for the errors other commit when communicating.

Interesting to know that focus is on verbal. The French has a really strong accent in pronouncing English.

The emphasis has shifted to being able to communicate an idea from one person to another…and everyone has an accent of some kind. There were lessons in understanding accents from around the world, plus slang and even profanity (always a favorite class!)

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I’ve just returned from a holiday in Tenerife. Our neighbours in the next apartment were also British . One from near Glasgow, the other from Sunderland. I struggled to understand either of them.

My friend Paul, a lawyer in Lexington, Kentucky knows someone else in my metro area. Paul says that he can readily understand me (middle class and living in the south of the metro area) but struggles to follow the other guy (working class from the north of the area).

And, finally, my Spanish brother in law has, for many years, preferred to swear in English. He reckons we have a much greater range of nuanced obscenities than there is in Spanish

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Administering another lash to the deceased equine, I interpreted the question mark at the end of your “presume” sentence to mean you were not certain. It was intended as a good-natured nit pick. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

And taken as such.

I always try and respond to good natured pedantry with good natured pedantry.

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While it’s amusing, I would suspect it was an overlooked voice-to-text or autocorrect error from a phone-based posting.

You haven’t spent much time on the site. There are some obvious fat-finger typos, some English-is-not-my-first-language blunders, and a lot of obvious auto-correct disasters, but there is a car load of of barely legible ; ) posts tapped put by the only vaguely literate.

I’m surprised that written language comes into computer coding (about which I know nothing), but I understand that it can be possible to be pretty sure about the nationality of a coder. For instance some viruses carry linguistic clues that they could only really have been written by a native speaker of a certain language, this going rather deeper than just spellings, which are mostly quite easy to manipulate to give a false impression.

This may of course be an urban myth!

Can’t really comment on the misuse of English by Brits, but these days just about any internet forum is full of the same errors over and over by Americans. Some examples that particularly drive me nuts: Your is constantly used when the writer means you’re; hardly anybody seems to understand there, their, and they’re; to, too, and two; somebody is always saying something like "they brought the drinks to Bill and I (say what you will about Martha Stewart but I once saw her correct someone on this one on live national TV – bless her heart). They’re are a million more (just kidding – I meant their of course). The language is in peril. Thank you. Your welcome. You to.

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Similarish to the “accented writing” I mentioned. It’s folk who use accurate and understandable English but not idiomatic English. But then, as I’ve mentioned more than once here, you can tell if someone isn’t from my very immediate part of England by the word they may use for the simple bread roll. “Barm(cake)” people are my people - “bap” and “cob” people are not

Mom always had a good guide: Did you bring the drink to I or to me? (Answer should be obvious.) Did John and me go to the store or did I go to the store? (Again, answer should be obvious.)

My current pet peeve is lose/loose. But I try not to loose my mind over it :blush:

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I thought the current solution was to add misuses as definitions or pronunciations in official dictionaries. For example, I’m almost certain “sarcasm” used to mean something different than it does now. “Forte” was pronounced fort. Grammar has been more resilient, though.

My grade school teachers were very strict. We weren’t allowed to use “guys” as a general term to refer to gals and guys. We weren’t even allowed to say, “Hey!” I guess every generation goes through this, but it seems like there’s a lot more change these days than in the past. Thinking of language as an evolving, organic medium is overrated, if you ask me.

Funny, that brought me back to my days as an English major in the 80s. Chaucer sounded more Germanic than English. Shakespearean English is difficult for modern students to understand. My West Point-educated prof thought ebonics would be the standard by 2020 as we always strive to simplify the language.

But I/me and lose/loose will always grate my gears :sob:

BTW: “forte” was always “for-tay”."

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They’re are a million more (just kidding – I meant their of course). The language is in peril. Thank you. Your welcome. You to.

You have a real flare for expressing yourself.

You are on the mark about the decline of usage and grammar. It’s an atrocious development, because when written and spoken communication are incorrect or ambiguous, the consequence can be misunderstandings that needlessly consume our resources. English is a marvelously precise language when properly used. The Oxford comma is an example:

Let’s not even get started on states dropping cursive from the curriculum except to note: How are you going to have a unique personality if you can’t sign your name with a pen? The sports memorabilia industry ought to be having kittens and pounding on the state legislatures.

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Good example. I agree with the drivers. There needs to be an Oxford comma if that is what they indeed meant. As is, I understood it as “packing for shipping” or “packing for distribution”.