Re: [NTLK] OT - Do you speak BBC English?

From: G. Isten <gisela_at_tariffenet.it>
Date: Sun Sep 02 2007 - 20:19:30 EDT

Hi Paul, Christian & Matt,

>I won't even begin with the apostrophe! ("Soda's for sale...")

Hm, what if the good man was telling us that "Soda is for sale"...? ;-)

>It's maddening to walk past a green grocer's
>shop here and discover that he is selling "apple's, pear's, banana's..."

Alas, that seems to be as virulent an epidemic as avian influenza. It's badly affecting other languages as well. 3-5 years of English as a foreign language at school, and people seem to have erased any notion of how to write proper German or Italian from their brains. Apostrophes all over the place... about as attractive as head-lice in elementary schools. Everything is being anglicized (and incorrectly, at that). I sometimes wonder if the ubiquity of MS is co-responsible for some of the linguistic horrors we get to see these days. The German and Italian spelling checkers that MS's Word comes with are in fact atrocious.

John mentioned the educated brain. I am under the impression that, by and large, brains are increasingly less educated in this day and age, and that more and more of the younger brain-holders are less and less interested in actually using them. ;-)

Ciao,

Gisela, who fears she's starting to sound like her own grandmother *lol*

====================================================================
The NewtonTalk Mailing List - http://www.newtontalk.net/
The Official Newton FAQ - http://www.splorp.com/newton/faq/
The Newton Glossary - http://www.splorp.com/newton/glossary/
WikiWikiNewt - http://tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/
====================================================================
Received on Sun Sep 2 20:20:35 2007

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Mon Sep 03 2007 - 12:30:00 EDT