Their, there, they're

[sheffexpat]

To Greybeard,

I've taught English abroad and you're right----most of the students who learn English do a fantastic job .

Sometimes to show them how difficult or illogical English is , I used to show them this:-

Bow as in Bow and arrow

Bow as in bowed down

Bough as in bough of a tree

Cough

Tough

Dough

Rough

ruff

duff................etc........

After about half an hour of guessing how we pronounce each word,they realised how potty we all are in England but at least they knew what they were up against.

It was no good pretending to them that English is easy to learn and most of them accepted that and just got on with it.

I think it's a mistake in modern education in England to make the students believe that all learning is painless. It isn't and our kids either give up or get a nasty shock when they discover the truth and that's why standards are falling : we're desperately trying to help them hold onto the illusion.

[ToryCynic]

Whilst we're on the topic of English in general, who uses this punctuation mark: ":-" or "-:"

 

 

You see "-" and ":" beng used individually, but you can combine them both to make ":-" and "-:".

 

Alex

[wendy]

Originally posted by amhudson119

Whilst we're on the topic of English in general, who uses this punctuation mark: ":-" or "-:"

 

 

You see "-" and ":" beng used individually, but you can combine them both to make ":-" and "-:".

 

Alex

 

I think this is now down to common usage, if you know what I mean. When I left school 20 odd years ago :- was commonly used to denote the start of a list but now you would usually only see :. It's a bit like open punctuation on letters - that didn't really exist then and all addresses had full punctuation. I've never seen -: used though that's a new one on me.

[ToryCynic]

Originally posted by wendy

I think this is now down to common usage, if you know what I mean. When I left school 20 odd years ago :- was commonly used to denote the start of a list but now you would usually only see :. It's a bit like open punctuation on letters - that didn't really exist then and all addresses had full punctuation. I've never seen -: used though that's a new one on me.

 

On an address you'd now find:-

 

XXX Road

Area

Town

County

Post code

 

Before you'd find:-

 

XX Road,

Area,

Town,

County

Post code.

 

Except, it would be one the right hand side of the page

 

Alex

[ToryCynic]

That sort of thing, do you mean? As in when writing a letter..?

 

Alex

[wendy]

Yeah that's it. It's just a form of modernisation I suppose. Certain things don't get used anymore!

[ToryCynic]

Other annoyances of mine include:-

 

- People when writing thread titles will write: "What Is It Like In The Wincobank Area" - this is unnecessary, as only "What" and "Wincobank" need to be capitalised.

 

- Words being "AmericaniZed" (Americanised) - this seems to be creeping into language much more these days.

 

- The poor old semi-colon - it's hardly ever used; a great punctuation mark - I never see it being used these days !

 

Alex

[wendy]

Originally posted by amhudson119

Other annoyances of mine include:-

 

- People when writing thread titles will write: "What Is It Like In The Wincobank Area" - this is unnecessary, as only "What" and "Wincobank" need to be capitalised.

 

- Words being "AmericaniZed" (Americanised) - this seems to be creeping into language much more these days.

 

- The poor old semi-colon - it's hardly ever used; a great punctuation mark - I never see it being used these days !

 

Alex

 

I know just what you mean - especially about the americanisation of words.

[Clumber]

Originally posted by amhudson119

Whilst we're on the topic of English in general, who uses this punctuation mark: ":-" or "-:"

 

 

You see "-" and ":" beng used individually, but you can combine them both to make ":-" and "-:".

 

Alex

 

I use it, and the good old semi-colon.

 

I fully agree with what you've said about the lack of grammar in what is, after all, our native tongue. However we just have to accept that some people (for whatever reason) have maybe not had as a good an education as the rest of us. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of what age groups struggle with grammar and punctuation - I'd put money on it being the younger end - the age group where teachers thought it trendy not to worry about spelling but do everything phonetically.

 

But the thing that really gets me is TEXTSPEAK in messages like this - there is no excuse for it, its not a lack of education but laziness!!

[Lickable]

Tymes' a changing...

 

http://www.mun.ca/Ansaxdat/vocab/wordlist.html