The Historic District

Manalto wrote:OK, if you feel that strongly. I'm putting away the grill.

Now that kind of rare I can stomach.... literally! Yum!

hahaha, this is entertaining!

who was there? myself, manalto and neighmond...argh, it's me!!!
good paying jobs...it's WELL paying jobs...
irregardless, words are fun....

...jade

Frankly, I never gave much though to the actual meaning of "retro," and would likely have used it interchangeably with "vintage." I don't do a lot of online shopping for things like that, so I never noticed. But, on the few occasions that I've window shopped for retro stuff, I'd use the word "vintage" instead, (usually for a vintage light fixture of some kind) and get lots of results showing retro items.

As for using "fail" as a noun, I think that's just slang; coming from our shared experiences in school, when grades were treated as nouns. "He got an 'F' on his report card."

JRC wrote:Frankly, I never gave much though to the actual meaning of "retro,"

The actual meaning - or the meaning?

Don't get me started on the superfluous use of actual/actually.

"thought"

Get ready for more with all the texting.. a lot of kids now actually do think you is spelled U !
One misspelling I chuckle at is is "good mourning"

Now they don't even teach kids to write in school any more, they just teach printing. Handwriting isn't required anymore. I found that strange.

Now we have auto correct and Siri we are inventing new words faster than ever. If you haven't seen it there is a website called damn you auto correct where people upload snapshots of conversations gone all wrong, some are pretty funny.

http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/

I somehow got my computer to learn that doesn't' has two apostrophes and damn If I can "figger" out how to fix it. I never learned to touch type or type properly at all so looking at the screen and typing at the same time has become pretty much impossible for me now.

vvzz wrote:I don't think anyone owns the language though. Just because some bigwigs at Oxford say words should be spelled certain way or have a certain meaning, doesn't make it so. Language is a living thing that is constantly evolving.
Of course that doesn't apply to examples of dyslexia or stupidity .

Actually, the collective users of a language "own" the language. And it's the linguistic editors of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) that are the premier (though not exclusive), recognized authorities of the English language. They decide the difference between what is correct and what is ignorance. How the OED determines spelling and meaning (which is far from arbitrary) *does* make it so and those that don't comply are wrong.

Language does evolve but at a glacial pace so one can't claim "evolution" to excuse ignorance. The OED is much more likely to add a widely used, recently coined word than it is to add a new meaning to an old word; and it will never eliminate what already exists (it will just refer to it as "archaic").

Now that's how to use "actually." Thanks, James. Nice name, by the way.

I love this thread! I'm a self-professed "grammar nazi" and spelling champion. My friends know whom to ask for help with resumes and cover letters, and my eye can catch the spelling mistake in the smallest line that flashes by on the TV screen. It's a gift. And a curse. And a gift. News headlines drive me crazy, as when the local paper runs, in its largest font, "Hoards of people descend on..."

One of my favorite CL gaffes was the "shift robe." Took me forever to figure out what that was, and I had to say it out loud. "Dinning" table is another great one, and "rod iron" appears regularly.

I've noticed that the writing on this forum is generally excellent, and it's so much easier to read for content when my brain isn't being constantly distracted. I don't want to criticize anyone's writing, however; I'm not always as careful as I could be, especially when typing on my phone.

Olson185 wrote:Language does evolve but at a glacial pace so one can't claim "evolution" to excuse ignorance. The OED is much more likely to add a widely used, recently coined word than it is to add a new meaning to an old word; and it will never eliminate what already exists (it will just refer to it as "archaic").

For some official purpose? Sure. There needs to be an established standard. But I really dislike how some(in general, not anyone here) elevate themselves on a pedestal and judge people around because their pronunciation or grammar ain't right

I love listening how people with local or social dialects talk. It's not correct according to Oxford standards, but we can't call it 'wrong'.

Weird phonetical spelling (like aforementioned rod-iron) is a whole different story IMO. As a non-native speaker I don't even understand how you guys learn this stuff as kids. It doesn't me surprise people can't spell. There's no rhyme or reason to how most words are spelled(at least not practically applicable) It's complete madness.

we have a lot of immigrants so a lot of ESL people. One thing that drives me crazy is the way singular and plural gets messed up. examples might be I have some furnatures for sale, or I have three car for sale. It happens so frequently that no one corrects it and everyone just nods and understands. The worst I see is manuals transferred by other languages. We were trying to understand why the instructions said to make an adjustment to a machine "while it was stopping" Finally it dawned on someone that it was a typo, we were supposed to be making the adjustment while it was stopped... ahh! The little light went on. That made a world of difference and was much more safe.. uh.. safer... more safer I mean

I probably anger many with my grammar but I'm also fine being corrected. As I go I seem to be getting worse.. oh well My largest issue is probably that I carry on too much ! Those who don't do anything make less mistakes and I probably make more because I can't stop myself oh well say la vee