Username
porsche
Member Since
October 20, 2005
Total number of comments
670
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3091
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all _____ sudden
- July 29, 2010, 2:13pm
Dorothea, you know what's even worse? When "like" is used, not as an interjective, but in place of the word "said":
"...and I like, 'what should we do today?' And he like, 'I dunno.' And I like, 'ya wanna go to the mall?' And he like, 'yeah, ok.'..."
“Anglish”
- July 29, 2010, 1:59pm
Re: "Just because grammar changes, that doesn’t mean we should say, “oh, grammar changed, to hell with it then, let’s change the words, too."
Come on, now. French and Latin didn't make its way into English because anyone said "Hey, look at this. Our grammar is evolving. I've got a great idea! Let's make up a bunch of new words and change two thirds of our language. Let's do it right now. That sounds like fun. Let's form a club or something." Nothing even remotely like that ever happened in English history. Not ever (what's more, you already knew that). Oh, wait. Yes it has. That's exactly what Anglish is, isn't it?
I know, why don't we just make Esperanto the new world language?
“Anglish”
- July 26, 2010, 11:23pm
Actually, I'm quite curious. If you really and truly strip out every single borrowed word (and don't substitute any archaic ones), and only leave modern words that are directly descended from, oh, I dunno, Proto-Indo-European, just how many words would be left? I could be wrong, but I suspect that most of the words that the Anglish fans espouse are still borrowed, however long ago.
Adding a question mark to ensure a response
- July 25, 2010, 6:37pm
Steve, I'm not saying that the question mark is correct, but if you use a period, you're still asking the other person to decide.
Twenty-ten vs Two thousand-ten
- July 19, 2010, 12:19pm
My favorite has always been "the naughts", first heard just before the new millenium.
Resume, resumé, or résumé?
- July 16, 2010, 12:51pm
Jack, I'm afraid I have to disagree. To be honest, I think you are even contradicting yourself somewhat. If you imagine that "they" adopt the single accent to help with phonetics, then why isn't that the perfect etymological justification? By the way, to paraphrase Walt Kelly, "they" is "us"! The editors of American Heritage dictionary didn't pull the spelling out of their ass and set a new standard for us to follow. They simply recognized the already established standard usage. If that's not etymologically justified, then what is? Furthermore, adding accents for convenience most definitely is characteristic of English. Resumé is an example. If it were the only example that alone would be sufficient. But consider a word like souflée as well. It makes particular sense in these cases since without the accent, there's no way to indicate the correct pronunciation (other than context). In spite of the many different ways to pronounce each vowel, the accented -ay for a final -e normally isn't one of them. As for borrowing a word from another language requiring its exact spelling, notation, or pronuncation, says who? Just isn't so. Once a word is adopted into a language it becomes that language's word and any version (or versions) that its speakers universally agree on becomes the word. Writing "resumé" with one accent isn't creating one's own rules of language. It's following the standard of language that's universally accepted (well, perhaps I should say nearly universally, or this entire thread wouldn't be here!), at least, according the the American Heritage Dictionary.
Pronunciation: aunt
- July 15, 2010, 4:49pm
Nick, how do you pronounce "laugh"?
“I’m just saying”
- July 15, 2010, 4:36pm
Jan, are you suggesting that the Urban Dictionary is an irrefutable source of English usage? I think what several people are trying to point out to you is that the Urban Dictionary (by their own admission) is just a big open blog where anybody can post whatever they want.
Resume, resumé, or résumé?
- July 11, 2010, 5:23pm
No, Clancy, I'm not saying that I don't use any accents. I didn't say anything to you about ASCII tables. What I'm saying is exactly what I said, nothing more, and nothing less. The method you mention for creating accents does not work in Windows, per se. It only works in a small number of specific Microsoft applications. Others have posted that it only works in Word. It also works in Wordpad (another rarely used program). It pretty much doesn't work in any other applications and doesn't work anywhere at all in the Windows operating system. Nowhere. Perhaps I jumped to conclusions, but when you said "windows, any version...", I assumed you were referring to the Windows operating system, which would be incorrect. If you meant Word, you should have said Word. If you didn't, then why so defensive? I would have thought you'd welcome the correct information. On the other hand, if you had actually read the previous posts, we probably wouldn't even be having this exchange.
anything vs. everything
Since you're asking what the difference is, if you find everything, then, out of all the possible things there are to find, you must find every single one, without exception. On the other hand, if you find anything, then you only need find one or more, not necessarily every one. There's nothing positive or negative about either one. It's simply a matter of what you're trying to say. They mean two different things. Everything means all. Anything means at least one, possibly more. Perhaps I'm stating the obvious, but that is what you asked.