@HS - Apprenticeship and mentoring are two totally different things. The former is a formal period of training, usually under a particular boss, who is responsible for that training, with usually some sort of qualification at the end.

Mentoring, in business at least, is usually an informal arrangement and your mentor is not your boss, but a more experienced employee, possibly at the same grade as you, who can help with your training, keep an eye on you and give advice where necessary. Mentoring is particularly prevalent in knowledge-based industries such as banking, where highly-qualified staff get a lot of responsibility early on, without any apprenticeship period. :)

But in any case, what makes a word 'dreadful'? I can understand words that insult other people or words that describe horrible things being described as dreadful. I can understand words which sound ugly being called dreadful, perhaps.There are words I don't particularly like, but I'd never call them dreadful.

Apparently Oscar Wilde thought 'always' was a dreadful word, and then there's this from a well-known pronunciation poem:

"Beware of heard, a dreadful word. That looks like beard and sounds like bird"

But mentee, a natural partner for mentor? I'm afraid I don't really get it. I wonder if what really makes it dreadful is simply that it is new. :)

@HS - They don't sound right as Standard English, but the first one, at least, is quite normal in dialect, and of course there's the famous 'The boy done good'. Dialects have different rules, and in some English dialects adjectives are commonly used as adverbs.

But Fowler is obviously writing in Standard English. I'm wondering if this use was perhaps commoner in the past, or if, on the other hand, I'm simply alone in finding it odd.

Ngram would seem to support the first theory, with 'comes natural' being quite popular between about 1880 and about 1940, with interestingly a peak in the late twenties (Fowler's book was published in 1926). 'Comes naturally' was always more common, but whereas the ratio (in British books) in 1880 was little more than 2:1, it is now more like 12:1.

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=comes+natural%2Ccomes+naturally&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=18&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ccomes%20natural%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ccomes%20naturally%3B%2Cc0B%2Ccomes%20natural%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ccomes%20naturally%3B%2Cc0

@jayles - well, it's definite that people don't use it, but it would have been nice to know why. I presume that's where your original question came from; I 'll have a look at it next time I'm in the office. But if they say C is correct, are they saying the A and D are incorrect? Is there perhaps more context?

@ps.nikki - Jennifer showed the "formal correct" punctuation (I'll go with Jasper on that - when you're writing informally, you can do what you like), but it's necessary to know the difference between (coordinating) conjunctions - 'so, but' etc and (conjunctive) adverbs - 'therefore, thus, however' etc - a good dictionary will tell you. So to build on what Jasper said:

Clause + comma + coordinating conjunction + clause (neutral)
- I ate a hamburger, so I am full.

Clause + semicolon + conjunctive adverb + comma + clause (more formal)
- Hamburgers are fattening; therefore / thus they should be eaten in moderation.

or

Sentence + full stop + conjunctive adverb + comma + clause
- Hamburgers are very fattening. Therefore /Thus they should be eaten in moderation.

Incidentally both 'therefore' and 'thus' are now quite often used after 'and' and without a semicolon.The first example is from Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, the second from Oxford Dictionaries Online:

'He is the eldest son and thus heir to the title'
'He was injured and therefore unable to play'

Oxford Dictionaries Online also gives an example of 'thus' without semicolon or following comma, where it's followed by a participle rather than a full clause with subject and finite verb.

Burke knocked out Byrne, thus becoming champion

Personally I go by how long a pause sounds right, rather than by rigid rules. If you wouldn't pause in speech, don't use any punctuation. And use a comma where you'd normally pause briefly. Those last two sentences follow that principle, but also follow the formal "rule" - subordinate clause + comma + main clause, main clause + subordinate clause (without comma). And if you want a longer pause go for a semicolon.

Unlike in some languages, in English there is usually a direct connection between pronunciation and speech patterns. One thing I have to do with my Polish students when they're reading is to get them to pause at commas. When they do, the text usually becomes easier to understand.

@jayles - I bow to your greater knowledge of OE and ME, and I accept that a/an came from OE for one - you can see the same thing in many languages - Freench, German, Spanish etc.

But I'm going to be a bit picky anyway, as I think the changes took place well before the time of your quotes - In the Chaucer example, surely 'oon' can only mean 'one' in today's language, we'd even stress 'one' - 'It went in one ear and out the other'.

In the two from Shakespeare 'an' precedes h, which was often silent in the past, which is why some people still talk of 'an historic event' .

My point was really about modern pronunciation. And while some people might stress 'an' as /æn/ or possibly as a stressed schwa /ən/, I don't think many people (in either BrE or AmE) would stress 'a' as /æn/, as Afzal was suggesting, but as /eɪ/.

@Afzal - I heard an announcer on BBC radio yesterday repeatedly pronouncing the indefinite article /eɪ/ when there was absolutely no need to stress it and a simple schwa would have been more appropriate. I imagine this is that sort of thing that annoyed Alistair Cooke, not pronouncing a properly stressed 'a' as /eɪ/.

For me, A definitely expresses annoyance: I think we'd stress 'must'. D could go either way, depending on whether we stress 'have'. C is fairly neutral for me, simply asking about a fact.

Although a Brit getting on in years who sometimes uses 1st person shall interchangeably with will - 'We shall just have to see, won't we?' - B doesn't seem very natural to me - and I think the reason is that 'shall we' is usually used for making and asking for suggestions, not for questions of fact - 'Shall we go out tonight?', 'What shall we do next?'.

Incidentally, in the whole of the web, Google only finds 5 examples of 'Shall we have to have', one of which is this page. The other three get millions, although C gets about half of A and D.

Whether it's dreadful or not is a personal issue, and once I got used to it it sounded fine to me.

Perhaps it's unnecessary, as my dictionary gives exactly the same definition for mentee and protégé. However, the use of the word mentor has increased enormously in the last few years, as mentoring becomes popular in companies, so people preferring a linked pair is hardly surprising, á la employer/employee etc..

Employee and payee appeared a long time after the -er versions; I wonder if there were objections to them at the same time.

I might suggest a possible difference between protégé(e) and mentee - a protégé(e) is usually chosen by the mentor, for example a famous musician might take an aspiring youngster under their wing - that person becomes their protégé(e). But in mentoring within companies, new employees are often assigned to mentors, the mentors don't choose them, so perhaps mentee is more appropriate in those circumstances.

@jayles - unfortunately this is one of those examples where Google Books is talking nonsense. It says 1913, but look at that cover: that's never 1913. What's more it refers to some text or other from 1982. I'm very distrustful about the dates they give, especially when I can't look inside the book. It's got one from the US Code listed as 1959, for example, which turns out to be a from 2006, for example.

There's a possible example from 1958 (but I'm doubtful), and a definite from 1974 - Research Issues in the Employment of Women.

@jayles - Sorry, I regret parts of that last comment. It didn't come out the way I intended, and I certainly don't want to start WWIII with you. So, sorry again and please try an ignore my crassness.

@jayles - Language is never worth starting WWIII over, regardless of whether things were the same or not in OE or ME (I can't quite see the relevance of that comment, except to fly the Anglish flag) :). But we can still have our little discussions, can't we? Otherwise whither PITE?

@Afzal - I think you'll find that Cooke's complaint about the use of /eɪ/ (AY) was when the unstressed form /ə/ (UH) was more appropriate, regarding it as an affectation. I'd be very surprised if he pronounced the strong form of a as /æ/ as in PAN.

Incidentally, Cooke was on the panel of the American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style, which says that stressed a is pronounced ā, while stressed an is pronounced ă.

It would be so much easier if everyone just used the IPA, but the Free Dictionary gives ā as being pronounced as in pay, and ă as being pronounced as in pat.