Miss spelled

[PeterSt]

In the "What is the 'Absolute sound' to you" thread we seem to have not only problems with that but also with our spelling. Me ahead of course.

 

Some started to explicitly quote spelling mistakes which of course contained mistakes again so now *that* is quoted and it can go on forever. Or for ever. It's almost a game. Meanwhile I myself try to learn from it which is not always easy because we're also dealing with English and American.

 

because native speakers in particular, and to some extent those who've learned it as a second language, will remember and use misspellings,

 

From the other thread I use this as an example, not because it contains mistakes, but because it contains a word which is too hard to guess right if you don't know - and already mentioned a couple of times in this post - it is about "miss". So obviously this is about missing (it) and how do I know that misstake (think miss-take) would be wrong. And so I used misstake a million times until I found that this was a mistake. Misspelling is a similar example but since missspelling looks a bit odd I would tend to write it as miss-spelled.

 

Hey, I'm actually only creating some text here so you can all see what's wrong with it and this will not only be about spelling mistakes but about wrong semantics just the same. Nobody can understand what I write anyway so it should be full of that.

 

Maybe this is not even fun because we had our fun to some extent already. But here is the latest from that other thread :

 

Similarly, Southerners also say, "IN-sur-ance", while Yankees say, "in-SUR-ance".

 

Insurance ? Ensurance ? The former. But I don't know because I just don't. But I can guess it and guess what ? Ensure man, ensure. Not insure. If you look it up like in here : assure/ensure/insure

you see that both ensure and insure are allowed for the same thing. Ensurance sadly does not exist (any more ... or anymore).

So you see, a lot is about how to derive it from something we understand, and next we go wrong after all.

 

Can we extend this thread a little to some extent ? Would be great to learn from.

 

Peter

[Paul R]

My native language is English, but I never understood English until I studied the French Language. French is, if anything, every bit as messy as English, but in a different way. So it is not surprising you and the other ESL folks have insights into the language that are fun to hear, and often surprising. At least to me they are surprising!

 

Polysemes and Heteronyms alone are enough to drive someone learning English as a second language mad. Then there are those Capitonyms and Synophones, darn them!

 

I think the favorite example of this is still "bow" which has something like 7 or 8 different meanings and three or four pronunciations?

[Audio_ELF]

Can people understand what's written? If yes good... If no; worry about your language use.

 

Oh and it's best if you're a pot; not to call the kettle black! Or to put it another way: if you live in a green house don't throw stones. Or perhaps just don't criticise other people's spelling cause your post may be no better (though spelling someone's name right is a good thing!)

[Allan F]

Can people understand what's written? If yes good... If no; worry about your language use.

 

Oh and it's best if you're a pot; not to call the kettle black! Or to put it another way: if you live in a green house don't throw stones. Or perhaps just don't criticise other people's spelling cause your post may be no better (though spelling someone's name right is a good thing!)

 

I don't know why the colour of your house should make any difference. But for some time it has been suggested that, if you live in a glass house, you shouldn't throw stones.

[StephenJK]

I don't know why the colour of your house should make any difference. But for some time it has been suggested that, if you live in a glass house, you shouldn't throw stones.

 

But if it was a greenhouse, it would be made of glass.

[Allan F]

But if it was a greenhouse, it would be made of glass.

 

Everyone knows that. But a green house is not a greenhouse.

[Jud]

Mis-spelling is similar to mis-take or mis-information (all are hyphenated to show the construction). The prefix "mis" provides the idea of error. So there is a spelling error; an error in "taking" (thinking you recognize) someone for another person, which then was generalized to apply to many sorts of errors; incorrect information; and so on.

 

The best resource I know of regarding the English language is the Oxford English Dictionary. I have the Compact Edition, which prints all the pages of the full edition in much-reduced form (two volumes instead of more than twenty) and includes a lighted magnifier for reading. It contains just about every word used in the various versions of English since approximately 700 A.D., with wonderful histories consisting in part of quotes using the word from contemporary sources down through the years to the present.

[Jud]

Just a little bit of a flavor of the OED online: English in use | Oxford English Dictionary

[audiventory]

Jud, thank you for link.

[sandyk]

Everyone knows that. But a green house is not a greenhouse.

 

Allan

This thread appears to be generating quite a lot of greenhouse gases !

It's not too often that you manage to catch out Eloise like that . (grin)

 

Regards

Alex

[PeterSt]

Mis-spelling is similar to mis-take or mis-information (all are hyphenated to show the construction). The prefix "mis" provides the idea of error. So there is a spelling error; an error in "taking" (thinking you recognize) someone for another person, which then was generalized to apply to many sorts of errors; incorrect information; and so on.

 

But you know Jud, you take so many things for granted that you forgot to explain what it is about.

To me, miss exists. Mis does not at all. And it doesn't. But as prefix it does and I can't guess that hence I don't see the reason why. Miss Spelled could exist in my "book". But when I hyphenate that I am wrong, like in miss-spelled. Or maybe not and you are wrong with mis-spelled. To me this looks "ridiculous" because mis does not exist.

 

It is not about this example but about the so many more things of which the logic seems to fail and since I never learned all the words of any langue, we must use rules. If we don't know the rules we use logic. And when that fails, well, all just fails.

 

I ensure you that you can be ensured to need an ensurance. That would be my logic, derived from the middle one which I know.

I assure you that you can be ensured to need an insurance is nothing I can guess from logic because all are about the exact same. Think of that. It just is. In Dutch : Ik verzeker je dat je er verzekerd van kan zijn dat je een verzekering nodig hebt. So this is how we make the mistakes.

 

Now back to the green house examples because I really love those.

[PeterSt]

This thread appears to be generating quite a lot of greenhouse gases !

 

Only after explicitly sorting out this one (which I only did to see whether it was wrong) I understand the message. Or not because Alex can be wrong. So greenhouse gases ? mwah. Greeshouse gasses yes.

Both coincidentally work out to the same (idea of Alex). But obviously it will not work out always like that. So without looking it up I just learnt from Alex's text that the plural of the noun "gas" is with one s. Not that I see the logic in this, but see my previous post. There already often *is* no logic, and so I take the gases as a noun for granted and happily use that next time myself.

Wrooooong.

[PeterSt]

worry about your language use.

 

Or usage ?

[PeterSt]

(though spelling someone's name right is a good thing!)

 

or : (though spelling someone's name correctly is a good thing!)

 

Not complaining about the "right" vs "correct", but I'd say it is correctly. Is this right ?

Nobody should answer Yes, because then right has to be rightly. I know, I feel the difference but I don't see where it is really (rules). So I change the sentence into :

(though spelling someone's name wrong is a good thing!)

This now even more challenges for the "ly" behind it. And so I would decide for the rightly and besides it obeys the rules in general. Still I am not 100% sure and thus better use correctly instead of rightly and now I feel confident it is okay.

 

You may not realize how much of a struggle is going on when you want to do it right. Yeah, sh*t, should be rightly for the same reason. So correctly then ? no, now I changed the message. Must be about the "it" in there.

 

Point is : I have no problems at all in reading/understanding such a thing. But in writing I obviously have and now without notice I changed the "message" as such and now English/American won't understand. So this is a nice one too : I will almost always understand (your writing) because of *not* knowing, while you won't understand (my writing) because me not knowing the exact same.

[PeterSt]

OffTopic alert.

 

Jud, thank you for link.

 

Here we have another example but it is in a different area;

I appreciate Yuri's attempts to make something of his English. It is also a challenge when we make something out of it. The biggest challenge however is to respond to him in semantics that *he* will understand (and I see one person in CA do that).

So with my poor English I try to talk to people from almost all the countries in the world, and many need to be approached very differently. This is not only about often explicitly being humble (and otherwise implicit humiliation) (Asia) but also about lacking phenomena like articles in Russian.

Here are my first two sentences in "Russian" :

 

Here we have other example but not same area;

I appreciate Yuri attempts to make some English. Is also challenge when we make something from.

 

This won't be correct all the way but it always needs the person to talk to you first to see how to do it. Of course this also depends on the person (and his knowledge of the language).

[Musicophile]

I personally struggle most with two issues in English:

 

1) when expressing myself, whether to use the UK English or American English terms. I've had people in London pubs joking at me when I asked for the restrooms whether I needed a nap, and asking for the loo in Los Angeles didn't get me very far either.

 

2) colloquialisms, especially sports expressions. Working for an American company, I've been several time asked to be the "Quarterback" of the team. I then always kindly explain to my American colleagues that I've never had the pleasure (?) of watching people with funny helmets jump at each other and so didn't really know what was expected from me. Baseball expressions are even worse, and there's so many from ballpark to home run. I've even started using some of them myself. But it is always good to remind Americans that while they may have a "World Series", there's probably 2.5 nations outside of the US watching this game, and that they may want to adapt their language in the international context. The Brits from my observation are less obsessed with sports expressions, when I have trouble understanding somebody there it's usually because of a thick Scottish accent, or the other extreme, somebody trying to show of his Oxbridge education and throw as many of the rarely used English language words (I'm always amazed how many words there are in English, and how few are used in real life).

[Jud]

Peter, and Musicophile to some extent, are running into the same problem: English, American English in particular, takes its words and rules from a larger variety of sources than most other languages. These rules (for spelling, sentence construction, etc.) freely contradict each other. Thus attempting to use logic is hopeless, as Peter has found. And trying to keep up with the new rush of words, phrases, and colloquialisms is impossible, as Musicophile knows. (Businesses love to use the concept of a team working toward a common goal, so plundering American sports for expressions is especially common.)

 

Perhaps the most basic set of contradictions is that between Germanic and Latinate words and constructions, "baked in" to the language when the English Saxons were conquered by the French Normans in 1066. Then words and expressions from all over the world were added during the English Age of Empire. Another round of this has occurred since World War II, as American culture and commerce have spread across the world, and have brought back the world's culture and commerce in return. At this point, there is virtually no rule of spelling or word construction for which you cannot demonstrate as many contradictions as examples where it is obeyed.

[Musicophile]

Overall, I'm not complaining. English is now the lingua franca, as were French (18th-19th century), Latin most of the time before, and maybe at some point we'll all rather speak Mandarin. At least it is rather easy to get to a usable level of English (while mastery will probably never be attained by any of us), so it clearly serves it purpose.

 

Where it really get's tricky, as PeterSt rightly pointed out, is that even if you master the words, the meaning may not always be the same. Here's an example for Dutch, but the same would work very well for German (same very direct communication style).

 

[Jud]

Yes, a friend back in college visited England one summer, and came back with the news that the word "quite" - which in American English means "especially," as in "quite good" - in England was used to dismiss the entirety of whatever you had just said, with a simple "Oh, quite."

[mav52]

What I have found from my travels abroad, What we say is somethings what others hear. An easy one; Aluminium. Over here (US) we say 'al-u-min-i-um'. British say 'aloom-i-num'.

 

Here we’ll run down a few choice British English words which baffle and bamboozle the American ear:

 

Chips

 

Food is a recurring topic of confusion for the US and UK. In Britain, chips refer to potatoes, cut into thick strips or wedges, usually at least 1-2cm thick, and fried in oil. Usually served wrapped in newspaper with salt and vinegar. In the US, chips are what the Brits call crisps: tiny, thin slices of potato friend or over-baked until they are slim and crunchy.

 

Pants

 

In the US, your pants are your trousers: what you wear over your legs. In the UK, pants are what you wear under your trousers (your knickers or underwear!). Also, ‘pants’ used colloquially can mean that something is a bit disappointing or dull: ‘that film was pants’ = that film was pretty bad.

 

Muppet

 

A muppet – and here refer to any cockney gangster film from London – is not a furry, talking puppet made by Jim Henson. No, that is the US version. In the UK (no doubt as a way of also making fun of the US version) a ‘muppet’ is a fool or an idiot – i.e. “don’t put your hand in the oven, you muppet!”

 

Blinder

 

A blinder is very positive, despite how it sounds. It is often used to refer to sport or performance – “he played a blinder”, “what a blinder”.

 

Quid

 

In British English, a quid is slang for a pound sterling – the British currency. Like the US, the UK has plenty of terms for money – but none of them are the same as the US. Dosh, cash, quid, bunce, bangers and mash (cockney rhyming slang = cash) all mean money.

 

Aubergine

 

Another foodie confusion: an aubergine is what the British call a large purple vegetable affectionately known in the US as an eggplant.

 

Banger

 

Banger is another fantastically British English word. It is perhaps best known for referring to a sausage – bangers and mash, a British classic dish, means sausages with mashed potato. But a banger can also be anything good, or particularly rousing. This is used especially in reference to songs – “that is a club banger!” means ‘this song gets a club bouncing/it’s a huge tune!’

 

Biscuits

 

More food-related foolishness. Biscuits in the US refer to a Southern foodstuff, usually made with corn and served with something called ‘gravy’ – a sloppy whitish sauce. In the UK, biscuits refer to everything US English calls cookies. From Rich Tea (a quite bland, smooth biscuit) to Pink Wafers (….they’re pink wafers) to Hobnobs (oaty, rough biscuits covered with chocolate), the British biscuit is to be loved and adored. Dunked in tea is the classic way to eat.

 

Bum

 

Another tricky word; in the US a bum usually refers to a homeless person or vagabond, someone with no fixed abode or job who is judged to be drifting. In the UK a ‘bum’ is slang for your bottom (!). We think it best not to confuse them!

 

Hard/solid

 

In British English, hard is a word with many meanings. It can refer, as its primary dictionary meaning, to a material which is solid and rigid – i.e. a hard brick wall. However, following this meaning it has also become popular slang. ‘Hard’ or ‘solid’ is used to refer to work which is difficult – i.e. ‘this maths homework is solid’; or it can also be used to refer to a person who is tough, not to be messed with – ‘that Vinnie Jones is hard’. One thing is for sure: don’t get in a fight with a ‘hard’ person.

 

Fancy

 

Two meanings here: if you use ‘fancy’ as an adjective (i.e. ‘that car is fancy’) it means posh, flashy. But if you use it as a verb in British English it is totally different: to fancy someone means to take a shine to them, to be interested in them romantically (i.e. “ooh I really fancy Brad Pitt”).

 

Knackered

 

In British English ‘knackered’ is slang for being tired. The origin of this phrase is not very nice – it comes from castrating horses, whose chopped-off testicles were known as ‘knackers’. Urgh! It’s a wonder this phrase has become so popular!

 

Grass

 

In the US grass is a noun. In the UK it is also a verb: to ‘grass’ on someone, or to ‘grass someone up’, means to tell on them, usually to an authority figure. And the person who ‘grasses’ is usually a friend – or at least someone you know. So, a friend in primary school can ‘grass’ on you to a teacher (“it was her who stole the chalk from the blackboard!!”); but it can also be very serious – a ‘supergrass’ can also be a politician, soldier or rebel who reveals secrets about a colleague for political gain.

 

Mug

 

In the UK, a mug has traditionally meant two things: a cup for your tea or hot drunk; or an idiot, a fool, someone who has been made to look stupid. In the US, a mug is usually a thug or hoodlum. In the US, to be mugged is to be robbed (by a mug, one assumes). In the UK, to be mugged is to be fooled. Yet the US meaning is also more common in Britain now

 

All I know visiting other countries does have its challenges if you want to communicate with someone.

[krass]

What I have found from my travels abroad, What we say is somethings what others hear. An easy one; Aluminium. Over here (US) we say 'al-u-min-i-um'. British say 'aloom-i-num'.

.

 

...mav52: I'm British and I think you have this one the wrong way round. We Brits say al-u-MIN-i-um

I'm not American, but I believe you say al-OOM-i-num

(capitals == emphasis)

 

This is also borne out by Wikipedia:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences

 

some way down you'll see the spellings as I describe above;

UK aluminium, US aluminum (missing the i)

 

mike

[Allan F]

...I think you have this one the wrong way round. We Brits say al-u-MIN-i-um..., but I believe you say al-OOM-i-num

 

+1

 

You are correct, Mike. As George Bernard Shaw said, "England and America are two countries separated by a common language".

[goldsdad]

Knackered

 

In British English ‘knackered’ is slang for being tired. The origin of this phrase is not very nice – it comes from castrating horses, whose chopped-off testicles were known as ‘knackers’. Urgh! It’s a wonder this phrase has become so popular!

 

I've always understood knackered, meaning tired, to be derived from "the knacker's" or "the knacker's yard", an abattoir where exhausted horses were slaughtered. "Knackers" meaning testicles has a different source - Google for further info.

[Allan F]

I've always understood knackered, meaning tired, to be derived from "the knacker's" or "the knacker's yard", an abattoir where exhausted horses were slaughtered. "Knackers" meaning testicles has a different source - Google for further info.

 

There are several different meanings for the word "knacker" or "knackers", depending on where it is used: Urban Dictionary: knacker

[goldsdad]

There are several different meanings for the word "knacker" or "knackers", depending on where it is used: Urban Dictionary: knacker

 

I was writing about the origin of the term "knackered" meaning tired, though.