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We are equating that after years of education, with the subject of English (albeit American English) being a core class for EVERY YEAR of attendance, and with s
by silverbax88 15y ago
We are equating that after years of education, with the subject of English (albeit American English) being a core class for EVERY YEAR of attendance, and with spell checkers on most forum communities, that if someone still goes out of their way to transpose "lose" with "loose", then, yes, they are probably an idiot.
- clstrfckr 15y ago*then
- silverbax88 15y agoupvoted for calling me on my BS
- darklajid 15y agoI know this is not appropriate, but it made me laugh so hard. I'm trying to write as correct as I can, but the GP just proved that these mistakes happen to everyone, even the people that think that it might make sense. What about non-native speakers? Their point might be valuable, the participation in a discussion really help- and meaningful, but still - these now/know, there/their, you're/your mistakes are common. And not an indication of intelligence. Edit: Just to be sure here and kind of answering the posts below: Guys, I'm a non-native speaker as well (in fact, my accent is terrible. I try to write as decent as possible, but that's a different thing). So - my data point, without any backing but my past experience, is that this is indeed an error that non-native speakers do just as well. I didn't want to imply that non-native speakers are idiots per se according to the criteria of this blog.
- argv_empty 15y agoThese are not mistakes I typically see from non-native speakers. (YMMV)
- snitko 15y agoFor non-native speakers these captchas would be easy. These are very basic things we tend to learn very well when we first start learning english.
- StavrosK 15y agoI will agree with the others. Non-native speakers (such as myself) tend to pronounce the words more carefully, thus they don't confuse them as often. In my head, "then" and "than" sound totally different. Same with "they're", "their", and "there", "loose" and "lose", etc.
- darklajid 15y agoInteresting. I kind of replied to the first line in an edit above, but the second one intrigues me. Probably this just proves that my accent is crap, but for me 'then' and 'than' sound about ~the same~, ditto for 'their'/'there' and 'loose'/'lose'. Again - probably I'm just missing something here. Improving my spoken English is definitely on the list of things I want to do..
- StavrosK 15y agoMaybe it depends on where you're from? In my Greek head-accent "e" and "a" are very different. Same with "their" and "there" (the-ir, the-r). When I speak, of course, they sound identical, but my spoken accent is not the accent I think in.
- cycojesus 15y agoI don't think it's a question of sound. (I'm french) 'they're', 'their' and 'there' sound the same (spoken or in my head), but their meaning has nothing in common so I never mistake one for another. How you acquire a language plays here. I learned english fully conscious of what I was doing rather than my organic absorption of french.
- StavrosK 15y agoOh, of course. I'm just saying that the most common reason for conflation (the fact that they're homophones) doesn't exist for me.
- erikpukinskis 15y agoFYI, you write "correctly". The only thing, grammatically, that you can do "correct" is "come correct", but that's an idiom.
- darklajid 15y agoThanks for the correction. I should've caught that.. You just triggered an image of my first english teacher. 'To be plus adjective, adjective plus noun, verb plus adverb' was her favorite. ;)
- eavc 15y agoIs 'correct' even working as an adverb in that case, or is it more like "come ready" or "come hungry"?
- klipt 15y agoUsing adjectives as adverbs is incorrect in British English, but extremely common in American English. For example: "I'm doing good" instead of "I'm doing well" "He eats real fast" instead of "He eats really quickly" If enough people speak that way, I don't think you can call it "wrong" so much as a dialect in its own right.
- erikpukinskis 15y agoI wouldn't correct a native speaker. I was just offering, in case they cared. Fast and good are de facto adverbs. Maybe in some American dialects it's common to use other adjectives as adverbs, but not in mine. Agree that language changes.
- cromulent 15y agoAn excellent example of Muphry's Law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphrys_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphrys_law
- yequalsx 15y ago"Then" is correct, isn't it? The statement is an if-then statement. Am I wrong?
- markokocic 15y ago> they are probably an idiot. Did you mean "He is probably an idiot." or "They are probably idiots."?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- StavrosK 15y agoNeither: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
- Symmetry 15y agoI didn't downvote you myself, but the use of the singular 'they' to denote someone of unknown gender has been in use in English since at least the time of Shakespeare (he used it in places). There was a movement a long time ago to try to make English more like Latin, removing things like the plural they, the split infinitive and so on. Nowadays, with Latin no longer regarded as the highest form of language we really don't have any reason to look down on traditional usage.
- derleth 15y agoExcept the people who create those captchas will, by Murphy's Law or similar, be precisely the people most opposed to split infinitives, ending sentences with prepositions, and other matters of usage that are objectively correct grammatically but are historically declasse (and is leaving out the acute accents in that word a misspelling in English?).
- markokocic 15y agoThanks. It's good to know that this usage is correct. However, it's also good to know that it might not be safe to use it in language test because of the dispute ;)
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- stcredzero 15y agoA part of this phenomenon, is that those of middle age or greater miss the days when there was good quality control over widely published text. The Internet has democratized widely published writing. There is no quality control over comments, except through communities. At the same time, there are large populations who place are undereducated and place little value on education, while they do prize the ability to get a rise out of others. An unfortunate consequence of this: reading more used to make me feel smarter and I'd sound more literate. Nowadays, through reading reading I tend to absorb things like "loose" for "lose" and other atrocious sounding quirks. There is a clear market for quality text, and there is power in being the provider of it.
- damoncali 15y agoMaybe they're smart, but suck at spelling. Not everyone is wired the same.