ByronBlack":3dpdi0f3 said:
No offense intended, but American's have butchered the english language so it's almost un-recognisable so I find your below statement abit of pot calling the kettle black: (in a good humoured way)
1. I think that you meant "Americans," not "American's." The apostrophe should only be used to indicate the possessive. Unless the English have changed that rule of thumb!
2. That would be "the English language," not "the english language."
3. "Unrecognizable" or "unrecognisable" are acceptable spellings, but the hyphen is misplaced.
4. The phrase is "the pot calling the kettle black." "A bit of pot" is something that you might buy in the back room of a nightclub.
ByronBlack":3dpdi0f3 said:
While i'm on the subject, there's two phrases that i've noticed Americans using a lot and it's always baffled me as it makes no sense; I wonder if you can shed some light on:
5. We capitalize "I" ("I'm" and "I've") in the States -- have the British put an end to this quaint practice?
6. "There's two phrases" should be "there are two phrases." This was interesting to me. "There's two phrases" sounds like something I heard in Pennsylvania.
7. There should be a comma before "and it's always baffled me."
My point is, Americans (no apostrophe) do not have a monopoly on butchering the English (capital E) language. I may be a guest on this forum, but its no reason to insult me and millions of others who may or may not adhere to prescriptive grammar as written by an Englishman.
Perhaps my original point needs to be explained. It seems that our dear Mr. Grimsdale used the term "opinionated" to describe himself, apparently ignoring the negative definition of the term. My statement about "ignoring tradition" refered to his blanket generalization about "gurus." I did not intend this to be about which side of the Atlantic one splashes.
The irony here is that I am not a big fan of prescriptive grammar (or more generally, prescriptive linguistics). However, in my field of research, I deal with it all the time, as many Germans assume that their form of the language is superior to that which is spoken and written in Austria, rather than accepting the differences, or even understanding, from the viewpoint of historical linguistics, how many of the supposed "butcherings" are actually antiquated forms, or at the very least, regional expressions that demonstrate that these languages are alive and have not yet been killed off by grammarians. From a sociolinguistic point of view, the little phrases that sound "wrong" to your ears are actually just as logical as anything that has managed to get into the prescriptivists' books.
All of this is on an entirely different level than Jacob Grimsdale's self-assessment that he is "opinionated." I don't think that he actually meant what he said, but what he said rang very, very true!
-Andy
:wink:
