English Grammar (Scepticalscribe?)

[rhett7660]

Don't feel bad about that. "Who" and "Whom" continue to challenge people who've spoken English since infancy; and more than a few people who actually teach English at the University level.

I will note that, for all its popularity as a de facto universal language, English can be an extremely complicated and often baffling language. Even for the native speaker. English is one of very few languages where you can have crossword puzzles that depend on a person's understanding and knowledge of a word's multiple meanings. For instance a recent NYT Crossword clue: "Figure in a dark suit", and its correct answer: "Spade" depend on the solver knowing that one of the many meanings of the word "Suit" (in addition to a set of clothing; a verb meaning to agree with or be appropriate to; and a legal action) - is that of a subset of a deck of playing cards. And that "Spade" - in addition to referring to a digging tool can also refer to a type of playing card.

How non-native English speakers deal with this, I don't know. I can tell you that German and French crosswords are, by comparison, relatively tame affairs, more on the lines of trivia quizzes.

On the other hand, English is a language that dispenses, almost entirely, with the baffling gendering of nouns that makes a German Mädchen (girl) neuter or a French wardrobe (garde-robe) feminine.

I applaud anyone who works to improve their English grammar.

I think I have been reading to many comic books lately, because the first thing I thought of was "Batman".

 

[0388631]

CMoS has always been my go-to.

 

[vrDrew]

This thread got me thinking a bit about my own on-line grammar. I like to think its pretty good, but I'm aware I make my share of typos and such. I did a bit of checking, and installed (today) Grammarly . It's an extension that works with your computer or phone, and it analyzes your grammar, spelling, etc.

I'm usually pretty skeptical of things like this. But it does seem to work pretty well on my iMac. It works in Safari and most browsers and other social media apps. The free version just corrects basic grammatical mistakes - case agreements, mis-spellings, and misused words (it just caught one - I put a hyphen in "misused"). The Advanced version sounds good. But it's a bit pricey at more than $10 a month. Apparently, it checks sentence and paragraph structure and a lot more.

I hope this doesn't come across as spammy. It's not. Try out the free version (only takes a couple minutes to install.) It's already improved my online, and offline, writing quite a bit. At least from a grammatical and punctuation standpoint.

 

[Gregg2]

At least from a grammatical and punctuation standpoint.

That's not a sentence. (just sayin'...)[this is a grammar thread after all]

 

[yaxomoxay]

I have received "Eats Shoots and Leaves," while I am almost done with "Woe is I."

I dedicate this video to everyone on this thread:

 

[ThisBougieLife]

How non-native English speakers deal with this, I don't know. I can tell you that German and French crosswords are, by comparison, relatively tame affairs, more on the lines of trivia quizzes.

Not to mention English orthography. What other language allows for the same complexity of homophones and homonyms?

I have a feeling "spelling bees" in other languages would be much simpler or even non-existent. In languages like Finnish, there's really only one possible way to spell any given sequence of sounds. That's unthinkable in English.

 

[yaxomoxay]

I have a feeling "spelling bees" in other languages would be much simpler or even non-existent. In languages like Finnish, there's really only one possible way to spell any given sequence of sounds. That's unthinkable in English.

Non existant in Italian. There are very few exceptions, but how you write a word is how to read it. There's no such thing as read/read, lead/lead/led, or Arkansas/Arkansas

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Not to mention English orthography. What other language allows for the same complexity of homophones and homonyms?

I have a feeling "spelling bees" in other languages would be much simpler or even non-existent. In languages like Finnish, there's really only one possible way to spell any given sequence of sounds. That's unthinkable in English.

Non existant in Italian. There are very few exceptions, but how you write a word is how to read it. There's no such thing as read/read, lead/lead/led, or Arkansas/Arkansas

There are two reasons for this: One was that as once printing became popular and the reading of printed material became widespread, language became standardised, and thus, spelling became standardised, too, with words written in an agreed form.

This meant that the written word had to look the same wherever the material was read, so that the reader could understand what was meant.

Precisely because printing involved putting words (permanently) into writing, a disconnect arose between the written and spoken word, because, even from the very beginning of a standardised spelling, some regional accents and pronunciations differed radically from their written form (which, not unnaturally, took its main elements and features from English as spoken in, or around, London).

Secondly, how words are spoken changes over time, while how they are written tends to stay the same.

So, part of the reason for this complexity of homophones and homonyms is that the actual pronunciation of some words has changed considerably over a few centuries (there is a lot of interesting stuff written on what is described in the history of the English language as 'the Great Vowel Shift') and thus, the spelling no longer reflects how the word is pronounced - whereas it did once.