Their they go to there lair

[Wombat]

Sorry chuck. Alec is correct. "Its/It's" is a unique case in our language.

GrammAr (and spelling, and question marks even, heh) does not stop the development of a language. It advances it. There's no reason that the language in question cannot evolve. Beautiful, beautiful things can be written, and proper grammar can help better convey the meaning.

P.S. Grammar and brevity are not mutually exclusive.

[cjolley]

It's not!
hmmm.....
I'll ask my sister. She has a Masters in, well... grammar.
I don't know what the degree is called.
chuck

PS Good God! I'm surounded by English Majors!
PPS The parenthetical addition does not change the use of does -vs- do?
PPPS I'm used to having the compiler check my syntax & grammar. How about something like that for English?

[HollyBerri]

Afaic, it's/its is just a PITA.

I <u>think</u> that it goes mostly like this:

• "It is wrong"---it's wrong.
• The long, dripping, snout of the Swamp Monster ---its snout.

Actually, I was about to type "it's snout" but looking at it, it appeared completely wrong. Don't take my word for anything, though-- despite the fact that I am/was an English major, learning Dutch has reminded me just how much gramm<u>a</u>r I no longer remember.

It does make me more flexible about the error-prone posting I see around here lately, though

Oh, and Alec, I believe that "possessive article" is completely correct.

-------------------
Holly

PS: My grammar is fine, but my UBB is shot all to hell....

[This message has been edited by HollyBerri (edited 18 May 2001).]

[Jorden]

First off Chuck, Alec and Wombat are right as far as I know.

It is not a human, but an animal or object.
Its cage means an animal's cage.
I hate to say it, but it's wrong what you say!
It's there is an abbreviation of it and is

I'll leave this to the persons who are better in English or Amerilish than I am
<hr>
The Pit.... Now, where should I start?
"Grammer is a invention. Grammer stops the development of language."
a invention? Is that your way of enhancing the English language? One that has been longer on this earth than you have been, and so you have a good way to kill it? Ever heard of putting an N before any word that sounds to start with an a, e, i and an o?? Thinking where the u and y went to? J-uu, Wh-y phonetic.

"try Satanic versus or whatever it is called" Satanic versus whom? You might mean the Satanic verses???
"and you'll fall asleep at the first page or if not the 2nd page", you sure did, didn't you?
"Why have a paragraph of correct grammer when you can say it one sentance. "
Why try grammar when you can't even spell grammar or sentence right?

If your firewall breaks up the MURC spell-checker, why not reach for a dictionary? Like we all do, when we don't know for sure !!

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">The english lang is so brilliant why do we pronounce Derby Darby. Scone, scon or Scone.
When you say there or their it sounds the same so why have different spellings.</font>

Looks like I hit you at your heart without mentioning your name, but you jumped anyway

Okay, why Derby is Darby and Scone Skoon is because that's your heritage. A couple of centuries of English.
Why say there and their when it sounds the same? You might SAY it the same, but when you write it, it has different meanings.
If you ever want to get a job, you might want to know what the difference is, as there is even a difference in pronounciation.

Or would something like I write the rites that right my wrongs sound and show better for you if I wrote I rite the rites that rite my rongs?

Jord.

[cjolley]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by cjolley:
It's not!
hmmm.....
</font>

I meant this as a pun
I now am more on Alec's side.
Though, I would like to check with my sister.
(She will say that both are right, what with the new theories of English & all)
The great flexibility of English is it's most powerfull trait.
You can say almost anything ten different ways with ten small differences in meaning or tone.
chuck



[This message has been edited by cjolley (edited 18 May 2001).]

[Sasq]

From the Grammar book
" its and it's
These two words are often confused by native speakers of English as well as by foreign learners.

Its is a possessive word (like my, your).
Every country has its traditions (NOT it's traditions)

it's is the contracted form of it is or it has.
It's raining again. (NOT its raining again)
Have your seen my camera? It's disappeared. (NOT Its disappeared)"

Taken from my teachers grammar book. It helps me teach proper like, it does

Dan

[This message has been edited by Sasq (edited 18 May 2001).]

[KvHagedorn]

Thank God Holly posted something here so I could get my sanity back. I don't know if you guys are just kidding around or not, but there are so many people who truly are poor grammarians that your humor is lost on me. When I see crap like that, any content that might be there loses all value. I simply assume that the writer is a <u>MORON</u>, and discount anything that he says accordingly. So, I believe, do most people. If you want people to think you are stupid, go ahead and continue to write poorly. If not, get your lazy asses in gear and learn!

Jorden's English is almost always perfect, and it's not even his primary language. Maggi and many others here from northern Europe also seem to be more adept at English than a lot of the native speakers here. It's really very sad. No wonder Europeans often think we are sub-intelligent. If you can't use your own native language worth a damn you should be ashamed of yourselves, not laughing it off like it's unimportant. Certain elements of American culture are to blame for this attitude, but I won't get into that. It's just pathetic that anyone thinks this is trivial.

Maybe I'm wrong... maybe these many Americans aren't just lazy. Maybe they really <u>are</u> stupid. If so, I apologize to anyone I may have improperly categorized.

By the way, YES... this was meant to offend and shame anyone for whom the shoe fits. If it angers you, maybe you should just go live in a zoo.

[Jorden]

Thanks KvH. I take your compliment as it is

Jord.

[HollyBerri]

Gee, KvH... normally I love compliments, but I'm not at all sure I want to be associated with your tirade--whether or not I agree with any or all of it.

Now, I'd be a total fool to come on these forums and say that Americans are by nature stupid.

But I will say that growing up in America does teach one to not see things in such black-and-white terms as you do...

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">When I see crap like that, any content that might be there loses all value. I simply assume that the writer is a <u>MORON</u>, and discount anything that he says accordingly.</font>

This is not a productive attitude in America. Think about it:

• Dan Quayle couldn't spell (or speak), yet was Vice-President.
• Donald Trump once said on national TV that if he was reincarnated he wanted to come back as an underprivileged African-American man, because they had the most advantages.
• Mike Tyson is dumb as a bag of rocks.
• Brooke Shields once said--in front of a Congressional hearing, held to determine her fitness to appear in an anti-smoking public service announcement after being in movies like "Pretty Baby" and "The Blue Lagoon"-- that she was an appropriate role model for teens against smoking because she was a teen, and she was against smoking. She then said she was against smoking because smoking can kill you...and if you're killed, you lose an important part of your life. Yes, really. I personally am still waiting to find out the unimportant part of your life you have left.... Yet she went to Princeton University, the second highest Ivy League college in the country after Harvard. I went there, too-- you can imagine why I left, with people like that filling up the joint.

My point is that all these people would be ignored by you, but on the other hand, they all have more money and/or power than most Americans will ever see. So they cannot be ignored, and that changes people's perspective on the relative importance of seeming (or in fact being) intelligent.

It's not really all that necessary much of the time. "Clever" is much more useful, overall.

---------------------------
Holly

[cjolley]

It's very difficult to get which of the its', its and it's, it is, isn't it.
chuck

PS Dave, zzzzzz.......


[This message has been edited by cjolley (edited 19 May 2001).]

[Pace]

I usually try to make it legible, and only very rarely use accidental colloquialisms (e.g. I used "summat" instead of "something" in IRC earlier).

Another thing that has been mentioned, is not just the bad grammar, but pointless abbreviations. And by pointless I mean that it may be quicker to type the first time, but not when people don't understand what you meant by it!

With the boom in SMS/text messages for mobile phones in the UK, there has been a great fascination in shortening every possible word and phrase known to man! sth, lol, ur, 4u, 2b etc - all coming more and more into messages. While 'lol' is obviously very popular (though I don't use it, I'm more a 'hehe' man ), something's like "sth" is stupid! My friend sent this message

Can I ask sth?

My reply was

Who is sth?

For anyone who doesn't know, sth is short for 'something' - so she was wanting to ask me something!

And what makes it more annoying is when there is no need to shorten the word except for laziness, there seems to be a craze to get the messages under 10 characters, never mind the standard 160 that are allowed!

Howe'er, on occasion, ah kin drap intae a richt scots slang, in there's a wee chance ye'll ken whit ah'm oan aboot, ye widnae if yer nae tae sare o' the talk, ne'er mind yon weird slang a ken!

But that's just to see if there's any Scots, or anyone who fancies tryin' to work it out

It shouldn't be too hard to native speakers I guess, but maybe having English as a second language may cause a few problems (tho' no tae Jord, as he ken's whit ken means!).

And, btw (pointless TLA? Or two? ), what primary English speakers can speak another language fluently? I presume dZeus can count himself in that category, but that's coz (:lookeyes: ) he's living in another country I couldn't cope in a country on my own I think, but I know "Hello, how are you?" in a few languages! Shame I don't understand 99% of the responses

P.

[cbman]

Taking this thread off topic, I have a question for the germanic populous of the forum?

Way back in public school I asked the languages teacher if I could learn german instead of french.

She replied, "No. You may not. You must have french as a second language."

I then proceeded to ask how hard it was to learn german.

She replied, "Not very, all they do if they don't have a word is to string together a descpition of the item in question."

I doubt very much this is the case.. but sometimes I see german words in books that remind me of this.

Now.. I don't know hardly any german so I could be way wrong.. so here is my little example.

Volks = People
Wagen = Wheeled Vehicle

Volkswagen = People's Vehicle



I wonder how far off I am...

[Gurm]

The grammar of the average American (and everyone else who uses English, I'm afraid) is absolutely atrocious.

Their spelling isn't great, either.

It's sad, really.

- Gurm

------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[KvHagedorn]

Well, Holly, that was one of those elements of American culture I was talking about. Kids see someone like Brooke Shields being stupid and think that somehow they too can be millionaires without lifting a single brain cell. Brooke got into Princeton because she was Brooke and wanted to go (also possibly because someone threw some money at the university.) I didn't know you had gone to Princeton. You are about her age.. did you know her? And was she really this stupid, or was she flustered because she was sitting in front of Congress?

Anyway, yes, for the most part I do ignore these people. The problem is not me, but the masses that do NOT ignore them. There is a very serious problem with our society when stupidity and crime ("I'm a rich and powerful Columbian druglord") are seen as not being such bad things at all. Most people are not in a position to be Brooke Shields or a Columbian druglord (not that they would want to be if their priorities were straight), so if they want a decent job in the real world, they really ought to pay some attention to their education. Parents and teachers used to have some say in bringing kids back to reality, but sadly, they wuss out now and don't do their jobs. Willful ignorance has become more and more acceptable, for which attitude I really have more scorn than I can possibly communicate here.

By the way... the Dan Quale potato(e) issue is an interesting one. You knew that the word had been misspelled on the flash card that he was using, didn't you? Now I wonder how that could have happened.. could there have been a teacher who was a very ardent Democrat who had access to those flash cards and altered that one? Or perhaps the teacher was convinced by the rival campaign to do this? I'm not sure what happened, but a misspelling on a spelling flashcard seems very suspicious to me, especially when it was one of the very few cards the vice presidential candidate used in that scenario. Granted, he should have paid more attention there.. they really got him.

[Liquid Snake]

Actually, during the day, it seems I make a lot of typos. But, at 3AM, my spelling is actually better, but my grammar becomes a lot worse!

(Gee, I post and then see three new posts ahead of me!)
I think KvH is right, in that the kids today see these people, and think that being "cool" like them will make them rich and famous. I myself try to ignore these types of people as well.

[This message has been edited by Liquid Snake (edited 19 May 2001).]