Perhaps they meant..................Garretson Beekman "Garry" Trudeau
You know, Doonesbury.
No wonder that guy turned out weird.?ÿ Should have qualified himself for the Orphan's Picnic by doing in the parents who might just have well named him Sue.
What does an elevator do? What does a jack do? Or a hoist? None of them work in the opposite direction. Except maybe crane. I would never use it like that, but in my weird head I could imagine "craning" something in a downwards motion.
"Canada Closes Country to Non-citizens, Trudeau"
That's rather harsh - and non-Canadian - not letting the Prime Minister in.?ÿ
Another example of why choice of punctuation is important.
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As a non-American, I can't get my head around the word "ain't". It started off life as a contraction of "are" and "not". That's easy. I get that. "Aren't"
But now the word "are" is gone and has been replaced with an "ai"; which is merely a grunt and not a word.
That's my first gripe with it.
My second gripe is the fact that as a replacement for the word "aren't", it's not even used correctly:
"You ain't" = You are not. (Fine.)
"We ain't" = We are not. (Fine.)
"I ain't" = I are not. (Nope. Never.)
I can also say that I am OK with you guys using a "z" (that would be a "zed" and not a "zee" thank you very much) as opposed to an "s". I've heard that it is one of the very few examples of the English language evolving. I never spell "realise" with a "z", but I can tolerate dialect difference in this instance because it makes sense. "Soft s" vs "Hard s". I get it.
I do, however, have a bit of an issue with your lack of "u" in colour, honour. labour, etc. "Color" and "honor" would indicate that the first and seconds vowel have the same sound. But they don't.
She offered her honour, so I honoured her offer. For the rest of the night I was on her and off her.
And whose idea was it to take the "i" out of "aluminium"? Titanium, magnesium and uranium are feeling jealous.
One that I would like to add as an Australian is this: "Eachother" vs "Each other". It's something that I learned in school and still use religiously. We officially speak British English in Oz, but "eachother" is a word that is uniquely ours apparently.
"John and I spoke to eachother on the phone."
"I handed a copy of the document to John, as well as each other person in the room."
They are different concepts.
But you should never listen to an Aussie speak. We can't pronounce the letter "r" unless it comes directly after a consonant or at the beginning of a word, which means we say:
"I went to the docta with my motha, my fatha, my brotha and my sista."
We're shocking. Saffas (South Africans) and Kiwis (New Zealanders) do it as well.
Ain't that the truth..........Are not that the truth.......
"A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences..."
I adhered to this practice through high school, and never could get an "A" on a paper because I could not make it "x" number of pages long. My Freshman English professor in college taught me how to be verbose, and to fill my writing with essentially meaningless drivel. After that I never created a paper that was too short, and never received anything other than an "A". Thank you Dr. Johnson...
?ÿand Kiwis (New Zealanders) do it as well
Only some.
The south of the South Island was settled by the Scots.
Down there, you can still hear a rolling R in the locals' speach.
It is still noticeable around the towns of Gore (pronounced goRRRRe) and Invergargill (inveRRRRcaRRRRgill)
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I have a question then about the Scot influence to the language.
The Scot and Irish historically had no "yes" or "no" words. A question like "Did you got to work?" would be answered "I did" or "I did na'". Now as modern media has blurred our speech, words like Aye or Nah have become used and one might hear (particularly in Ulster) "Did you go to work?" answered by "I did, Aye" or "Na. I did na' ".
Do you hear similar patterns in the south?
Do you hear similar patterns in the south?
Aye, for sure.
It is most noticable in the vocabulary.
You will hear words like 'wee'; 'punnet'; 'crib' that are not used elsewhere
And up North the Maori language has more influence - 'eh', 'kai'
The global spread of multi-media, TV in particular, is changing the way we speak - kiwis today sound much more american than before, 'cookie'; 'fries'; 'vacation' for example.
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And whose idea was it to take the "i" out of "aluminium"? Titanium, magnesium and uranium are feeling jealous.
My soldering ability was terrible, but a few years ago I went to youtube and found many great videos on how to do it, so now I'm ok. However Most of the vids were from USA and Canada and the pronunciation/spelling "sodder" really got up my snorkel (it still does), so much so that I went to the www to get proof of wrong, wrong, wrong. However, there's a logical explanation of how it came to be and how it is indeed correct (and similarly for aluminum).
Wee is my favorite Scot adjective. I use it here in the US as often as I can to keep it alive.
Here be an excerpt from a fine Scot poem by Robert Burns; To A Mouse:
Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a pannic's in thy breastie!
Our friend Mr. Burns left us ower early he did. 😉
The one that gets me is: "Next ___day"
It is used in a conversation on Tuesday:
Me Surveyor: "Let's meet onsite on Monday."?ÿ
Client: "Ok, next Monday."
Me Surveyor: "This coming Monday, not the Next Monday."
Client: "Yeah, next Monday!"
Me Surveyor: "The Monday of next week. This coming Monday."
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@micheal-daubyn-2
Well, as an American-- I don't consider "ain't" to even be a word. You could call it slang, but slang is full of all kinds of ridiculous things... like "y'all". ???
There is definitely confusion over?ÿ this and one must be careful.?ÿ But I tend to read your example like the client.?ÿ The next time the calendar says it is Monday.
I did read a story about that flat earth lunatic who died during or after his steam rocket experiment.?ÿ From what I remember about it it seemed like maybe he was alive after the initial crash and then died from the internal injuries after being taken to a hospital.?ÿ In that case it's perfectly possible to die after crashing.
Nope, I watched the vid and he definitely was instantaneously killed upon impact.
"A YouGov survey...suggested last year that as many as one in six Americans are not entirely certain the world is round..."
?ÿHow many surveyors subscribe to this point of view, I wonder??ÿ
I would assert almost all.?ÿ Certainly everyday construction and boundary surveyors who either survey using local plane ground coordinates or State Plane (an artificial flat surface related to the sphere by a transform which is sorta accurate).?ÿ The only "surveyors" who deal with the roundness of the Earth are geodesists who think in Lat-Lon and deal with large scale surveying (thousands of miles or more).
I've rarely had to deal with the sphere, notably during 20+ mile high accuracy levelling where the N-S direction of the runs had to be corrected for the oblateness of Earth.?ÿ An unusual survey was where Lat-Lon was the deliverable for locating Deep Space antenna's fiducial centers?ÿ from monuments (pure GPS combined with sub mm accuracy terrestrial observations).?ÿ Turned out we found a 19cm error for the antenna's nadir point, which caused quite a stir and corrections for previous observations.
To state it all commercial land surveyors work in a flat earth scenario and somehow agree with the the flat earth people is accurate.
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"After further review of the finish of the Daytona 500, NASCAR has determined that the finish ended under caution."
Argggg. The race ended under caution. Or perhaps the race finish occured under caution. "The finish ended"???ÿ The finish is not a noun. Hey, I know it's NASCAR, and grammer isn't exactly the most important thing about it, but when you are supposed to be a professional writer......
"...The 64-year-old died after his homemade?ÿsteam-powered?ÿrocket crash?ÿlanded moments after takeoff..."
Never mind the bit about "crash landed" . Either you crash or you land. You don't crash land. But that horse left the barn generations ago. I'm talking about dying after crashing. He died when he crashed, not after. Saying he died after crashing makes it seem that he crashed, got out and walked around, then died. This is a common one - I see examples everyday.?ÿ ?ÿ"Bill passes house after vote.." "Trees blown over after windstorm" and so on. Lazy.
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This isn't American English. This is just bad grammar.
The overuse of the word "like" is my pet peeve.?ÿ
Like I agree, dude.
Like wow that's a bummer man 🙁
I can't vouch for Scottish Gaelic, but you are quite right that in the Irish language there is still no official "Yes" or "No". The kids in the Gaeltachtaí these days are using "Sea" for yes (from "Is ea") or "Níl" for no (from "Ni hea"). But these are just abbreviated forms of "it is" and "it isn't". They work, but they are slang. You get used to it pretty quickly though, once you figure out that they are not saying "Seo", which is the short form for "here". That always throws me at first when I am over there.
Having no official "Yes" or "No" means that you are supposed to answer in the negative or positive version of the question that was asked. "Did you go to the shops?" "To the shops did I go." (I can say those things in Irish, but I won't embarrass myself here by trying to spell them.) Personally, I think that this is where the old joke of the Irish being backwards comes from. The grammatical patterns in the sentence structure are backwards from an English point of view.
There is also no hello in any of the Gaelic languages. You say "Dia duit" (God at you), which is replied with "Dia Maire duit" (God and Mary at you). There are a lot of fundamental things missing in Gaelic. It's also extremely difficult to curse in Gaelic. The words simply aren't (ain't) there.
As someone who can speak (some) Irish and who learned the Ulster dialect from my grandparents as a boy, I have always been fascinated by the differences between the Australian and New Zealand accents in English- the major difference being the vowels. That's really interesting, because in the larger Gaelic languages (Scottish Gaelic and Irish) the main difference in the accents is also the vowels, and it is the exact same difference. As you know, the Scottish influence is much more prevalent in NZ due to the settlers while the Irish influence is much more prevalent in Australia due to the convicts, two thirds of whom were Irish. The differences in the Gaelic accents have filtered through into our English.
I also hear those exact same differences in the Canadian and American accents. It's all in the vowels. Again, Scottish people went to Canada, whereas the Irish tended to go to the USA.
Fascinatingly nerdy stuff.
