Ethical question

[Sceadwian]

If you know it's actually a lot then you're 1 up on about 75% of the rest of the world as far as I know =)

 

[robertdean]

If you know it's actually a lot then you're 1 up on about 75% of the rest of the world as far as I know =)

I am usually good with grammer and proper word usage. My problem usually comes from spelling.

 

[Sceadwian]

Yer one up on me then =\

 

[tcmtech]

Ah the sceadwain School of grammar.

It starts with the difference between 'allot' and 'A lot'. Then rather fizzles out from there.

 

[Sceadwian]

There's nothing wrong with my grammar, when I decide to pay attention to it =P Which is seldom the case <snicker>
Two of my biggest pet peeves are alot being used when someone means a lot, and the other one is people that spell weird with an ie instead.
Then again I'm American and I spell color colour.

That stupid grammer rule I before E except after C doesn't work for weird... Cause well it's weird =)
And as far as using the u in colour I think it's more colourful =)

 

[Mikebits]

The i before e except after c rule often lets me down.

beige, cleidoic, codeine, conscience, deify, deity, deign,
dreidel, eider, eight, either, feign, feint, feisty,
foreign, forfeit, freight, gleization, gneiss, greige,
greisen, heifer, heigh-ho, height, heinous, heir, heist,
leitmotiv, neigh, neighbor, neither, peignoir, prescient,
rein, science, seiche, seidel, seine, seismic, seize, sheik,
society, sovereign, surfeit, teiid, veil, vein, weight,
weir, weird

caffeine, casein, codeine, deil (Scots, devil), disseize,
either, geisha, inveigle, keister (slang, buttocks),
keister, leisure, monteith, neither, obeisance,
phenolphthalein, phthalein, protein, seize, seizin, sheik

quoted from. AUE: Exceptions to the rule 'I before E except after C'

 

[Sceadwian]

I know, a rule with more exceptions than generalities. Sad.

 

[tcmtech]

I here ya barkin!
I am quite sure I took a few years of life out of more than one English teacher just on having the rules of how the English language works and why it has so many contradicting rules explained.

They would say I dont understand how it works. Yet to me if someone can repeatedly find and point out the problems with something in minute detail, Wouldn't that sort of show that just maybe they get it better than yourself?

I always have admitted that my spelling is poor and my punctuation is bad. I also come from a region where many of the old languages from the mixed heritages that make up my community still show influence as well.

The south has Tex Mex. We have dakodian skandagermian!
Thats Northern American/Canadian and Scandinavian/German underlying the primary American English language.

 

[Mikebits]

I think what makes the English language so confusing is that it is a borrowing language. The English language is a hodgepodge derivative of Germanic, Frankish, Latin, Greek, and I am sure many more. But I digress from the original post, so thyself should quench thy tongue

 

[Bobby Ironsights]

Unless it's patented.

nope, patents only protect against commercial exploitation, if you copy a patent for a doohickey, and then make said doohicky for personal use, but never sell it, no laws have been broken.

 

[Mr RB]

It's debatable whether patents are "law" anyway. If someone infringes a patent then the patent owner can start "law" proceedings to prosecute but the patent itself is little more than a proof of ownership, and that too is debatable and will also need to be proven on court.

So copying patented IP is not necessarily illegal, only if a court later rules that IP was stolen which would be the same case whether the patent existed or not (if the court rules that way).

And on the English language what ticks me off lately is the vast number of Americans on TV shows who say "assessory" when what they mean to say is "accessory". Even people here on Aussie TV shows are starting to say it... Do they say "assess" instead of "access" too? Or is the defect only limited to one form of the word?

 

[tcmtech]

And on the English language what ticks me off lately is the vast number of Americans on TV shows who say "assessory" when what they mean to say is "accessory". Even people here on Aussie TV shows are starting to say it... Do they say "assess" instead of "access" too? Or is the defect only limited to one form of the word?

So where do you think all those now silent letters in words and words pronounced differently than they are spelled originated from in the first place?

Poor language skills that got adopted by everyone over countless years, thats where!

 

[BeeBop]

Sorry robertdean, I really don't want to go off track but, I do think your question was well answered, and hope you don't mind. I always hated spelling! I have to work at it.

English has quite an interesting history. It also has the largest vocabulary of all languages.
Before 1360, the language of educated people in England was French. Before that it was Latin. English was spoken by the poor, and sounded more like Scandinavian.

Part of the reason the spelling is so !#@&%! is that we never had a dictionary until after Jonathan Swift's time (d.1745) Perhaps the most famous of his work was Gulliver's Travels. **broken link removed**

In 1755, Dr. Johnston Samuel Johnson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediatook the task of writing a dictionary and settling, once and for all, the way words would be spelled, upon himself. (in other words, although many books had been written by that time, there was no 'proper way' to spell, and it was causing quite the confusion. Swift, who was a right winger, had been quite angry, because the King had not established rules for the language, as had the French, Germans, Spanish... etc.)

Our grammar was derived from Latin by Bishop Lowth in about 1762. (He seems a 'staunch old cuss' to the likes of myself.) Unlike the spelling, which was proscriptive, the grammar was prescriptive. The ongoing debate over which language - the spoken, or the written - was the 'true' language, is interesting.

Not only have we borrowed words from other languages, but the words we borrowed, were borrowed back, then sometimes, re-borrowed. Although only about 15% of our words come from German, it is the 15% we use about 80% of the time.

Thanks for your patience.

 

[shokjok]

I see no issues with your plans. Twenty years ago, I wanted to re-design an Apple II+ with 4164 RAMs and 27128 EPROM. Now I plan to use my Apple II+ as a home control computer - yes, I kept it and it works to this day! I wrote a magazine inventory program entirely in 6502 code.