(no subject)
Although the Met Office predicted rain today my sinuses are insisting that there has been a weather change. Hopefully the rain will hold off
But the met office needs to spell-check and proof read. Thundeer indeed.
Speaking of spelling Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary is an amusing little tome that's full of spelling trivia. A fun lump of spelling trivia that's nothing as good as Eats Shoots and Leaves but has interesting bits and pieces, tho I don't quite appreciate the fact that he's lumping Irish English in with English English without including some proper examples of Irishisms. It could have done with a page explaining how Irish English sentence structure sometimes reflects Gaeilge. It has a page on testing your skill at determining the difference between "British" and "American" newspapers and one of the examples is "New Doping Rules Favour GAA Cold Sufferers". Somehow that single sentence screams "Irish", I dunno, the GAA mention kinda gives it away!
It's a legacy issue, it's hard to explain to my soon-to-be sister-in-law why that grates. Over 80 years ago we became a republic, but still there's this slightly colonial attitude displayed. Often we can't get stuff sent here because they don't send to "overseas" but they'll send stuff to the North. If it suits however, they'll use information from Ireland, Irish Staff, etc. We often pay more for similar services in the UK, without any of the benefits.
And people this is what helps racism along. Unthinking attitudes that grate. Asking people to go an extra distance and then discriminating against them.
Back to the book tho. If you've ever wanted to know stuff like the commonest used letters (e,t,a,h,o are the top five), see how spelling and words have changed, see a short discussion on the interesting similarity of some alien races in SF, find out about the international alphabet and see how errors occur in people from different language sources mis-spell in english, then this is an interesting book to dip into. It belongs with Schott's Almanacs as being non-essential, not particularly useful but interesting trivia.
But the met office needs to spell-check and proof read. Thundeer indeed.
Speaking of spelling Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary is an amusing little tome that's full of spelling trivia. A fun lump of spelling trivia that's nothing as good as Eats Shoots and Leaves but has interesting bits and pieces, tho I don't quite appreciate the fact that he's lumping Irish English in with English English without including some proper examples of Irishisms. It could have done with a page explaining how Irish English sentence structure sometimes reflects Gaeilge. It has a page on testing your skill at determining the difference between "British" and "American" newspapers and one of the examples is "New Doping Rules Favour GAA Cold Sufferers". Somehow that single sentence screams "Irish", I dunno, the GAA mention kinda gives it away!
It's a legacy issue, it's hard to explain to my soon-to-be sister-in-law why that grates. Over 80 years ago we became a republic, but still there's this slightly colonial attitude displayed. Often we can't get stuff sent here because they don't send to "overseas" but they'll send stuff to the North. If it suits however, they'll use information from Ireland, Irish Staff, etc. We often pay more for similar services in the UK, without any of the benefits.
And people this is what helps racism along. Unthinking attitudes that grate. Asking people to go an extra distance and then discriminating against them.
Back to the book tho. If you've ever wanted to know stuff like the commonest used letters (e,t,a,h,o are the top five), see how spelling and words have changed, see a short discussion on the interesting similarity of some alien races in SF, find out about the international alphabet and see how errors occur in people from different language sources mis-spell in english, then this is an interesting book to dip into. It belongs with Schott's Almanacs as being non-essential, not particularly useful but interesting trivia.