h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Actually, I've never seen a Euro coin.

Do an image search in google.

http://www.sparxmedia.co.za/harrison/euro1.jpg

Tee hee.

Is that seriously it? It's so... weird... And, doesn't England not use Euros anyway? Does that involve all of the UK, or just England? Or that is just wrong and you all use Euros?

In the British Isles, only the Republic of Ireland use Euros.

The Euro is obviously a rip-off of the Two Pound coin, only with a tiny map of Europe and a deformed penis printed on the front instead of the Queen's head.

Although I'm not entirely sure I can call that weird, since all of our coins have animals on them... Except the weird 50c and 20c pieces, but the original ones still have animals on them...

www.dfat.gov.au/ facts/currency.html

"lliterative (adjective + noun)
(illiterate + iterative)
repeated use of a misspelled word, often getting worse and worse over time."

Right, I'll give you that. You're illiterative with regards to not being able to spell 'I'. Which is abysmal for anyone over the age of 6. Then again, it's more of a grammar mistake than a spelling mistake.

"Illiterate
Definition:

1. [n] a person unable to read
2. [adj] ignorant of the fundamentals of a given art or branch of knowledge; "ignorant of quantum mechanics"; "musically illiterate"
3. [adj] not able to read or write"

Now you claim you know about the grammar of the English language, which constitutes a fundamental part of the language. Nobody in their right mind would dispute that. If you know it, you certainly don't use it, meaning you are ignoring it, making you illiterate under definition 2 of the word illiterate. As you make more grammatical and systematic errors than repeated spelling errors (uses of Capitalisation, tenses, punctuation et al) you are more illiterate than illiterative.

Now go away before I correct you an umpteenth time.

http://www.pseudodictionary.com/search.php?letter=i&browsestart=100


"the dictionary for words that didn't quite make it"

Does that mean that illiterative isn't actually a word there boss?

According to the site it's a place where people make up there own words for ones that aren't in the dictionary.

Their own words, surely?

I say you made an illiterative comment. Thats not a mispelling, or even a repeated mispelling.

illiterate
illiterative

I can see why your baffled on the subject the two look very similar. That sneaky 'i' and 'v' just bumped in there causing a whole lot of trouble!

"If smileys are now part of the English language, then I'll submit to your argument, but suggest you lay off the Acid. It does bad things to you."
It depends what exactly your talking about. But of course, as you mistakenly believe, there is only a single version of english and it is standardised. Non of this dialect and neologism language, thats for the commoners and the barbarians..

Read what we wrote. We know what illiterative means, but to find out we had to trawl a website of words that aren't in the dictionary. As such we can safely say it isn't a real word, in the same way that 'badong' is not a real word. It serves to outline an abstract concept, but it is not part of the standard language.

Furthermore, I never once stated that there is only one type of English. I myself speak with a Salford dialect. There is however ONE set of spellings for British English. There are no unerroneous dialectal mis-spellings. If you can find me any source telling me that there are dialectal spellings, which are widely recognised and as such don't show up on a spell checker for example, then I'll concede to your point. Until then however, don't be such a hypocrite and ask HPB ro change the academy pages, which is what this little slanging match started off as. You being a condescending hypocrite.

And I can look THOSE up for you if you'd like.

You'll be saying collocation and phonetics isnt in the dictionary next. More lost marks...

You'll remember the have i got news for you episode where the guest publication was a magazine from yorkshire, featuring poems and letters written in the yorkshire accent, and even further back the scotish poem in the anthology written in that dialect. Theres also creole if you want to go further with it.
As you can see there isnt. Theres a standard way granted, but theres nothing stopping anyone doing it differently. Which is why in txts punctuation is gone and symbols are in.

I assume he choose standard english. If not good for him! Glad to see someone not using standard english all the time!

Save you a job. Dialect does not cover spellings. How do I know?

Page 393 of The Oxford English Reference Dictionary (1996), left hand column.

Dialect (noun)
1) A form of SPEECH peculiar to a particular region.
2) A subordinate variety of a language with non-standard VOCABULARY, PRONUNCIATION or GRAMMAR.

So there you go. You can pronounce a word however you like. You can use slang words (so long as your target audience will understand them, unless you are stressing the divergence of dialects). You can say 'you's lot' or 'give us a fag' all you want. You just can't change the written spellings.

Case closed. End of story. Your bad spellings cannot be justified by claiming that it is a dialect.

And don't tell me about 'txting'. I did my A-Level project on technology and modern language, and came down firmly on the side of 'txtspk' being a related but totally seperate facet of the English Language, much like American English or Australian English. I got an A on it, so I think I may have a slight clue about the subject.

*Remembers studying the color purple, written in non-standard english using the grammatical features of creole. Realise that a dialect cannot be written absolutely ever because of course the dictionary is almighty and powerful*

"You just can't change the written spellings." .. of standard english. Of course not to directly try would be foolish as it evolves and changes over the years rather then over night.
I am choosing non standard english, both on my PS and my journal, using grammatical frameworks of the language i speak applied to the written language. In effect ive choosen to use capital letters where it suits or needs stress.

You'll be telling me theres only one form of written english in a minute.

Define form. If by form you mean spelling, then yes.

SOURCE (if you quoted any when prompted, you'd get further)
'Language Change' by R. L. Trask (1994)
Chapter 10, Relatedness between Languages.
"Given sufficient time these DIALECTS (regional varieties) can diverge so much that they eventually become mutually incomprehensible and must at some point be regarded as different LANGUAGES."

This can be seen as proof that two dissimilar enough dialects (eg West Indian creole, American English, Cornish) can be regarded as seperate languages. As there is no seperate dialect for the region you live (I know, I live there) with the exception of Lancastrian, spoken by 20 people in a remote village, it must be said that you are simply using incorrectly spelt standard English. Unless you can find a SOURCE which states that the mistakes YOU made are recognised as STANDARD by any GROUP of people because you're speaking a recognised DIALECT we'll just assume this is more proof of you being unable to let a lost cause go due to your stubborn pig-headedness. Or to put it in a bit of Salford slang, "You're chatting bubbles mate."

This divergance can also become convergance (as can be seen with bolton dialect, and i await the day when t'other gets in t'dictionary)

My dog is called bubbles, she understands what i say but lets be nice and say she cant read. However my mother, my father, robin, amy and a few other non-h2g2ers have seen it and understood why conan isnt spelt Conan.

What i was directly point out were the spelling mistakes on 3/4 of the academy pages, but hey, if thats how you like em then keep em the same.

I know what convergence is. But you are not attempting to bring your supposed 'dialect' into line with that of everyone reading your Journal.

"non-h2g2ers have seen it and understood why conan isnt spelt Conan."

Why? Because you show a blatant disregard for the fact that all proper nouns, in all dialects and all languages that I know of, start with a capital letter?

You've failed to supply any sources to back up your argument, so at least shed light on your infinite wisdom and tell us mere plebians why you don't spell names with a capital letter.