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

Excellent!

Apart from "... destruction of Lindisfarne". It's still there, I believe.

Thanks for the comment. Yes it is still there but "Nevertheless Viking raids on Lindisfarne's wealthy coastal monastery did continue throughout the following century and in 875 A.D the monks of Lindisfarne fled their Holy Island with the body of Cuthbert, remembering the dying wishes of their saint;- "....if necessity compels you to chose between one of two evils, I would much rather you take my bones from their tomb and carry them away with you to whatever place of rest God may decree, rather than consent to iniquity and put your necks under the yokes of schismatics" For many years the monks wandered the north of England, with the coffin of St Cuthbert, until they eventually settled at Durham in 995 A.D where St Cuthbert's body lies to this day."

Ok, can he lose the bias while still keeping the humor? I *did* mention I love the article, right?

Wasn't it spelled "Briton" at one point? I know I've run into the name in my readings, and assumed it was where modern Britain is today. Or did I assume totally wrong?!?

Briton - Britain? That's what I thought but am always prepared to stand corrected.
I am not sure what 'bias' though - can you be more specific?

Hoopy Frood the Scout said "Try to lose some of the bias if you can, hard I know, especially when you are so passionate about the subject matter " ... in a previous post -- I don't know what he meant, hopefully HP will be back to say!

Nothing in particular really stands out, in fact the tone of the article is great, I agree Brianna, just have to watch out for the pedants though So pay no mind to my mention of bias really, as I'm biased towards scrapping mobile phones and 'txt msgs' and teaching the Americans how to spell properly...
(waits for the audible gasps)
...
(then waits for the torrents of abuse)
...

And I always thought a 'Briton' was an inhabitant of the 'British' Isles, a historical faux pas about Bretons and Brittany I think...but I may be wrong, I often am.

Keep at it, it's got real promise as an EG Entry
HF

Exactly,; that's correct. And the British Isles = Britain (or Great Britain). Can't understand why this is causing such a problem!

Much misinformation in history texts, on my part ... and only about half published in the US, btw!!!

I have a friend who just got back from working in London, and just before he left, he said, "I can't wait to get back to where people know how to pronounce things..."

Makes sense. I said much the same when I moved to England from Scotland .

Indeed, I had to relearn "English" when I moved from Oz.
HF

If you're going to include quotes (like the one from '1066 And All That' at the beginning of the entry) you have to make sure that everyone knows it's a quote. You do that by putting it in a tag if your GuideML skills are up to it, or by giving it quotation marks and its own paragraph if they're not. Either way you have to acknowledge the source and the writer(s).

In the original, ‘"Weeny, Weedy and Weaky," ’ is in quotes and is acknowledged as a footnote: ’From 1066 and All That, originally published in Punch in the 1930’s’. Sorry it didn’t come out in my first attempt at pasting something into a medium that is unfamiliar to me.

Hi JH,

The following sentence , at the start of your Entry, needs to go:

'A light-hearted (but serious) look at the evolution of a language'.


It is the kind of thing that you could have written as Post 1 when you first submitted your Entry to PR.

It needs to be replaced with a para giving a much fuller introduction.

P.S. Ref your Post 32, there are no footnotes in your Entry. Do you know how to do them?...

Like this:

‘"Weeny, Weedy and Weaky," ’ ’From 1066 and All That, originally published in Punch in the 1930’s’ .

BIGAL - footnotes won't work because the author has written the entry in plain text, not Guide ML <./>test3848655</.> If he does decide to change the format he's apparently going to have to do something about those ampersands.

Briton – Britain? If the Britons thought they lived in Briton I doubt if we’d be able to decipher what they wrote. It wasn’t ‘Britain’ (great or otherwise) but a bunch of bickering, xenophobic savages. I think I share all Hoopy Frood’s ‘bias’ and the entire thing came about from trying to teach French speaking Moroccans why it is that if you translate French into English directly it sounds incredibly pompous and long winded (apart from it all coming out back-to-front). Look at any French/English dictionary and half the words are pretty much the same but they are pronounced and used entirely differently.
I should also add that I have spent the past 30 years working (as an architect) on three continents in nine counties with over 60 different nationalities – speaking English. Communication was never a problem until I started to teach. Before then I just adapted my English to the people I was talking to. My wife (Moroccan) uses but one verb tense – the present but she can be understood. "I go see my sister yesterday" "I go see my sister", I go see my sister tomorrow".
I need a beer!

Oh, right.

Well, I teach EFL - amongst other things. Actually, I'm teaching two groups of Arab students at present (from Dubai). Although I agree that it's not too difficult to communicate using the 'Present Simple' most students are keen to sound reasonably natural in their speech. Hence idiomatic expressions are important

TTFN................. 'Ta Ta For Now'.

Apparrantly we don’t ‘teach’ we ‘train’ and we don’t train ‘students’, we train ‘learners’ (last year it was ‘participants’). I am informed - EFL is now ELL and if English language teachers spent less time worrying about what to call things, they might begin to teach. Yes idiomatic English is important and hence I wrote this piece FOR MY STUDENTS. They weren’t bothered at all whether the historical I’s were dotted or not, they were interested in the very strange history of a bastard language that is increasingly colonising the world (until the Chinese get there).

We understand that you originally wrote this piece for your students, James, that's not the issue.

But you've chosen to submit this entry to Peer Review, which is what entries go through if their authors want to get them into the Edited Guide. And the audience there is quite different than just your students, and we do expect authors in Peer Review to work to make their entries appropriate for the wider audience of the Edited Guide.

If you'd be happier leaving it as it is, you can certainly withdraw it from Peer Review -- it would still be here on h2g2, and everyone would still be able to read it.


Mikey