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

nnnnrrrrrr It just doesn't sound right

It's perfectly valid and as it's less archaic technically more acceptable...but it's just not as nice a word!

Technically more acceptable to whom?

I suspect those paid fortnightly buy weekly.

To the grammarati

may be a silly question but... is fortnight a contraction of 'fourteen nights'?

At college we were told "The only stupid question is the one you don't ask." If only that were true!

Yes, fortnight is a contraction of 'fourteen nights', just as sennight is a contraction of 'seven nights'. Language is often amazingly simple - mainly because most of the people who use it are.

Being in the location NZ is, there are many converging variations of language. I've the rather difficult position where I've used slang with someone for whom it meant the complete opposite where they were from.

What about disk? He said, idly reopening a week-old conversation.

I've always used disk for floppy or hard ... but disc for any other kind. Did someone misspell it in the first place or is disk just the standard US spelling so it got to the UK in the same that program did?

F

Obviously, as the program was on a disk.

F

That's an interesting point.

If you were to record, say, Coronation St on one of the new DVD player/recorders and also place a copy of 'Minesweeper' on a floppy you'd have a programme on a disc and a program on a disk.

No wonder context sensitive voice recognition still has problems!

F

I suspect that it may have something to do with Latin/Greek distinctions. Ancient Greek had kappa; classical Latin apparently used 'c' for the same sound (derived from gamma by a roundabout route through Etruscan, I read somewhere). Hence a latinised form of a Greek word would use 'c' for kappa, whereas a modern English romanisation from the original Greek would use 'k'. (As in sceptic/skeptic -- although both forms use the terminal 'c'.) However, I lack the etymological knowledge to be certain about this. Anyone?

Disk, as in floppy, is an abbreviation of "diskette," emphasising the miniature nature of the things (bearing in mind I entered the world of computing in the era of compact cassette tape and floppies were 5.25 or 8 inches and really were floppy! )

I used to play idly with the notching tool for the 5 1/4's while waiting for a 20KB prog to load.

Them were the days