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

in that case can i add
















the whole of the english language.

it's ambiguos, spelt funny and pronounced weirdly. we should have just stuck to grunting at each other

Well, in my experience (ie having being an teenager) even grunts can be misconstrued.

Howsabout we return to hitting and poking each other with big pointy sticks?

Mind you, a drunken conversation would then probably look like Morris Dancing, and that'd be scary!

"....ie having being an teenager...."

Eeek! and on a thread about Grammar, too!

my gramma is allergic to threads about gramma and gets automaticallt worse.

so does my spelling and punctuation.

but as i have no shame i wont be over it

the english language is a thing of beauty. the horrendous misuse of it by people who dont know their arse from the elbow is less good. a guide article on jargon anyone? hehe

Don't know much about english grammer (as the education system decided my genration didn't need to learn it, I'm a 70's child), but as far as I can gather english has fairly relaxed grammatical rules complared to other languages. So in english there is often no "correct" way to say something, perhaps this is because english is the bastard child of many other languages so many confusions arise.

Or am I talking s***e?

FABT - The thing is, I know the stuff reasonably well, just my fingers take on a life of their own! and you know one of the pedants will pick up on it.......

Can I borrow your 'no shame' shield for a moment here then?

>>here's a great oxymoron
>>
>>military intelligence

Who said that? FABT???? SMACK!

I'm glad the original question was asked, because people keep telling me I'm wrong to say "more clever". I know it sounds a bit clunky, but cleverer sounds more odd to me.

Or am I just too pedantic and precious about it?

ouch sho that hurt!

i know what YOU'VE been reading.....

i would probably say cleverer, but i dont know if it's right or not

>I'm glad the original question was asked, because people keep telling me I'm wrong to say "more clever". I know it sounds a bit clunky, but cleverer sounds more odd to me.


you mean it sounds odder?

it can be either

oh sorry, "more odd" indeed... it's getting to me.

FABT: not what I've been reading. I'm thinking more of my previous career... (and what I've been reading, but some other instances of it too)

I have another grammar question though, from a friend of mine who coaches a German lad who's learning English. His teacher has marked correct a sentence in which he uses the word "aboriginal" to refer to people, without having the word people attached. As far as we understood it, you can refer to art as aboriginal, but to refer to a person you'd have to say aborigine, unless you followed aboriginal with the word people.

Am I making any sense here?

FABT: Methinks I spy a Dr. Who fan.... Jon Pertwee (RIP) specifically...

shouldnt it be arboriganie (but spelt right)

Sho, you're quite right about "aborigine" and "aboriginal".

"original or earliest known; native; indigenous: the aboriginal people of Tahiti." - from dictionary

I don't really mind the language being mangled, so long as it's done deliberately by someone who knows better. I'd give an example, but I'm rather exampless at the moment.

I think language gets mangled for the want of a few extra words. People try too much to condence what they say.

Thanks Gnomon, it's a kid who is taking seriously important English exams soon, so we had to check.

Apparition - I think the reverse is also true though. I think the big crime in education in the 1970s was the way the teaching of English grammar was dropped.

We had a fantastic workbook "The Queen's English" which my school insisted upon, despite grammar being old fashioned and not required. Most of the kids from my class, when we got into the grammar school (where they also didn't teach grammar) had less problems than the others with French grammar, because we knew the difference between a verb and a noun.

This is *the* Guide after all. To Life, the Universe and Everything. Under the listings for Everything you'll find the list of entries on language. C37
This entry may help with some of the questions you have about usage. A586640