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

Not just US but Canada as well (the larger part of the continent). It may have been a prelude to texting, contract the sentence of not-quite-needed words?

It's still odd.

It is, and I generally try to avoid such contractions .. especially on-line

I used to find "she wrote me" strange, but it makes sense as an abbreviation of "she wrote me a letter".

Atleast on this side of the pond (Atlantic) it would seem that English has been compressing or contracting well before the simplistic rubbish that is txtspeak. So much of that is unique to a crowd or an age group. I received one today, LPU.



Love, Peace and Understanding.

I like it ...

Particularly since the contraction alters the sense of both sentences.

Could not care less (than I already do) has that status of your care left unsaid but implies your consideration could not sink any lower.

Could care less - implies that you actually care more about something that you in fact don't. So your consideratino could in fact sink lower than it currently is - these meanings are opposites!


Similarly

Write to me - wrote a letter / email to a recipient (me)

Write me. I always think they mean they wrote down "me"


Okay these are opposites but differing descriptions.


I then experience that moment of 'cognitive catch-up' then where I think 'oh they meant...'

What do our continental cousins have against proper negation and contiguity?

It is, as I say, odd.

Bleh

There AREN'T opposites.

See what I mean. Totally confusing.

I really can't get my head round the (seems to me) current trend of writing/saying obligated when obliged is correct.

I really do feel obligated to tell you that indeed, obliged is just as corect.

(A little more affirmed present tensed? I'm pooh with all them rules of stuff)

Thinking on it, as sparsely as I do on a Sunday morning ...

I'm obligated, it is a duty and an necessity to tell you of something ...

Obliged is more of a need and a feeling to deal with something or pass it along.

I think that the first is a little more first-person-to-second-person. The latter is a much more general conversational thing

People do definitely have a stronger leg - take a look at high-jump competitions, for example, a small number of competitors start from the other side in the run-up, so they have the same number of strides but can use their better/stronger leg.

Expressing that "no one sees the artist in me" ...

I arrange plants, words, metals or woods, and in some rather novel ways even electonic ciruitry

And my PS gets zapped for that. (Second time this week zapped, no changes in several weeks, but the Eds are watching )

Expressions which you've always thought were wrong:
"Barack Obama - Nobel Peace Prize winner".

'New politics'.

(thanks to the Clegg/Cameron coalition).

"All´s fair in love and war"

Love perhaps. In war there has always been things that were considered beyond the pale, in Eurasia anyway.

Quite a few things are considered beyond the pale in love, too, for that matter...

True, Clive and

'threw it out of the window'
and
'threw it out the window'


But the bit that really makes me spit / jealous / feel deprived /sad is that it's their version that's the international one now.

"Common Era" and "Before Common Era", what is so common about this era? If you don´t feel you should use the birth of Jesus as the start of the calendar, make a new one. Don´t just make up a silly new word for it.

>>..what is so common about this era? <<

The colonising imperialist countries were using
the Christian calendar and imposed it upon the
countries they 'conquered'. Thus it was established
as the standard thru most of the whirled.

Some countries began as British colonies, some were
French, some Portugese, some German... in different
parts of the globe. But one of the things they had
in common was the adaption of the calendar. It was
handy for business, trade and knowing when Easter was.


~jwf~