Do ye git the gist?

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Alan SHARP
Posts: 612
Joined: Tue Apr 06, 2010 9:41 pm
Location: Waikato, New Zealand

Do ye git the gist?

Post by Alan SHARP » Wed Sep 07, 2011 10:10 am

Greetings

I find it interesting that some, newly into genealogy research, are so set upon the correct spelling of their famly surnames. It's not that many generations ago, when many were signing documents with their mark, most often an "X" and such was the unlimited variety of hand writing styles, discerning spelling was quite a task. Then came mechanical forms of printing with standardised print, which is easier for the eye to interpret.

How easy can be seen by this piece, that once again, has appeared in my email, in box.

Don't delete this just because it looks weird. Believe it or not, you can read it.

I cdnuolt blveiee
taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The
phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at
Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the
ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the
first and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a
taotl mses and you can still raed it wouthit a porbelm. This
is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by itself, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?


Alan SHARP.

speleobat2
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Joined: Tue Apr 03, 2007 3:14 pm
Location: USA--Alabama

Re: Do ye git the gist?

Post by speleobat2 » Wed Sep 07, 2011 1:17 pm

Alan,

That is truly amazing, but please don't tell my nephew. I think you need to learn the correct spellings first and on one of his spelling tests where he had to use each word in a sentence he correctly spelled all of the words on the list, but misspelled every other word that had more than one letter!

My misspellings are all just typos, of course!

Carol :D
Last edited by speleobat2 on Wed Sep 07, 2011 10:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Looking for: Clerihew, Longmuir/Longmore, Chalmers, Milne, Barclay in Newhills,
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Alan SHARP
Posts: 612
Joined: Tue Apr 06, 2010 9:41 pm
Location: Waikato, New Zealand

Re: Do ye git the gist?

Post by Alan SHARP » Wed Sep 07, 2011 10:24 pm

Hi Carol.

Being "just a farm lad" I was never confident with spelling. Even checked that I got the right style / stile above, and then ran my copy through a spell check. Back in the hot metal days, I found myself convenor / editor, of a yearbook for nine years, and the collective copy supplied, would have been the laughing stock of the rural community, had it not been for the proof readers. Such a waste of hot metal, but the printer had it factored.

With English being the universal language of navigation, many words have been acquired, along the way, from other tongues. Words even correctly spelt, can have totally different meanings, depending upon where you are around the globe, and the context with which you use them. Great fodder for the humoroust.

Another email received, in recent days, sums up our ENGLISH language.---

I think a retired English teacher was bored.

THIS IS GREAT!
Read all the way to the end................
This took a lot of work to put together!
You think English is easy??

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8) A colourful bass was painted on the face of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) This insurance is invalid for this particular invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row between the row of boats.

13) They were "too" close the "two" doors to close them.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in my favorite dress I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?


Let's face it - English is a crazy language with constant disagreement as to proper use. It makes little sense. There is no egg to be found in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index becomes 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you have left?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English teachers and creators should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what other language do people recite at a play but play at a recital? Ship by truck but send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, But when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick' ?

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this ..

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more use and meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is 'UP.'

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ?
At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?
Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends.
And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.
We lock UP the house and some guy will fix UP the old car.
At other times the little word has real special meaning.
People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.
A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.
We open UP a store in the morning and we return to close it UP at night.
We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!
To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.
In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.
If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used.
It will take UP a lot of your time, if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP.
When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP,
for now my time is UP,
so........it is time to shut UP !
Now it's UP to you what you do with this email.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alan SHARP.

PS, the face above was not of my doing, there must have been a character in the copied and pasted material that trigered it. How strange.
Last edited by AndrewP on Wed Sep 07, 2011 11:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Smilies turned off, so that '8)' does not show up as a face.

speleobat2
Posts: 1646
Joined: Tue Apr 03, 2007 3:14 pm
Location: USA--Alabama

Re: Do ye git the gist?

Post by speleobat2 » Wed Sep 07, 2011 10:37 pm

Alan,

Having had a mother who spoke Finnish, a language which baffles me, and having studied a couple of other languages in school, I must admit that I thoroughly enjoy the quirks of the English language!

And, yes, I did go back and correct my misspellings in my first post!

Carol :D
Looking for: Clerihew, Longmuir/Longmore, Chalmers, Milne, Barclay in Newhills,
Munro, Cadenhead, Raitt, Ririe/Reary

AndrewP
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Contact:

Re: Do ye git the gist?

Post by AndrewP » Thu Sep 08, 2011 12:01 am

How do you teach someone learning English as a foreign language to pronounce the syllable 'ough'?
  • Rough
  • Through
  • Dough
  • Bough
  • Trough
  • Thought
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ough_(orthography)

Food for thought,

AndrewP

paddyscar
Site Admin
Posts: 2418
Joined: Mon Aug 08, 2005 7:56 pm
Location: Ontario, Canada

Re: Do ye git the gist?

Post by paddyscar » Thu Sep 08, 2011 5:30 am

We had a substitute priest from Poland, and as I was the reader, I went in to see if he had any special items I would need to announce or read. He spoke 5 languages and was studying for his Doctorate.

Andrew has picked up on exactly the series of letters that were giving him problems in the homily. Something about the plough pulling through the rough ground.

After clarifying the pronounciation for him, he said to me 'This is English?' :lol:

Frances

Montrose Budie
Posts: 713
Joined: Sat Dec 11, 2004 11:37 pm

Re: Do ye git the gist?

Post by Montrose Budie » Thu Sep 08, 2011 2:16 pm

Heard about the Frenchman, trying to learn English, who commited suicide during a visit to London after seeing the billboard "Black & White Minstrel Show pronounced success!" ?

mb

ficam
Posts: 53
Joined: Sun Sep 14, 2008 8:43 pm
Location: Edinburgh

Re: Do ye git the gist?

Post by ficam » Sun Sep 25, 2011 9:50 pm

Strangely, I have a relative who is dyslexic and struggles to read aloud most of the time, read the original post out loud, with only one stumble ...and far quicker and more easily than they would have read it had it been written "correctly"...??!!

Alan SHARP
Posts: 612
Joined: Tue Apr 06, 2010 9:41 pm
Location: Waikato, New Zealand

Re: Do ye git the gist?

Post by Alan SHARP » Fri Oct 14, 2011 4:07 am

Greetings "ficam"

My niece has just sent me this brain teaser, so I will add it........................................

Good example of a Brain Study: If you can read this you have a strong mind:

7H15 M3554G3 53RV35 7O PR0V3 H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N D0 4M4Z1NG 7H1NG5! 1MPR3551V3 7H1NG5! 1N 7H3 B3G1NN1NG 17 WA5 H4RD BU7 N0W, 0N 7H15 LIN3 Y0UR M1ND 1S R34D1NG 17 4U70M471C4LLY W17H 0U7 3V3N 7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17, B3 PROUD! 0NLY C3R741N P30PL3 C4N R3AD 7H15.


PL3453 F0RW4RD 1F U C4N R34D 7H15 :).................................................

Alan SHARP.

StewL
Posts: 1396
Joined: Sat Dec 11, 2004 12:59 am
Location: Perth Western Australia

Re: Do ye git the gist?

Post by StewL » Fri Oct 14, 2011 7:10 am

Hi Alan
I was quite pleased that I began to read the message after the third word in the text :D
Stewie

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