English Language

B

bigyetiman

Well-known member
Messages
2,409
A girl at work was talking about delving into her family history, and said a long dead relative had committed suicide so wasn't buried in the churchyard as suicides weren't allowed to be buried in "concentrated" ground. Which amused us all

Someone else said his aunt always talks about a cousin who suffers from "athletic flips" Which conjures up an image. Epileptic Fits by the way

I am sure we all have a tale of mistaken words.

Our neighbour had Anglican (Anglian) Water round for a leak.
 
chrismahon

chrismahon

Active member
Messages
5,085
Location
Gascony, France
So I'm puzzled by the sign (which I haven't seen) saying Disappearing Chemist as well @Marigold . When I learned to read they were experimenting with the phonetic alphabet and as a result I struggle with spelling. As we all know that experiment didn't work well, but it did get me started on wanting to read because the words in the books were exactly as I heard them said. So perhaps more of a success than was given credit for. Poor French children struggle with a very complex language where the last letter isn't pronounced, so how on earth can they be expected to write it? Illiteracy here is very common, so you get an email contact which just says phone me, because they can't type a response to a question!
 
B

bigyetiman

Well-known member
Messages
2,409
A friend said that after hearing about Roseate Hues, in a lesson, she went home and for ages thought roses ate shoes.

There was a company round these parts called " The Ferret cleaning Company" and when we saw the vans, it was a case of "how do you clean a ferret, how did it get dirty in the first place. Another favourite was Brain Haulage
 
M

Margaid

Well-known member
Messages
2,110
Location
Shropshire
chrismahon said:
So I'm puzzled by the sign (which I haven't seen) saying Disappearing Chemist as well @Marigold . When I learned to read they were experimenting with the phonetic alphabet and as a result I struggle with spelling. As we all know that experiment didn't work well, but it did get me started on wanting to read because the words in the books were exactly as I heard them said. So perhaps more of a success than was given credit for. Poor French children struggle with a very complex language where the last letter isn't pronounced, so how on earth can they be expected to write it? Illiteracy here is very common, so you get an email contact which just says phone me, because they can't type a response to a question!
Click to expand...
I can't think what that is either!
One of the advantages of Welsh is that it is totally phonetic - learn the sound of the letters and you can say the words. Mind you we do have these things called mutations where the preceding word can alter the letter of the next word ...
At least the verb comes in a snesible place in English, unlike Latin and German when it comes at the end of the sentence!
 
Marigold

Marigold

Moderator
PKF Sponsor
Messages
8,130
Location
Hampshire, U.K.
Margaid said:
I can't think what that is either!
One of the advantages of Welsh is that it is totally phonetic - learn the sound of the letters and you can say the words. Mind you we do have these things called mutations where the preceding word can alter the letter of the next word ...
At least the verb comes in a snesible place in English, unlike Latin and German when it comes at the end of the sentence!
Click to expand...
Dispensing!
Used to be part of the sign over most chemists, eg Boots, at least up to the 1970s when she was little. ‘Disappearing’ was actually a pretty good guess, phonetically, she got the first and last syllable and the important P in the middle. It shows how much of our reading is contextual - phonetics can only take you so far.
 
M

Margaid

Well-known member
Messages
2,110
Location
Shropshire
Thanks Marigold. I learnt to read by word recognition because I wanted to know how Mummy knew what to say when she read a story. So I sat on her lap while she pointed her finger at each word as she said it. It meant I was horribly precocious and could read silently before I went to school which got me into trouble in "reading aloud" classes as I'd be well ahead of the game, and it looked as though I was unable to follow the story until the teacher realised what I was doing. I think that's why I can read printed documents upside down, although not very fast, handwritten stuff is more difficult!

I do feel sorry for people trying to pronounce English with so many different sounds having the same spelling, cough, bough, through and throrough being just a few examples!
 
Marigold

Marigold

Moderator
PKF Sponsor
Messages
8,130
Location
Hampshire, U.K.
Technology has its own language nowadays.
The young woman who submitted the tech support message below (about her relationship to her husband) presumably did it as a joke. Then she got a reply from Tech Support that was way too good to keep to herself.

The query:
Dear Tech Support,
Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slowdown in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.

In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as: NBA 5.0, NFL 3.0 and Golf Clubs 4.1. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and House cleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.
What can I do?
Signed: Desperate

The response (that came weeks later out of the blue)…

Dear Desperate,
First keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an Operating System.

Please enter command: I thought you loved me.html and try to download Tears 6.2. Do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5. However, remember, overuse of the Tears application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0, or Beer 6.1. Please note that Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download Snoring Loudly Beta version.

Whatever you do, DO NOT, under any circumstances, install Mother-In-Law 1.0 as it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.

In addition, please do not attempt to re-install the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Cooking 3.0.

Good Luck
Tech Support ????
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top