View Full Version : Whare Ded Ya Larn How Tah Spell ?
K8EEI
03-09-2009, 04:14 PM
This is from our " Beating the dead horse dept. " :p
I was just reading a few posts and I cannot believe some of the grammar and uh er "spilling " . Makes us look like " maroons ":confused:
OK , I'm ready .....fire away .:eek:
Constant exposure to cell-phone text-messaging, on-line messaging, etc will do wonders for one's diction and grammar... :rolleyes:
WA6MHZ
03-09-2009, 04:27 PM
I like to invent words. But they are still understandable.
Notta: Not a
Inna: In a
'cause
justa
you can combine words to make a new one.
justcuz: just because
Some words come from texting (I don't do texting!)
WTF?: I do not understand?
NFG: Not Functioning Good
FUBAR: REALLY NFG!!!
Spelling can be creative. This is a Forum, not an English Grammar class.
You don't need no form, paragraphs, proper spacing or margins.
I write as if I were talking (edited for a PG rating, of course). No F-this or F-thats. No F's at all as we don't want to raise the eyebrows of the mods!
The worst I will do is call some undesirable, rotten person a "rat bastard".
That is pretty tame.
Spelling is hard sometimes, especially all the I before E stuff except after C and other exceptions people are supposed to know without a Spell Checker.
If I spell "Transciever" wrong, people can still get the general idea of what is being referred to. But what is very hard is discerning WTF people are saying when they are Stone drunk and English is a 2nd language for them to begin with. There was that one post about some guy who was being chased down as being a Jammer that was almost impossible to discern what he was talking about. So I am able to read around the spelling errors for the most part, and am not offended by them. The whole point is to understand what the other person is talking about, not give them a grade for a Grammar and Spelling test! I know I am probably a prime offender in the Spelling error category, but no one has a hard time figuring what I am talking about.
WB3JLA
03-09-2009, 04:34 PM
Aoccdrnig to rseerach at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?
PS: Hwo'd yuo lkie to run tihs by yuor sepll ckehcer?
AB8MA
03-09-2009, 04:34 PM
Too much Battlestar Galactica. Maybe off topic, but how do they get away with their pronounciation of the F words?
W4KTL
03-09-2009, 04:39 PM
As long as I can understand what someone is trying to say, I really don't care about the spelling. What really irks me though is when someone makes a totally off topic response to a post just to critique someone's spelling or grammar. It's like the poster can't make an intelligent comment on the topic but they feel compelled to reply with something.
K8ERV
03-09-2009, 04:44 PM
I dudn't lurn to spell gud. That way I can deny everyting. (Maybe I should run for an office).
TOM K8ERV Montrose Colo
WB3JLA
03-09-2009, 04:44 PM
As long as I can understand what someone is trying to say, I really don't care about the spelling. What really irks me though is when someone makes a totally off topic response to a post just to critique someone's spelling or grammar. It's like the poster can't make an intelligent comment on the topic but they feel compelled to reply with something.
You are trying to tell me sometimes someone starts talking about something else
Could never happen here
Left the dock @ 3 am aboard the "Nice Day Too" with zman, fishy, travelersportfishing, and rugman and reached the fishing grounds at 5:30.
We were anchored first, and the bite was non existant, we made a couple moves around and found them about 9:00am.
It was drop and reel fishing for about 3 hours on nice cod.
We finished with 68 fish, all big fish between 8-20#.
The conditions were less than ideal and we got beat up most of the day.
Pictures to come as soon as zman sends them to me.
Capt and Crew we're very accomodating, although most of us did not like the ride of the cat style party boat, including my stomach.
K8ERV
03-09-2009, 04:45 PM
Jim, I read the whole thing before I realized it was in lower slobovian. Interesting.
TOM K8ERV Montrose Colo
K8EEI
03-09-2009, 04:55 PM
Speaky English ? :D
Ah izz corn- fused :o:rolleyes:
Too much Battlestar Galactica. Maybe off topic, but how do they get away with their pronounciation of the F words?
Finagle if I know...
Admittedly, I'm an English snob--I have little patience with people who are too lazy to spend a little extra time expressing themselves well...within their ability, anyway. I correct bad English all day at work so when I return home I hope to see decent English elsewhere.
If you don't think decent use of punctuation can have consequences then here's a true story from the late-19th or early-20th centuries (the details have been lost to a fading memory):
A sales rep was at a vendor examining some merchandise when he telegraphed back to his boss the price of each widget and and asked how many he should buy. A telegram came back with "NO PRICE TOO HIGH" so the rep bought all the widgets...which promptly bankrupted his company because his boss forgot to add a very important comma: "NO, PRICE TOO HIGH."
KB3LAZ
03-10-2009, 07:30 AM
Learn, you mean people are capable of such?
WB1HJS
03-10-2009, 10:54 AM
I lrned to spl by snding cw too much.
K8ERV
03-10-2009, 11:48 AM
his boss forgot to add a very important comma: "NO, PRICE TOO HIGH."
Way back (in the 1800's) an English teacher asked our class to punctuate:
"that that is is that that is not is not is not that it?"
TOM K8ERV Montrose Colo
Way back (in the 1800's) an English teacher asked our class to punctuate:
"that that is is that that is not is not is not that it?"
TOM K8ERV Montrose Colo
In modern lingo (long after Chaucer's time, when you were born), that now translates to "What it is, (Homes or Bro)?" :D
WB3JLA
03-10-2009, 02:17 PM
DIS---LOOK---LIKE--EBONEXS
AND HIM WENTED TO SCHOOLS
http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk243/supro66/Prescriptions.jpg
N8CPA
03-10-2009, 02:44 PM
I was taught to spell by nuns--with rulers, 12" long; yardsticks, 36" long; pointers, 48" long. And they knew how, when and where to wield them, their skills well honed by habit! And if I went home crying about it, dad had a belt 38" long.
Dad put his pants on one leg at a time, but he could take off that belt and land it on my latter cheeks in one fluid motion--from his waist to my waste!
And--I'll say it again--I walked to and from my nether tortures on CRUTCHES!
Made a speller out of me! :D
K7UTA
03-10-2009, 03:10 PM
Huked on foniks wurked grate four me:rolleyes::D
Some old guy wrote this, I like it. His lifetime book sales somewhat exceed my own :p:
SPELLING
I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing. I have a correspondent whose letters are always a refreshment to me, there is such a breezy unfettered originality about his orthography. He always spells Kow with a large K. Now that is just as good as to spell it with a small one. It is better. It gives the imagination a broader field, a wider scope. It suggests to the mind a grand, vague, impressive new kind of a cow.
- speech at a spelling match, Hartford, Connecticut, May 12, 1875. Reported in the Hartford Courant, May 13, 1875
Why, there isn't a man who doesn't have to throw out about fifteen hundred words a day when he writes his letters because he can't spell them! It's like trying to do a St. Vitus dance with wooden legs.
- The Alphabet and Simplified Spelling speech, December 9, 1907
...simplified spelling is all right, but, like chastity, you can carry it too far.
- The Alphabet and Simplified Spelling speech, December 9, 1907
I have had an aversion to good spelling for sixty years and more, merely for the reason that when I was a boy there was not a thing I could do creditably except spell according to the book. It was a poor and mean distinction and I early learned to disenjoy it. I suppose that this is because the ability to spell correctly is a talent, not an acquirement. There is some dignity about an acquirement, because it is a product of your own labor. It is wages earned, whereas to be able to do a thing merely by the grace of God and not by your own effort transfers the distinction to our heavenly home--where possibly it is a matter of pride and satisfaction but it leaves you naked and bankrupt.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book came with its arbitrary forms, men unconsciously revealed shades of their characters and also added enlightening shades of expression to what they wrote by their spelling, and so it is possible that the spelling-book has been a doubtful benevolence to us.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
...ours is a mongrel language which started with a child's vocabulary of three hundred words, and now consists of two hundred and twenty-five thousand; the whole lot, with the exception of the original and legitimate three hundred, borrowed, stolen, smouched from every unwatched language under the sun, the spelling of each individual word of the lot locating the source of the theft and preserving the memory of the revered crime.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
Rege
W5HTW
03-10-2009, 05:00 PM
About Mark Twain.
Yes, I noticed that before. That he could spell.
As can most writers.
When language becomes "each man for his own version of spelling" it ceases to be communication and becomes babel. Just noise. Grunts, and drawings on a cave wall.
There is a right way to spell a word. It is the way that word is known in the vast scheme of things. No other way. Spelled correctly, that word has a definite meaning. Spelled incorrectly, it is just a guess.
It seems to be that communication is what makes a civilization, and certainly it is what makes a nation. A nation is held together by its language. When the language disappears, the nation disappears, too.
Close enough is not good enough. The use of a word should be the correct use, in that particular context. Words don't have to be long and large. They can be short and simple. But each word has a meaning, and if we wish to convey a meaning to anyone, we must find the right word to do so.
"You're" is not the same as "your." They aren't even close in meaning.
Ed
K8ERV
03-10-2009, 06:08 PM
"You're" is not the same as "your." They aren't even close in meaning.
Ed
Your right about that!!
TOM K8ERV Montrose Colo
G0BXU
03-10-2009, 06:24 PM
In my schooldays, spelling was considered important enough for corrections to be placed in the margins of the page of our written schoolbooks by the teacher. We then had to write that word six times so as to remember the correct spelling for next time. I became quite good at spelling and pride myself on it to this day.
If you can't spell then you can't make anything of crosswords or word games, which I enjoy.
Nowadays, teachers do not correct spellings in children's books. I found out the reason why on a parent's open night at my daughter's school. THE TEACHER COULDN'T SPELL PROPERLY HIMSELF.
Worrying trend, all these graduates leaving universities with degrees and no simple spelling skills. :eek:
Alan
N8CPA
03-10-2009, 06:44 PM
At my school, if you mispelled a word in a sentence, in a paragraph, in an essay, in a term paper, it would affect the grade you got in whatever subject.
That applied double to the 'affect/effect' confusion. And the grade was reduced after you had already gotten the 12," 36," or 48" correction, and after the nether cheeks had been wasted by the belt from dad's waist.
During mid-terms, no walk was ever longer than the one home. The weather was cold, the chin down, the pavement slick and trepidations high--on CRUTCHES!
N8YQM
03-10-2009, 07:47 PM
Worrying trend, all these graduates leaving universities with degrees and no simple spelling skills. :eek:
Alan
How true. Maybe I'm cursed since my mother taught English, but I learned to spell in school. I couldn't believe the newspaper my university published. A 4th grader could spot all the mistakes in it. At least one of my professors flat out said he would grade heavily on spelling and grammar, since there's really no excuse for it at a college. I cringe when I see folks getting "too", "to", "two", "their", "there", "they're", "your" and "you're" interchangeably. Seems to me I learned about words that sound alike but have different meanings in the third grade.
When it isn't spelling skills, just a lack of punctuation is sad. Questions without question marks, and gross misuse of apostrophes if the apostrophe key can even be identified correctly. Has anyone else seen words like "can`t" or "can,t"? :eek: Just because a word ends in "s" doesn't mean it gets an apostrophe.
W7IBI
03-10-2009, 10:03 PM
I agree with you wholeheartedly. You don't have to know how to spell to take a multiple choice exam to get a ham license. Hell, you don't even have to know the correct answers! I get homemade QSL cards that are the work of proud amateurs. They are loaded with spelling errors too.
"At my school, if you mispelled a word in a sentence, in a paragraph, in an essay, in a term paper, it would affect the grade you got in whatever subject.
That applied double to the 'affect/effect' confusion. "
Absolutely agree with that statement. I thought the teachers were totally unfair when they graded a History report for spelling, as well as content, but it sure taught you to "mind your "Ps" and "Qs" !
I use Firefox to post here in the forum, and it underlines any word that it thinks is mis-spelled. I also use the "Google" feature of typing a word I'm not sure about into the "search" box. If the word is not spelled correctly, it will often ask me , " do you mean xxxx ?" and give me the proper spelling of a difficult word.
When I was in High School, I was one of the worst spellers in the world. My typing skills were so bad, that the teacher took pity on me and gave me just a barely passing grade so I could graduate with my class!
I can now type at nearly 100 wpm, and my spelling is quite good, thanks to the constant reminders from the auto-spellchecker and "Google" ! I don't believe that anyone who uses a computer has an excuse to spell and look like some redneck from the back woods any more, even if they happen to be one !
73, Jim
K8ERV
03-11-2009, 04:25 PM
I can now type at nearly 100 wpm,
73, Jim
Bet you only use very short words.
TOM K8ERV Montrose Colo
Actually, Tom, in the interest of upholding the TRVTH ( as B.C. likes to say ) , partial paralysis has slowed me down, somewhat ! But I still prefer MT-63 to PSK-31 ! ;) :)
