Grammar Geek wrote: Not that this is on topic, but I'm intrigued. A posting outside a building is called a label in BrE? What is a sign? Well, GG, it's in NnsE - Non-native speaker's English! In other words, using label is a sign that you're

Hey Dex 17, I'm so glad you told that 14 year old all of that. I was wanting to after reading that racist drivel. I couldn't agree more, intelligence is not really race specific as it is people specific, and even then it's touch and go. There

I have not heard that, but increasingly often ... rarely correcting mis-hearings by reading (well-edited) texts. I completely agree with the curmudgeon, yet another manifestation of the prevalence of televison over reading. It even extends to ...

Afrikaans only became an official language in the 1920s, and trek entered English long before that. Of course, but it didn't come from the Dutch spoken by academicians in the Netherlands; it came from the Dutch spoken by farmers in South

On 28 Aug 2004 08:35:31 -0700, R H Draney Jon Miller filted: * I assume Sara meant to write "pooberty" there. I've never had much occasion to use the word, but it would not have occurred to me to pronounce it any other way than

And in Spanish "Usted" is often abbreviated "Ud." When I was in high school (and the1st year of college), it was abbreviated Vd. (or vd.). Has that changed? (It's been 40+ years.) The fairly recent (1998) Oxford Spanish

At the AUE site, there's a page headed "Pronunciation of newsgroup contributors' names". The URL is http://www.alt-usage-english.org/audio gallery/index.html When you click on "WAV" or "MP3" by my name, you

Huh. In the early part of my life, before Laura became as common a name as it is now, I ... correct people who wanted to call me Gloria) and explain that my surname (Frank) had no "s" on the end. When I was a child, I dreaded the first

In Devon (UK), there is a town called Topsham. The locals (and those in the know) pronounce it Tops-um, others call it Top-sham. See: http://www.topsham.org/ The town of Horsham in Sussex is properly pronounced "Horse-um" or even

I have been worrying overnight whether I am a construct ... genuine independent person. This will help me sleep at night. Professor John Lawler, of the University of Michigan's Linguistics Department, posts from that university at Ann Arbor,