I'm sort of between a B and C, so I think I'm qualified. It's sort of a...gradual growth process, so it's not like you're very surprised. It hurts when you run a bit, but you get special sports bras for that. You really don't notice though. My question for you: not to be rude, but why do you abbreviate straight as str8?
Habit. That and the nagging insecurity of is it straight or strait. Str8 removes the spelling concern.
Pretty sure it's "straight," as in straight and narrow. The vanilla option. Same meaning it has to the chemically enamored. Basically, the connotation is "boring."
Yeah the only time I have seen strait used was to describe the body of water, Bering Strait, Strait of Gibraltar, etc.
And after a day of translating, I'm apt to write it as streit, which is the way you would spell it in Spanish to get the correct pronunciation. That brings me to my next nagging question: Why has the English language never received a concerted spelling reform? I'm not asking why the spelling system is so idiosyncratic. I'm a trained linguist; I could give a class on the why of that. What I'm stumped by is the seeming adoration we give to spellings that are really off, no matter the reason the word may have come into the language in a given way. At the very least the -ough and -augh archaic word cluster needs some attention. Seriously. It's no lafing matter. I'm thru with the whole thing.
...and despite all the problems with the English language, it's still not the hardest language in the world to become fluent in.
This doesn't bother me nearly as much as the difficulties English has with gender. There is no gender-neutral pronoun (I don't refer to people as "it", sorry). I have an uncle and an aunt, but there's no word for both of them together. On the other hand, I have male and female cousins, but no way of referring to them in a way that implies gender. I have nieces and nephews, but there's no word that refers to all of them. We have cattle, but no singular way of referring to them. There's a cow and a bull (and a steer). But there's no singular for gender-neutral cattle. There is for deer (doe and buck). There is for sheep (ewe and ram). But not for cattle. Come on, English! Get your shit together! I could put up with all the spelling weirdness of English if they'd just fix all the gender confusion.
I just have to post this: Euro English The European Union Commissioners announced today that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language standard for European communications rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty’s Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement, and has accepted a five year phased plan for what will be known as, Euro-English, (EURO for short). In the first year, ‘s’ will be used instead of the soft ‘c’. Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard ‘c’ will be replased with ‘k’. Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome ‘ph’ will be replased by ‘f’. This will make words like ‘fotograf’ 20 per sent shorter. In the third year publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will endorse the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also al wil agre that the horible mes of silent ‘e’s in the language is, disgraful, and they would go. By the fourth year peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing ‘th’ by ‘z’ and ‘w’ by ‘v’ During ze fifz year, ze unesesary ‘o’ kan be dropd from vords kontaining ‘ou’ and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis, and evri vun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru!
Thanks for that, @Aled James Taylor. Was drinking coffee and missed my mouth. My dry cleaning bill is winging it's way through the ether as I type. Gotta say, though, the thought of English getting overhauled scares me. Even since I was in Primary school, there have been numerous amendments made. I sometimes have a hard time remembering the revisions, instinctively spelling as I was originally taught. One example of this is 'development.' I cringed every time I saw it—cringing sufficiently often to go to the bother of checking that my memory wasn't at fault. Ok, then... apparently 'developement' is now considered an obsolete spelling—my bad— but how the hell am I supposed know? It's not I got sent a memo or anything. Goodness knows I have enough catching up to do, righting habitual spelling mistakes, never mind my dodgy grammar and punctuation.
I was brought up mostly writing in Welsh, where the selling is phonetic. I now just rely on spell checkers to do the work for me so I just have to look out for wrong word errors. Right. That does it! Why-o-why is the word 'Phonetic' not even spelled with an 'F'?
Well, if you are going to go down that road, I'd highly recommend the full lactating experience. Not much use having a pair, if you are not prepared to embrace them in all their wonder. And besides, target practice is fun. (And it is at this point I'm gonna self-censor, lest I offer up a wholly inappropriate anecdote. )
Ha ha! You should try being a Yank and living and writing in the UK. I am now so mixed up I have no idea if half of what I write is correct or not. Both sides of the Pond.
I know exactly where you are coming from, having lived in Seattle. The only Americanised spellings I never slip up on, are the substitutions of 'z' for 's.' The other day, I had to resort to using a dictionary, because I couldn't remember the correct spelling for the rubber bit of a wheel. I was scratching my head thinking, 'y', or 'i', and couldn't for the life of me remember which was which.
It's tire, if you're in Seattle. Tyre if you're 'here...' I own a Webster's dictionary, and have to constantly refer to it, when I'm writing "American" stuff. The Zs and the Ss are becoming melded in my head, and I often switch from one to another in the same piece of writing. Many other trip-ups, such as 'traveling' versus 'travelling.' I know they are both used, but without consulting the dictionary I don't know any more which one is correct where. This kind of thing has really undermined my confidence. Little things like, if you're writing a century, and want to refer to it numerically. Well, in the USA you'd say 1900's. Here that gets laughed at, as the apostrophe is not used—and I end up classified with the greengrocer and his potato's. Here you're write the date as 1900s. Sometimes both of them look wrong to me! That excellent wee book "Eats Shoots and Leaves" does actually tackle this issue, and has clarified some points for me. Points where I was yanked up short, only to realise that I was actually right, writing as an American.
Eek!.... 'traveling', vs 'travelling.' Ok, that does it. Webster's and Oxford English dictionaries, here I come! Or... is it a matter of obsolescence, and if so, which country saw fit to make the extra 'l' redundant? And more to the point, do you have a catchy saying, or rhyme to help me remember? (Kiddin'!) I'm so confused.
Ha! You've been looking at my facebook page. I don't know if they look like one another at this point. Saw Celine on last season's The Voice (US) and she was looking reeeeaaaallllyyy anorexic. Like, not in a funny ha ha way.
Why do so many company names end in 'x'? Is it easier to remember? Is it supposed to look or sound cool? What's the deal with karaoke? Seriously? I get it you're having fun when it's your time to sing, but is it really worth the wait when you have to listen to the ear torture that precedes your own flawless, fun, amazing performance? And if you aren't planning to sing, why would you go to a karaoke bar? You and me both. What is it like to have breast-breasts, the kind that roll down to your armpit when you lie on your back, that bounce up and down when you run, that can be motorboated, or squeezed together so that you can put stuff like pencils and chopsticks between them? I really don't want a boobjob or anything, if done for any other reason than breast cancer I find such enhancements pointless, but it'd be interesting to spend one day with anything above a B.
