OT word usage

"a christmas tree" wrote in message
ups.com...

cybercat wrote:

Hay! I am back. Did you miss me?

Babe, your back early!
What a surprise!!

did you sleep well, you missed quite a bit
are you ready for your bloody mary...
the mix tonight is wonderful, it even has meat in it


You are just wayyyyy spooky.

Sorry for humping your post, but you *did* call me
"babe" so you brought it on yourself.

I have not been sleeping. I have been shopping and
working. And trying to keep the wild beasts at bay.

Why do I see no cat stories? How are Lucille and Jupiter?

cybercat wrote:

You are just wayyyyy spooky.

lol, no for real, it's very finely chopped beef, (very fine)...and
well, it just
goes with that big ol, peppery shot of vodka and tomatoe juice, a
little, tabasco maybe


Sorry for humping your post, but you *did* call me
"babe" so you brought it on yourself.
I have not been sleeping. I have been shopping and
working. And trying to keep the wild beasts at bay.

yeah, I thought it felt like humping

Why do I see no cat stories? How are Lucille and Jupiter?

they are doing much better, they started playing together tonight.
Lucy is still a little awkard about it, but I can tell she is having
fun.
the kitten is clueless...trying to attack Lucy
Im enjoying the kitten. When I run her out of one slipper, she gets in
another one.
I can't win. So I roll her over with my foot, but then she grabs on
with all 4 and biting...mind you...on my poor ol foot

I wasn't taking it personally.. ;o) just kinda reminding people that not
everybody is an english speaking american in here.



--
Will~

"... so that's how liberty ends, in a round of applause."

Queen Amidala, The revenge of the Syth.


"Rhino" wrote in message
.. .
Willow,

I may not be understanding your note correctly - my French is pretty
rusty! - but it looks like you think that Mike is criticizing your grammar
in particular. I realy doubt that is the case.

I think he was reacting to something I said in the "Switching from dry
food
to canned" thread - see the comments following Joe Canuck's answer to my
question - and then generalizing from there with a general refresher for
_everyone_ on some common grammar mistakes made all the time by native
English speakers.

English is notoriously difficult as a second language due to its many
rules
and exceptions to those rules. Heck, those rules and exceptions make it a
minefield for native speakers too, especially since many schools stopped
making much effort to teach grammar 30-odd years ago. English speakers
have
no real equivalent to l'Academie du langue francais either to police the
language.

I've read several of your posts, Willow, and I had no idea you were not a
native English speaker; you're English is on a par with that of most
native
English speakers.

Rhino

"Willow" wrote in message
...
On peut faire ceci en francais. De cette facon je ne ferai pas de fautes
et
j'aurai le plaisir immense de corriger TES fautes...

Passe une bonne journee.

--
Will~

"... so that's how liberty ends, in a round of applause."

Queen Amidala, The revenge of the Syth.


"---MIKE---" wrote in message
...
Just for clarification - some words are commonly misused. Here is a
guide,
Your - possessive - belonging to.
You're - contraction - "you are"
There - at a place
Their - possessive - belonging to.
They're - contraction - "they are"


---MIKE---
In the White Mountains of New Hampshire
(44° 15' N - Elevation 1580')

"Willow" wrote in message
...
On peut faire ceci en francais. De cette facon je ne ferai pas de fautes
et
j'aurai le plaisir immense de corriger TES fautes...

Just remember, Antoine de Saint Exupéry flunked French. Ô, au, eau, eaux,
etc. Oh, les os. Can't say I blame him. (For non-francophones, I'm playing
with the different ways French represents the O sound).

"Annie Wxill" wrote in message
...

"Rhino" wrote in message
.. .
...... you're English is on a par with that of most native
English speakers.
Rhino
Hi Rhino,
If you're one of those native English speakers, your example proved the
point that many native English speakers don't know the difference between
you're and your.

BANG!!

That was the sound of my jaw dropping and hitting the floor as I realized
that I wrote "you're" when I meant "your". This was particularly ridiculous
given the subject of the conversation :-(

About as many of them can't tell their its from their it's, and are really
lying when they think they're laying.

You probably won't believe this but it is _very_ rare for me to mess up
these simple words. Or at least it _used_ to be! Must be brain rot setting
in....

My Grade 7 and 8 grammar teachers are rolling over in their graves as they
contemplate what has become of my English.

But, we can love them, anyway, especially our fellow cat lovers, right?

Yes indeed! Bad grammar or spelling don't make you an evil person, just
someone who doesn't communicate as clearly as you would like. :-)

Annie

Rhino

"a christmas tree" wrote in message
oups.com...

---MIKE--- wrote:
Just for clarification - some words are commonly misused. Here is a
guide,
Your - possessive - belonging to.
You're - contraction - "you are"
There - at a place
Their - possessive - belonging to.
They're - contraction - "they are"



to this day I cannot tell you for certain how to spell

thier or their
peice or piece

on the Charlie Brown spelling bee, it was, "i before e except after c"

That's weird.

hard ones are like, though "even though you paid", it looks like tough
but it's not so

And that's often a worthwhile thing to do. Too often Usenet users think that
the United States is the only country in the world and that English is the
only language used by people on this planet.

Rhino

"Willow" wrote in message
...
I wasn't taking it personally.. ;o) just kinda reminding people that not
everybody is an english speaking american in here.



--
Will~

"... so that's how liberty ends, in a round of applause."

Queen Amidala, The revenge of the Syth.


"Rhino" wrote in message
.. .
Willow,

I may not be understanding your note correctly - my French is pretty
rusty! - but it looks like you think that Mike is criticizing your
grammar
in particular. I realy doubt that is the case.

I think he was reacting to something I said in the "Switching from dry
food
to canned" thread - see the comments following Joe Canuck's answer to my
question - and then generalizing from there with a general refresher for
_everyone_ on some common grammar mistakes made all the time by native
English speakers.

English is notoriously difficult as a second language due to its many
rules
and exceptions to those rules. Heck, those rules and exceptions make it a
minefield for native speakers too, especially since many schools stopped
making much effort to teach grammar 30-odd years ago. English speakers
have
no real equivalent to l'Academie du langue francais either to police the
language.

I've read several of your posts, Willow, and I had no idea you were not a
native English speaker; you're English is on a par with that of most
native
English speakers.

Rhino

"Willow" wrote in message
...
On peut faire ceci en francais. De cette facon je ne ferai pas de
fautes
et
j'aurai le plaisir immense de corriger TES fautes...

Passe une bonne journee.

--
Will~

"... so that's how liberty ends, in a round of applause."

Queen Amidala, The revenge of the Syth.


"---MIKE---" wrote in message
...
Just for clarification - some words are commonly misused. Here is a
guide,
Your - possessive - belonging to.
You're - contraction - "you are"
There - at a place
Their - possessive - belonging to.
They're - contraction - "they are"


---MIKE---
In the White Mountains of New Hampshire
(44° 15' N - Elevation 1580')

snip more useless bullcrap

what wrong rob

need to put people down just to feel good
what a sad sac

and you don't know jack about history

"RobZip" wrote in message
...

"---MIKE---" wrote in message
...
Just for clarification - some words are commonly misused. Here is a
guide,
Your - possessive - belonging to.
You're - contraction - "you are"
There - at a place
Their - possessive - belonging to.
They're - contraction - "they are"


Snippets borrowed from a long forgotten source........

Look at them. Websites. Everywhere. How many billion websites are there
now? Surf around, and for every five well-designed, easy-to-get-around,
useful sites that exist, there are 69 that suck ****, play stupid little
MIDI files, are hard to read, hard to navigate, and, more importantly,
have
obvious and glaring grammatical and spelling errors everywhere.

This sort of thing has been pointed to by many as evidence that literacy
skills are in decline at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Blaming it
all on computers is an understandable, if entirely incorrect, next step.
Consider the history of literacy. Before about 2000 BC, everybody in the
world was illiterate. When writing started to develop in China and the
Golden Crescent, it wasn't something that everybody just jumped up and
started doing. The first literate people were specialists; the myopic
computer nerd of the twenty-first century has an analogue in the 'scribe'
of the minus-twenty-first century. These scribes also often served as
priests in whatever the local religion was, especially because those who
were smart enough to read and write were generally also smart enough to
figure out eclipses, and such things.

Now that everyone has TV and everyone has a computer, a printer, and
access
to the Internet, everyone thinks they're a potential Charles Dickens. The
skyrocketing demand for 'news' filler in TV, radio, and print means that
hordes of journalism-school graduates are imposing on you constantly. The
ability to print your own material at home on your computer, and more
lately to 'print' it for the whole world to see on the World Wide Web, has
merely exacerbated that difficulty.

The problem isn't that people are less literate than they were one or two
or four hundred years ago. The problem is that instead of reading the
material of the 1% of the population who were the most literate, we can
now
read the material of almost the entire ****ing population, and literary
ability be damned.

While it probably doesn't help that schools have lately been focussing on
'whole language' (often interpreted as 'Scribble whatever you want, no-one
gives a **** if it's understandable from a grammatical, spelling, or even
legibility point of view), thereby reducing children's exposure to the
basic concepts of HOW TO ****ING SPELL and HOW TO PROPERLY PUT A ****ING
SENTENCE TOGETHER, I doubt that it matters much. The children of the
phonics era mostly weren't paying enough attention to get much of a clue,
either. And heaven knows, surviving written material from the 19th
century's plebes is replete with, uhh, imaginative spellings and
grammatical formations.

In short, the illiteracy was always there. Only now, instead of being
decently hidden in private letters, it's published to poke out the eyes of
everyone in the world who can access a computer.

The Internet is the great equaliser.

The only possible difference lies in the discrimination of the reading and
surfing public. Unfortunately, as we currently live in a society of
voluntary illiterates who seldom read anything more complicated than TV
Guide, the result is that the title of 'most clever sheep' is bestowed not
by an intelligent and omniscient shepherd, but rather, by the dumbest of
the other sheep. (See 'People's Choice Awards' for further details.)

Sort of.

I can't disagree with anything you say.

In some ways, I almost get the impression that, because the tools to
communicate are there, that people not only _can_ use them, they feel
_obligated_ to use them. Otherwise, I'm at a loss to understand the sudden
appearance of millions of blogs, most of which seem to say nothing of
interest to anyone but the writer - and even the writers seem pretty
indifferent to themselves in many cases. Or do they really imagine that I am
waiting breathlessly for more accounts of how they brushed their teeth this
morning or why they chose not to?

But I would caution you against going too far the other way, namely in the
direction of elitism. I simply refuse to regurgitate claims that
such-and-such a writer or actor is brilliant just because such-and-such a
committee of self-styled experts has decreed it to be so. That writer's
supposed brilliance simply means that he has touched the "experts" (or
bribed them) but it doesn't mean that the writer touches _me_. And I'm just
not willing to suspend my own critical faculties in deference to someone who
simply declares (or implies) that he knows more than me without proving it.

I will bow to experts on matters of _fact_ if they _demonstrate_ an
expertise (as opposed to simply claiming it). But on matters of _opinion_, I
make my own choices.

Unfortunately, all too many people are willing to abide by pronouncements of
"experts", whether they come from governments or the People's Choice Awards,
when they are on matters of _opinion_. That's just flat out wrong. Anyone
can have an _opinion_ on who is the best actress in a particular kind of
performance but no one can decree that a given person is the best actress as
a matter of _fact_. The label of "best actress" can ONLY be applied as an
opinion; there is no objective way to justify labelling anyone "best
actress" as an unassailable _fact_.

But I digress.... ;-)

Rhino

"a christmas tree" wrote in message
oups.com...
snip more useless bullcrap

what wrong rob

need to put people down just to feel good

You obviously cannot read and comprehend. The article actually elevates some
by pointing out that those who are deficient in their language skills have a
voice to be heard and make their presence known in numbers not seen before.
While those who haven't mastered the basics have always been around, we
simply hear and see more of their drivel today thus lending the impression
that overall skills have declined. It isn't so. Your lack of capitalization
and punctuation would seem to cast you among the uneducated and unwashed.

what a sad sac
My sac (sic) is quite happy.

and you don't know jack about history

Explanation and rebuttal please?