However, my point was that “Seehund” isn’t “seal” (generic). It’s “harbour seal” (the specific species). A generic “seal” is “Robbe” in German. Thus my claim that “seehund” is “seal” is close, but not completely accurate.
In Dutch, “zeehond” - and “robbe” BTW - translates as “seal” (generic).
BTW, that the harbour seal is called “Seehund” in German isn’t very surprising. The harbor seal’s head has a rather dog-like profile, while the other common seal in those waters, the grey seal, has a more horse-like profile.
Pretty much any spelling error that can be made will be made. I guess you could call it Murfy’s Law.
What is erroneous is to think that this sort of thing is more common than it used to be. In fact, missing apostrophes and spelling errors on commercial signage are old new.
We may espouse new words, if we have Shakespearean eloquence or Einstein’s creativity. If not, colloquial English suffices. We have 171,476 words at our disposal, along with 47,156 obsolete words. Help yourself.
Yet indiscrepancy [sic] is the flyspeck. “They’d be warming up the gas chamber right now,” is the abomination.
But, of course, the Trumps are graded on a curve so this doesn’t matter.
Hi iLemming. I too am occasionally irked by people who use words they don’t really understand because they think they sound good.
Giving people a leg-up raises them to a new level; it does not accelerate them to a faster speed.
The process of dilution cannot be a slope, slippery or otherwise. You perhaps meant to say that, "the continuous dilution of the English language…leads to a slippery slope, or perhaps, “…places us on a slippery slope”; either is better, but neither really escapes the problems inherent in your mixing of metaphors.
“Laissez-faire apathy” is a tautologous pleonasm: there is no interventionist apathy. You meant of course to say invariably, not invariable, but this is doubtless a typo. (Bonus dormitat Homerus, after all.) “hoi polloi” is a noun, but in the phrase “hoi polloi usage” you are attempting to use it as an adjective. Either that or you have forgotten to make it possessive. (I.e. you would not speak of the “the common people usage”, but “the common people’s usage”.)
[quote]
English is not the conjugation convoluted and superfluously lettered French language; nor is it the arcane, multitudinous runic, chinois communication method of Mandarin.
[quote]
Firstly, “conjugation convoluted” should take a hyphen. “Multitudinous runic” is nonsense. “Mulitudinously runic” is also nonsense, but at least has the correct grammatical form. It is otiose to describe Mandarin as Chinese, even if you do so in French. The greater flaw in this sentence becomes apparent if we remove the modifiers: “English is not French; nor is it Mandarin.” True, but banal. A better formulation would be “Unlike French, English is not…;nor, unlike Mandarin, is it…”
Facile means superficial, not easy. E.g. “An easy mistake to make, if your approach to language is facile”.
A stylistic issue rather than a grammatical one: if you are attempting to write in a noticeably clever or erudite fashion, have the grace and self-confidence to avoid drawing attention to the effort you are making.
“Avail” as an intransitive verb means to be of use or to serve (e.g. “This well-meant advice on writing availed him little.”) but you do not here intend to be of use to the French, as an example or in any other way. You meant to use them as an example, in which case you should say “Availing ourselves of the French as an example”. If you’ve heard others use a word but don’t fully understand what it means, it’s probably best to avoid using it yourself until you can check how to do so properly.
Time presses, alas, so I will stop here. I hope this helps - it’s good that you tried but expressing ideas clearly can be tricky. Don’t be discouraged.
IUPAC had a good reason for that. It’s an international organization and, strange as it may seem, most languages do not have the spelling convention that PH is pronounced /f/.
iLemming had another thread not too long ago, which I’m too lazy to look up at this hour. It was quite similar in tone. I eventually concluded he was engaging in performance art.
If any of our German Dopers drive by they may be able to correct me, but what I remember hearing my coworkers say is just “Google”. It’s a proper noun, not a generic noun, so it carries no article.
