Those Pesky Homophones
As one who has been known drop a double negative or two at the grammarian’s picnic, I do find myself getting the proper and correct sequence of alphabetic characters with the necessary corresponding interjected white space all lined up in some order of sensible English.
[A discourse on blog I frequent was ongoing about the difficulties that some people, and especially non-native English speakers have, with the English language.]
And it is those homonyms and homphones that get me into trouble. And yeah! Those pesky heteronyms and polysemes and capitonyms. They’ll for sure wrap/rap themselves around my axle/axil in knots/nots that will make a pair/pare of twisted shorts look like a love fest/nest of my favorite rock group: Jacque Strawp and his All Elastic Band.
As one snarky blogger wrote once, "If it is spelled correctly---it's a typo"
And spell checker just ends up making a fool out of me.
Back in my teaching days, it never failed, I would be writing/righting on the chalk board and getting “bowl” and “bowel” mixed up in the most inappropriate ways. For I taught both nutritional physiology and culinary cuisine . . . to some of the same students!
And when I do catch myself making some horrendous gaffe in spelling, usually when it is too/to/two late to do anything about it, I just think of old President Andrew Jackson. Bless him! For with him, "It's a darn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word."
My father once told me that his English teacher at Canadian Junior College back in the ‘40’s said that there were five distinct grammatical errors in the following sentence. I think she had this as a test question. I can spot a couple, but five? And that sentence, if it even qualifies as a sentence: “Them’s them.”
And “as far as”, or horrors! “All the farther” along this line of spelling graffiti, there are some nuggets/nougats of thought.
"Justice is not spelled 'Just Us'---Power concedes nothing without demands." Frederick Douglas
And "Can you spell community without unity?"
But for me, I just give up. "Can't spell worth tish…"
The Refectory Manager
Oh! And check out Wikipedia about those nasty homophones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homonym
[A discourse on blog I frequent was ongoing about the difficulties that some people, and especially non-native English speakers have, with the English language.]
And it is those homonyms and homphones that get me into trouble. And yeah! Those pesky heteronyms and polysemes and capitonyms. They’ll for sure wrap/rap themselves around my axle/axil in knots/nots that will make a pair/pare of twisted shorts look like a love fest/nest of my favorite rock group: Jacque Strawp and his All Elastic Band.
As one snarky blogger wrote once, "If it is spelled correctly---it's a typo"
And spell checker just ends up making a fool out of me.
Back in my teaching days, it never failed, I would be writing/righting on the chalk board and getting “bowl” and “bowel” mixed up in the most inappropriate ways. For I taught both nutritional physiology and culinary cuisine . . . to some of the same students!
And when I do catch myself making some horrendous gaffe in spelling, usually when it is too/to/two late to do anything about it, I just think of old President Andrew Jackson. Bless him! For with him, "It's a darn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word."
My father once told me that his English teacher at Canadian Junior College back in the ‘40’s said that there were five distinct grammatical errors in the following sentence. I think she had this as a test question. I can spot a couple, but five? And that sentence, if it even qualifies as a sentence: “Them’s them.”
And “as far as”, or horrors! “All the farther” along this line of spelling graffiti, there are some nuggets/nougats of thought.
"Justice is not spelled 'Just Us'---Power concedes nothing without demands." Frederick Douglas
And "Can you spell community without unity?"
But for me, I just give up. "Can't spell worth tish…"
The Refectory Manager
Oh! And check out Wikipedia about those nasty homophones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homonym
posted by The Refectory Manager | 3:30 PM
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