'Sneaky Words' - a spelling conundrum.
Django Cat
last year or so to describe a particular type of spelling error. What
happens is that a student misspells a word they intended to write, but
the misspelling is, itself, a legitimate word. Crucially, it’s a word
which is recognised by the Word spell-checker dictionaries. This
means that when the student looks back through their work there’s no
squiggly red underlinings to show up the error.
My own classic, which I probably do as often as not, is to type ‘form’
when the word I intended was ‘from’ – I bet I’m not the only person
here who does that one. Another I see all the time in assignments by
business students is ‘manger’ written instead of ‘manager’. Here’s a
list of some Sneaky Words spotted recently in student writing, the
intended word given first, followed by the misspelling:
Can’t/cat
Diary/dairy
Exist/exit
Feel/fell
For/fro
Form/from
Manager/manger
Quiet/quite/quit
Time/tome
Though/tough
Thought/though
Through/trough
I’d be very interested to gather further examples spotted in the wild
by AUErs, but please note I’m interested only in actual errors found
in WP documents, rather than hypothetical Sneaky sets: if I’d started
making up my own possible examples this would be a much longer list,
but of less use in providing clues as to what’s happening when a
student writes.
Another point is that these are examples caused either by typos or by
genuine ignorance of how the word is spelt (in the case of manager/
manger, possibly conditioned by phonics). I’ve just finished
proofreading a PhD thesis, throughout which the student (otherwise a
very smart cookie indeed) writes ‘sighted’ when he means ‘cited’, but
that’s not sneakyism, it’s a genuine ignorance[1] that there are two
separate words here; ‘sighted’ is the spelling he intended to write.
Nor is this a question of usage; if I was making these up I’d probably
put in the old favourite homonymical set
there/their/they’re[2].
However, I’ve genuinely never seen a student (and I’m talking about
second-language English speakers here) make mistakes with these.
Another thing that happens is that some of the sneaky misspellings are
completely unfamiliar to students as words anyway. No student in my
classes has ever previously encountered the word ‘tome’ and, given
that my lot don’t spend that much time feeding farm animals AFAIK,
nobody’s ever come across the words ‘trough’ or ‘manger’ either. This
also means that most Sneakies only usually work in one direction
(though it’s quite possible to imagine though/thought, but the only
example of this one I’ve seen – and only once and that in my own
writing – was thought/though).
The reason why I tell students about this stuff, and show them my
list, is to encourage them to check these particular sneaky words when
they proofread their work, hence why I'd like to gather some more
examples.
The other request I’d like to make of AUErs is for suggestions to coin
a term for this phenomenon (unless one already exists, in which case
I’d be glad to have it pointed out TVM). Hopefully™ something ending
in –nym. None of the words on my list are either homonyms or
synonyms, and while there may be Sneaky Words that are one or other or
even both (hear/here comes to mind), that doesn’t get to the heart of
sneakyism. I thought of ‘Sneakynyms’ but somehow, that just doesn’t
cut the condiment. What’s Latin for ‘spell checker limitation’?
[1] Let’s hear it for Genuine Ignorance.
[2] Try not to get all rhotic on this one please. It works in my
context.
DC. Back Tuesday. Skitt’s law may apply.
cybercypher
> "Sneaky Words" is a term that's evolved in my writing
> classes over the last year or so to describe a particular type of
> spelling error. What happens is that a student misspells a word
> they intended to write, but the misspelling is, itself, a
> legitimate word. Crucially, it's a word which is recognised by
> the Word spell-checker dictionaries. This means that when the
> student looks back through their work there's no squiggly red
> underlinings to show up the error.
>
> My own classic, which I probably do as often as not, is to type
> "form" when the word I intended was "from" -- I bet I'm
> not the only person here who does that one. Another I see all the
> time in assignments by business students is "manger" written
> instead of "manager". Here's a list of some Sneaky Words
> spotted recently in student writing, the intended word given
> first, followed by the misspelling:
>
> Can't/cat
> Diary/dairy
> Exist/exit
> Feel/fell
I do this one a lot. It's a typo.
> For/fro
> Form/from
Students do this one a lot. It's an "I didn't bother proofreading"
mistake.
> Manager/manger
> Quiet/quite/quit
Students do this one a lot. It's an "I didn't bother proofreading"
mistake.
--
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor
Native speaker of American English; posting from Taiwan.
"It has come to my attention that my opinions are not universally
shared." Scott Adams, The Dilbert Blog, 23 Jan 2007;
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/
teranews charges a one-time US$3.95 setup fee
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Django Cat
> Django Cat <vivjunkm...@lineone.net> wrote
Well, yes, but the pedagogic point may be, "I relied on technology to
do (some of) my proofreading for me (and it let me down)".
I'm off somewhere there's no computers for a couple of days. Catch
you anon.
DC
HVS
> On 29 Apr, 12:57, cybercypher <dontbot...@easypeasy.com> wrote:
-snip-
>> Students do this one a lot. It's an "I didn't bother
>> proofreading" mistake.
>>
>
> Well, yes, but the pedagogic point may be, "I relied on
> technology to do (some of) my proofreading for me (and it let me
> down)".
Also, proofreading one's own work is notoriously tricky: even when
proofing fairly carefully, it's not uncommon to read what you thought
you wrote, rather than what you actually wrote.
You could add "oft he" for "of the" to your list of errors. I found
I was making that one so often that I added it to auto-correct.
(I can't imagine needing to write "oft he"; if I did it would be
sufficiently strange that I'd remember to undo the auto-correct.)
--
Cheers, Harvey
Canadian and British English, indiscriminately mixed
Daniel Damouth
news:Xns9921987B...@62.253.170.163:
> On 29 Apr 2007, Django Cat wrote
>
>> On 29 Apr, 12:57, cybercypher <dontbot...@easypeasy.com> wrote:
>
> -snip-
>
>>> Students do this one a lot. It's an "I didn't bother
>>> proofreading" mistake.
>>>
>>
>> Well, yes, but the pedagogic point may be, "I relied on
>> technology to do (some of) my proofreading for me (and it let me
>> down)".
>
> Also, proofreading one's own work is notoriously tricky: even when
> proofing fairly carefully, it's not uncommon to read what you
> thought you wrote, rather than what you actually wrote.
>
> You could add "oft he" for "of the" to your list of errors. I
> found I was making that one so often that I added it to
> auto-correct.
I have the persistent habit of leaving the 'y' off of 'they'.
-Dan Damouth
HVS
> HVS <use...@REMOVETHISwhhvs.co.uk> wrote in
> news:Xns9921987B...@62.253.170.163:
>
>> You could add "oft he" for "of the" to your list of errors. I
>> found I was making that one so often that I added it to
>> auto-correct.
>
> I have the persistent habit of leaving the 'y' off of 'they'.
One that really bothers me is my recently-developed trick of double-
striking the "o" of "to", and typing "too".
The worst bit is that the result doesn't look like a typo: it looks
like serious illiteracy.
Philip Eden
.
The other request I'd like to make of AUErs is for suggestions to coin
a term for this phenomenon (unless one already exists, in which case
I'd be glad to have it pointed out TVM). HopefullyT something ending
in -nym. None of the words on my list are either homonyms or
synonyms, and while there may be Sneaky Words that are one or other or
even both (hear/here comes to mind), that doesn't get to the heart of
sneakyism. I thought of 'Sneakynyms' but somehow, that just doesn't
cut the condiment. What's Latin for 'spell checker limitation'?
None of the vaguely appropriate Greek routes, I mean roots,
looks memorable or trip-off-the-tonguable ... but how about
a "proxinym", which has the additional advantage of sort of
being one itself: "approxinym".
Philip Eden
HVS
Since a lot of these are caused by touch-typing errors, how 'bout
"qwertynym"?
Mike Lyle
"Django Cat" <vivju...@lineone.net> wrote in message
news:1177849289.6...@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
[...]
The other request I'd like to make of AUErs is for suggestions to coin
a term for this phenomenon (unless one already exists, in which case
synonyms, and while there may be Sneaky Words that are one or other or
even both (hear/here comes to mind), that doesn't get to the heart of
sneakyism. I thought of 'Sneakynyms' but somehow, that just doesn't
cut the condiment. What's Latin for 'spell checker limitation'?
I think we need Greek here. "Continonym" would come from the word for
"close", but might get confused in some way with the Latin dertivatives.
Getting awry form he lures, "Spelch"? "Typonym"? "Microplop"? "Emsword"
appeals to me: I'm sure that if he used MSWord, Ld Emsworth would be
doing them all the time.
--
Mike.
HVS
>
> "Django Cat" <vivju...@lineone.net> wrote in message
> news:1177849289.6...@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> [...]
> The other request I'd like to make of AUErs is for suggestions
> to coin a term for this phenomenon (unless one already exists,
> in which case I'd be glad to have it pointed out TVM).
> HopefullyT something ending in -nym. None of the words on my
> list are either homonyms or synonyms, and while there may be
> Sneaky Words that are one or other or even both (hear/here comes
> to mind), that doesn't get to the heart of sneakyism. I thought
> of 'Sneakynyms' but somehow, that just doesn't cut the
> condiment. What's Latin for 'spell checker limitation'?
>
> I think we need Greek here. "Continonym" would come from the
> word for "close", but might get confused in some way with the
> Latin dertivatives. Getting awry form he lures, "Spelch"?
> "Typonym"?
That one occurred to me, too.
Donna Richoux
> The other request I'd like to make of AUErs is for suggestions to coin
> a term for this phenomenon (unless one already exists, in which case
> I'd be glad to have it pointed out TVM). Hopefully something ending
> in -nym. None of the words on my list are either homonyms or
> synonyms, and while there may be Sneaky Words that are one or other or
> even both (hear/here comes to mind), that doesn't get to the heart of
> sneakyism. I thought of 'Sneakynyms' but somehow, that just doesn't
> cut the condiment.
I think I should point out, before this discussion gets much deeper,
that the final element is "-onym" not "-nym". From Greek onoma, onyma,
name.
This came up in the discussion of whether there should be "contronyms"
or "contranyms".
The "o" in biology, psychology, etc, does seem to be a mere connecting
noise. But not this one.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Prai Jei
<1177849289.6...@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>:
> ‘Sneaky Words’ is a term that’s evolved in my writing classes over the
> last year or so to describe a particular type of spelling error. What
> happens is that a student misspells a word they intended to write, but
> the misspelling is, itself, a legitimate word. Crucially, it’s a word
> which is recognised by the Word spell-checker dictionaries. This
> means that when the student looks back through their work there’s no
> squiggly red underlinings to show up the error.
explore/explode
word/work
keep/keel
A possible cause of such errors is where a letter has been omitted. The
spell-chucker picks it up and offers several alternatives, but the victim
is so used to just hitting ENTER in response that he doesn't chick weather
the worm at the top of the lisp is the one he actually wanes.
> I’ve just finished
> proofreading a PhD thesis, throughout which the student (otherwise a
> very smart cookie indeed) writes ‘sighted’ when he means ‘cited
Sure he didn't mean sited?
--
Two-colour printing (red/black/blue/green) available
Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply
Don Phillipson
>
> > > Manager/manger
> > > Quiet/quite/quit
> >
> > Students do this one a lot. It's an "I didn't bother proofreading"
> > mistake.
Django Cat" <vivju...@lineone.net> wrote in message
news:1177854341....@o5g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> Well, yes, but the pedagogic point may be, "I relied on technology to
> do (some of) my proofreading for me (and it let me down)".
The practical point is that this fails as an excuse
(and if students offer it as an excuse, it suggests
defective understanding of what excusing means.)
It is simply a renarration of the student's failure to
attempt to do what was within his capacity to do
-- remediable by future action, but not by these words.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Don Phillipson
news:4634c07f$0$10726$db0f...@news.zen.co.uk...
> The other request I'd like to make of AUErs is for suggestions to coin
> a term for this phenomenon (unless one already exists, in which case
> I'd be glad to have it pointed out TVM).
Newspapermen call (or used to call) persistent
errors Eluders (and occasionally published updated
lists of the most common.) This was in the days
when they preferred Orwellian simplicity to exotic
coinages ending in -nym.
Peter Moylan
> Since a lot of these are caused by touch-typing errors, how 'bout
> "qwertynym"?
It's not any old touch-typing error, it's a special kind. Your fingers
are trained to follow a certain pattern, and they go ahead and do it
regardless of what your brain had in mind.
One of my most common errors is to add an extra letter, to turn the
intended word into an equally valid (but inappropriate) word. This sort
of error rarely makes it into the final copy, because I see it on the
screen as I'm typing. It merely makes me use the "backspace" key more
often than I'd like to. Sorry, but I can't think of examples for the moment.
I did, however, see an example as I was typing the above paragraph:
that instead of than
That again was something that I caught as I was typing, because I was
looking at the screen. Perhaps that sort of error turns up more often
with those whose typing skills are so good that they don't bother to
look at the screen. Typically, the only time I type without looking at
the screen is when I'm copy-typing, and therefore concentrating on the
original.
One thing I strongly suspect is that this sort of error was less common
before the widespread use of spelling checkers. I'm in the habit of
re-reading anything I type before sending it off. (If it's important
enough to print, I read the printed copy rather than - or as well as -
the screen copy. I find that I catch more errors on paper than on the
screen.) I've noticed that many people seem to believe that they don't
need to proofread if they have a spieling chucker. Thus, if we're going
to find a name for the phenomenon, I'd prefer to see something that
suggests lack of proofreading.
--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain
eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists, and I can no longer
receive mail at my newcastle.edu.au addresses. The optusnet
address could disappear at any time.
Oleg Lego
>HVS wrote:
>
>> Since a lot of these are caused by touch-typing errors, how 'bout
>> "qwertynym"?
>
>It's not any old touch-typing error, it's a special kind. Your fingers
>are trained to follow a certain pattern, and they go ahead and do it
>regardless of what your brain had in mind.
>
>One of my most common errors is to add an extra letter, to turn the
>intended word into an equally valid (but inappropriate) word. This sort
>of error rarely makes it into the final copy, because I see it on the
>screen as I'm typing. It merely makes me use the "backspace" key more
>often than I'd like to. Sorry, but I can't think of examples for the moment.
>
>I did, however, see an example as I was typing the above paragraph:
> that instead of than
>That again was something that I caught as I was typing, because I was
>looking at the screen.
When I look atthe screen, my typing enfs yo lookuen lume thid.
R H Draney
>
>I think we need Greek here. "Continonym" would come from the word for
>"close", but might get confused in some way with the Latin dertivatives.
>Getting awry form he lures, "Spelch"? "Typonym"? "Microplop"? "Emsword"
>appeals to me: I'm sure that if he used MSWord, Ld Emsworth would be
>doing them all the time.
It's a "checko"....r
--
"You got Schadenfreude on my Weltanschauung!"
"You got Weltanschauung in my Schadenfreude!"
Daniel al-Autistiqui
wrote:
>‘Sneaky Words’ is a term that’s evolved in my writing classes over the
>last year or so to describe a particular type of spelling error. What
>happens is that a student misspells a word they intended to write, but
>the misspelling is, itself, a legitimate word. Crucially, it’s a word
>which is recognised by the Word spell-checker dictionaries. This
>means that when the student looks back through their work there’s no
>squiggly red underlinings to show up the error.
>
[...]
>Another thing that happens is that some of the sneaky misspellings are
>completely unfamiliar to students as words anyway. No student in my
>classes has ever previously encountered the word ‘tome’ and, given
>that my lot don’t spend that much time feeding farm animals AFAIK,
>nobody’s ever come across the words ‘trough’ or ‘manger’ either. This
>also means that most Sneakies only usually work in one direction
>(though it’s quite possible to imagine though/thought, but the only
>example of this one I’ve seen – and only once and that in my own
>writing – was thought/though).
>
Yes, I did once see, in a printed book, a phrase involving "It looks
as thought...".
I also remember when I was about 7 or 8 and we were doing a worksheet
in school, something about articles of clothing I guess. Believe it
or not, the first question on the sheet read,
What is the same about a book and a shoe?
I actually proceeded as hard as I could to "erase" the last letter of
the seventh word. Then I supplied the missing "t"!
daniel mcgrath
--
Daniel Gerard McGrath, a/k/a "Govende":
for e-mail replace "invalid" with "com"
Developmentally disabled;
has Autism (Pervasive Developmental Disorder),
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder,
& periodic bouts of depression.
[This signature is under construction.]
Django Cat
wrote:
> > On 29 Apr, 12:57, cybercypher <dontbot...@easypeasy.com> wrote:
>
> > > > Manager/manger
> > > > Quiet/quite/quit
>
> > > Students do this one a lot. It's an "I didn't bother proofreading"
> > > mistake.
>
> news:1177854341....@o5g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
>
> > Well, yes, but the pedagogic point may be, "I relied on technology to
> > do (some of) my proofreading for me (and it let me down)".
>
> The practical point is that this fails as an excuse
> (and if students offer it as an excuse, it suggests
> defective understanding of what excusing means.)
> It is simply a renarration of the student's failure to
> attempt to do what was within his capacity to do
> -- remediable by future action, but not by these words.
>
Ya but... I actually teach Academic Writing to students for whom
English is a foreign language - in many cases, a very foreign
language. If a student gives me an assignment full of Sneakies or any
other systematic errors, I'm not in the business of accusing them of
making excuses for shoddy work, I'm interested in finding out why the
errors occurred and helping them avoid making the same errors in
future - and it may well be that the student really does think the
word processor will point out all spelling mistakes to him/her. I
know when I have to write something on WP I tend to type copy quickly,
not stopping to worry about spelling and thereby slowing my
composition down. When I stop to think I look for red underlining,
and that's where Sneakies get a chance to creep into my own writing.
I'm lucky that my students are pretty well motivated - they badly want
to develop their language to the level they need to follow
postgraduate courses in the following years - we don't really have an
excuse and blame relationship.
DC
Django Cat
> Django Cat (or somebody else of the same name) wrote thusly in message
>
> > 'Sneaky Words' is a term that's evolved in my writing classes over the
> > last year or so to describe a particular type of spelling error. What
> > happens is that a student misspells a word they intended to write, but
> > the misspelling is, itself, a legitimate word. Crucially, it's a word
> > which is recognised by the Word spell-checker dictionaries. This
> > means that when the student looks back through their work there's no
> > squiggly red underlinings to show up the error.
>
> explore/explode
> word/work
> keep/keel
>
> A possible cause of such errors is where a letter has been omitted. The
> spell-chucker picks it up and offers several alternatives, but the victim
> is so used to just hitting ENTER in response that he doesn't chick weather
> the worm at the top of the lisp is the one he actually wanes.
>
> > I've just finished
> > proofreading a PhD thesis, throughout which the student (otherwise a
> > very smart cookie indeed) writes 'sighted' when he means 'cited
>
> Sure he didn't mean sited?
> --
Sure. He might well have done, but he didn't.
DC
Django Cat
>
> - Show quoted text -
Thanks for lots of good ideas so far. This morning's class had this
example:
politic/political
again, with a group that had no idea that there was any such word as
'politic' or what it might mean.
Thanks also for the terminology ideas - I really like Proxi(o)nyms,
Eluders and Checkos.
DC
cybercypher
[...]
> this example:
>
> politic/political
>
> again, with a group that had no idea that there was any such word
> as 'politic' or what it might mean.
>
> Thanks also for the terminology ideas - I really like
> Proxi(o)nyms, Eluders and Checkos.
One of the things that happens with Chinese speakers is that they
frequently use nouns for adjectives (e.g., "She was happiness" instead
of "happy") and verbs because in Chinese there is no morphemic
difference. The same two characters can be used as either, and only
context makes a difference.
Django Cat
> Django Cat <vivjunkm...@lineone.net> wrote
> [...]
>
> > Thanks for lots of good ideas so far. This morning's class had
> > this example:
>
> > politic/political
>
> > again, with a group that had no idea that there was any such word
> > as 'politic' or what it might mean.
>
> > Thanks also for the terminology ideas - I really like
> > Proxi(o)nyms, Eluders and Checkos.
>
> One of the things that happens with Chinese speakers is that they
> frequently use nouns for adjectives (e.g., "She was happiness" instead
> of "happy") and verbs because in Chinese there is no morphemic
> difference. The same two characters can be used as either, and only
> context makes a difference.
>
> --
Right, thanks for that Franke, I see that all the time. Only this
morning we got in a twist with my writing class - 2 PRC, 2 Taiwanese,
2 Koreans, 1 Thai, 2 Saudis, 1 Libyan - over 'Economy' and 'Economic'.
DC
cybercypher
> On 1 May, 14:21, cybercypher <dontbot...@easypeasy.com> wrote:
>> Django Cat <vivjunkm...@lineone.net> wrote
>> [...]
>> One of the things that happens with Chinese speakers is that they
>> frequently use nouns for adjectives (e.g., "She was happiness"
>> instead of "happy") and verbs because in Chinese there is no
>> morphemic difference. The same two characters can be used as
>> either, and only context makes a difference.
> Right, thanks for that Franke, I see that all the time. Only this
> morning we got in a twist with my writing class - 2 PRC, 2
> Taiwanese, 2 Koreans, 1 Thai, 2 Saudis, 1 Libyan - over 'Economy'
> and 'Economic'.
Well, "economy class" is a legitimate ADJ+NOUN phrase, except that
"economy" is a noun functioning as an adjective in that case, so
everyone has a right to wonder why they can't say "economic class" or
"economical class" there.
Django Cat
> Django Cat <vivjunkm...@lineone.net> wrote
>
> > On 1 May, 14:21, cybercypher <dontbot...@easypeasy.com> wrote:
> >> Django Cat <vivjunkm...@lineone.net> wrote
> >> [...]
> [...]
> >> One of the things that happens with Chinese speakers is that they
> >> frequently use nouns for adjectives (e.g., "She was happiness"
> >> instead of "happy") and verbs because in Chinese there is no
> >> morphemic difference. The same two characters can be used as
> >> either, and only context makes a difference.
> > Right, thanks for that Franke, I see that all the time. Only this
> > morning we got in a twist with my writing class - 2 PRC, 2
> > Taiwanese, 2 Koreans, 1 Thai, 2 Saudis, 1 Libyan - over 'Economy'
> > and 'Economic'.
>
> Well, "economy class" is a legitimate ADJ+NOUN phrase, except that
> "economy" is a noun functioning as an adjective in that case, so
> everyone has a right to wonder why they can't say "economic class" or
> "economical class" there.
>
Indeed. I think what we got was *"China and the US are two of the
major economic (sic) in the World".
Any idea what that 'in the World' is about? That's another one I see
in all Chinese speakers writing. Is it like 'nowadays'? Do you have
to put something into Chinese writing that contextualises place?
DC
cybercypher
> major economic (sic) in the World".
I'm not shocked at the elided "powers" or misspelled "economies". That
is typical, especially when students regurgitate what they've almost
memorized.
> Any idea what that 'in the World' is about? That's another one I
> see in all Chinese speakers writing. Is it like 'nowadays'? Do
> you have to put something into Chinese writing that contextualises
> place?
Capitalization is another problem that doesn't exist in Chinese, of
course. And English has a lot of capitalization inconsistencies. Maybe
the writer studied German: "sind zwei der ökonomischen
hauptsächlichenergien in der Welt" [AltaVista BabelFish translation].
I've not really had to deal with that problem very much. Usually it's
scare quotes around names.
--
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor
Native speaker of American English; posting from Taiwan.
"It has come to my attention that my opinions are not universally
shared." Scott Adams, The Dilbert Blog, 23 Jan 2007;
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/
teranews charges a one-time US$3.95 setup fee
R H Draney
>
>Indeed. I think what we got was *"China and the US are two of the
>major economic (sic) in the World".
>
>Any idea what that 'in the World' is about? That's another one I see
>in all Chinese speakers writing. Is it like 'nowadays'? Do you have
>to put something into Chinese writing that contextualises place?
Dig this...first the headline:
Thailand Identified as World Top Holiday Destination
Wouldn't have been your first guess?...here's the lead paragraph:
A recent survey of international travelers has identified Thailand as the
world's top travel destination despite a widespread perception that the country
suffers from "civil unrest".
And now that you're sufficiently gobsmacked, here's the source:
The survey, conducted by Visa International Asia Pacific and the Pacific Asia
Travel Association (PATA), found that 52 percent of respondents were considering
Asia as their next travel destination, 9 percent more than in the previous
year's survey.
Maybe this is true...or maybe the joint venture performing the survey are
selecting respondents non-randomly...but there's that word "World" in the
headline....r
Mark Brader
> Indeed. I think what we got was *"China and the US are two of the
> major economic (sic) in the World".
>
> Any idea what that 'in the World' is about?
Seems natural to me. Makes it clear that you aren't just talking about
the Northern Hemisphere, for example.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | "My ambition is to see a saying of mine attributed
m...@vex.net | to Dorothy Parker or Mark Twain." -- Joe Fineman
cybercypher
> "Viv":
>> Indeed. I think what we got was *"China and the US are two of
>> the major economic (sic) in the World".
>>
>> Any idea what that 'in the World' is about?
>
> Seems natural to me. Makes it clear that you aren't just talking
> about the Northern Hemisphere, for example.
That's obvious. But the obvious point of the question wooshed right
past you, Brader: the majuscule "W".
--
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor
Native speaker of American English; posting from Taiwan.
"It has come to my attention that my opinions are not universally
shared." Scott Adams, The Dilbert Blog, 23 Jan 2007;
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/
teranews charges a one-time US$3.95 setup fee
--
Richard Bollard
wrote:
>On 29 Apr 2007, Daniel Damouth wrote
>
>> HVS <use...@REMOVETHISwhhvs.co.uk> wrote in
>> news:Xns9921987B...@62.253.170.163:
>>
>>> You could add "oft he" for "of the" to your list of errors. I
>>> found I was making that one so often that I added it to
>>> auto-correct.
>>
>> I have the persistent habit of leaving the 'y' off of 'they'.
>
>One that really bothers me is my recently-developed trick of double-
>striking the "o" of "to", and typing "too".
>
>The worst bit is that the result doesn't look like a typo: it looks
>like serious illiteracy.
People continually leave the "r" off "your". For example "I have
attached a copy of you form".
--
Richard Bollard
Canberra Australia
To email, I'm at AMT not spAMT.
Django Cat
>
> - Show quoted text -
I do that, certainly one for the list.
DC
Django Cat
> m...@vex.net (Mark Brader) wrote
>
> > "Viv":
> >> Indeed. I think what we got was *"China and the US are two of
> >> the major economic (sic) in the World".
>
> >> Any idea what that 'in the World' is about?
>
> > Seems natural to me. Makes it clear that you aren't just talking
> > about the Northern Hemisphere, for example.
>
> That's obvious. But the obvious point of the question wooshed right
> past you, Brader: the majuscule "W".
>
> --
>
No, I wasn't interested in the capitalisation. As Mark points out,
it's not unreasonable to use that 'in the w/World' in that particular
example sentence. But the Chinese speakers whose assignments I read
often use the phrase 'in the world' where it's totally redundant
(right now I can't find an example though).
In the past we've discussed Chinese speakers' overuse of the word
'nowadays', being due to Chinese languages not having tenses, and a
time marker word being needed to show that it's past present or future
we're talking about. This gives rise to sentences like:
'Nowadays globalisation is increasingly significant'.
To an English speaker that 'nowadays' is redundant; we know we're
talking about 'nowadays' because of the tense of the verb in the
sentence, but the Chinese writer thought we needed to be told. I
wondered if in a sentence like:
'China is a major economy in the World'
that 'in the (W)orld' represented another type of word or character
that goes in Chinese writing and says 'we're talking about places/
reality/location here, not abstract ideas/opinions/thoughts '.
There's also the fact that I read an awful lot of student pieces
containing sentences like:
'In my opinion China is a large country in Asia'.
Probably not. Forget I asked.
DC
cybercypher
> On 2 May, 02:30, cybercypher <dontbot...@easypeasy.com> wrote:
>> m...@vex.net (Mark Brader) wrote
>>
>> > "Viv":
>> >> Indeed. I think what we got was *"China and the US are two of
>> >> the major economic (sic) in the World".
>>
>> >> Any idea what that 'in the World' is about?
>>
>> > Seems natural to me. Makes it clear that you aren't just
>> > talking about the Northern Hemisphere, for example.
>>
>> That's obvious. But the obvious point of the question wooshed
>> right past you, Brader: the majuscule "W".
>
> out, it's not unreasonable to use that 'in the w/World' in that
> particular example sentence. But the Chinese speakers whose
> assignments I read often use the phrase 'in the world' where it's
> totally redundant (right now I can't find an example though).
I should think that it's reasonable to distinguish between the region
and the world. I don't know whether "in the world" is one of those
necessary constructs in Chinese the way in "it's red color" the
"color" is necessary, though, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear
that it is. The students in my speech classes throw those kind of
useless, redundant, uninformative phrases at me all the time in their
direct translations, and I have to keep reminding them not to
translate literally and directly form one language into the other.
My question for that writer would be why the "W", but I'd comment on
the redundancy of "in the world" if it were unnecessary in the
context of the writer's essay.
> In the past we've discussed Chinese speakers' overuse of the word
> 'nowadays', being due to Chinese languages not having tenses, and
> a time marker word being needed to show that it's past present or
> future we're talking about. This gives rise to sentences like:
>
> 'Nowadays globalisation is increasingly significant'.
I would think that this is also indicative of a love of showing off a
standard idiom they've learned in high school. I hate the word
myself, although I'll use it when it seems reasonable, but it cloys
when I hear it.
They are also fond of throwing in adages like "a penny saved is a
penny earned" and "a friend in need is a freind indeed", which I must
hear at least twice a week every week that I remain here.
> To an English speaker that 'nowadays' is redundant; we know we're
> talking about 'nowadays' because of the tense of the verb in the
> sentence, but the Chinese writer thought we needed to be told. I
> wondered if in a sentence like:
>
> 'China is a major economy in the World'
>
> that 'in the (W)orld' represented another type of word or
> character that goes in Chinese writing and says 'we're talking
> about places/ reality/location here, not abstract
> ideas/opinions/thoughts '. There's also the fact that I read an
> awful lot of student pieces containing sentences like:
One of the problems with the way English writing is taught in China,
Japan, Korea, and Taiwan is that students are forced to memorize
stock phrases that they are told to throw in whenever they can fit
them in, because if they've actually memorized them correctly, it
will increase their ratio of correct to incorrect English. Therefore,
on essay tests, they will get higher grades. That, of course, is only
if low-level non-native English teachers are grading the papers.
Native speakers and high-level non-native English teachers will
recognize the padding for exactly what it is.
These phrases are sometimes hilariously vapid, e.g., "It cannot be
denied that" -- which provides the essay with five words in a row
without a grammar mistake.
> 'In my opinion China is a large country in Asia'.
"In my opinion" is another one of those useless three-word phrases
that concatenate without a grammatical clinker. This has nothing to
do with a conscious choice of words that do any kind of active work
in the paragraph or essay. Students are not taught to think
critically but only to regurgitate. Even students who study abroad
and do learn in foreign classrooms to ask questions, to challenge the
teacher, to think critically, to write interestingly, etc., soon
learn that it's dangerous to do so in Taiwan and Japan and China and
Korea. They are challenging the authority of the teacher. My son
sometimes tells me that the way he pronounces an English word is the
way his Taiwanese teacher told him to pronounce it. I tell him it's
wrong but not to say that to his teacher lest he be punished for it.
> Probably not. Forget I asked.
--
CyberCypher
> 'nowadays', being due to Chinese languages not having tenses, and a
> time marker word being needed to show that it's past present or future
> we're talking about. This gives rise to sentences like:
>
> 'Nowadays globalisation is increasingly significant'.
>
> To an English speaker that 'nowadays' is redundant; we know we're
> talking about 'nowadays' because of the tense of the verb in the
> sentence, but the Chinese writer thought we needed to be told. I
> wondered if in a sentence like:
>
> 'China is a major economy in the World'
>
> that 'in the (W)orld' represented another type of word or character
> that goes in Chinese writing and says 'we're talking about places/
> reality/location here, not abstract ideas/opinions/thoughts '.
> There's also the fact that I read an awful lot of student pieces
> containing sentences like:
>
> 'In my opinion China is a large country in Asia'.
Here's a typical example of a Taiwanese writing problem:
"Although she is already forty years old, she has black long[1] hair
and is rather tall; many people saw[2] her say she looks young."
The first problem [1] is the order of adjectives, of course, but the
second [2] is the kind of uncritical no-thought process that goes into
writing a sentence that states the pie-in-the-face obvious: "people
who see her say that she looks young". How else would they know? No
one who doesn't see her will ever say that "she looks young"; all they
can say is "so-and-so said that she looks young" or "I heard that she
looks young". In another essay from this class, the writer says of her
friend "She has a[3] liquid dark hair". Again, no critical thinking
because there are no articles in Chinese, so they don't mean anything
to her. But if you asked if she is wearing a shoe, she would reply
that she's wearing "shoes" or "two shoes", or "Do you have a cell
phone?". she would reply "I have two sell phones. Do you want to
borrow one?"
-
Mike Lyle
[...]
> My son
> sometimes tells me that the way he pronounces an English word is the
> way his Taiwanese teacher told him to pronounce it. I tell him it's
> wrong but not to say that to his teacher lest he be punished for it.
I may have been drawing false inferences all the time, so is TW really
such a hell-hole?
--
Mike.
Bob Cunningham
<Cyber...@gmail.com> said:
> On May 2, 8:16 pm, Django Cat <vivjunkm...@lineone.net> wrote:
> [...]
> > In the past we've discussed Chinese speakers' overuse of the word
> > 'nowadays', being due to Chinese languages not having tenses, and a
> > time marker word being needed to show that it's past present or future
> > we're talking about.
[...]
I seem to remember that Russian has a word "ball" that's
used with numbers when no specific units seem necessary.
It's like in English saying, instead of "His IQ is 97",
"His IQ is 97 balls".
But maybe I'm remembering wrong.
athel...@yahoo
> HVS wrote:
> > Since a lot of these are caused by touch-typing errors, how 'bout
> > "qwertynym"?
>
> It's not any old touch-typing error, it's a special kind. Your fingers
> are trained to follow a certain pattern, and they go ahead and do it
> regardless of what your brain had in mind.
>
remarkably long-lived. More than 35 years ago when I lived in Berkeley
I found I nearly always typed it as "Berekeley" -- a real pain in the
neck, too, because it meant getting out the Snopake, painting over the
error, waiting for it to dry (or not waiting and having a horrible
mess when one typed over it), and then retyping. In the long period
since I have rarely needed to type the word at all, but when I do it
comes out once again as "Berekeley" unless I type it very slowly and
think about each letter. I finally fixed the problem by using my
abbreviation-expansion software to treat "Berekeley" as an
abbreviation for "Berkeley".
athel
athel...@yahoo
[ ... ]
> before the widespread use of spelling checkers. I'm in the habit of
> re-reading anything I type before sending it off. (If it's important
> enough to print, I read the printed copy rather than - or as well as -
> the screen copy. I find that I catch more errors on paper than on the
> screen.)
I find I see _many_ more errors on paper than I do on the screen.
However, I find it's a lot better to have the computer read the text
out loud: even though the expressionless computer voice grates quite a
lot I nearly always notice when it tries to pronounce a misspelt word.
(However, one such system I used insisted on vocalizing "Press" as
"Presidents", which struck me as weird: I can see the sense of
vocalizing "Pres." as "President", but it's not a word I often need in
the plural.)
athel
cybercypher
> cybercypher wrote:
> [...]
>> My son
>> sometimes tells me that the way he pronounces an English word is
>> the way his Taiwanese teacher told him to pronounce it. I tell
>> him it's wrong but not to say that to his teacher lest he be
>> punished for it.
>
> I may have been drawing false inferences all the time, so is TW
> really such a hell-hole?
It's awful for school kids. When their teachers aren't bitting their
hands with rulers or slapping them or denying them the right to go to
the toilet, their parents are harping at them all the time to get
high scores on all their tests because "education is the key to
success in life". They have tests all the time, and all they get to
do in most classes after elementary school is listen and memorize or
regurgitate and recite. I'm sure some of the Taiwanese, Japanese,
Korean, and mainland Chinese students (and former students) who hang
out here will tell you that they spend or spent most of their youth
at public school, private school, and cram school having garbage
forced into their heads.
What's amazing is how warm and kind the Japanese and Taiwanese are
despite being robbed of their youth. I can't say anything about
Koreans or mainland Chinese because I never lived in Korea or the
PRC, but I know about their educational systems from friends and
local teachers that I've met from there.
I try to make my classes as funny and interesting as possible for the
students. I give them as much latitude as I can to talk about
anything they want to, as long as they use English. I'm one of the
few EFL teachers who doesn't have to complain that making Taiwanese
students talk is like pulling teeth. They love to talk in my classes.
And I seem to have a knack for choosing the right kinds of methods
and materials to open them up. Sure, I have dead classes sometimes,
but that's my fault. The teacher's job is to motivate, not dictate,
so if I don't get the responses I hope for, I blame myself, not the
students.
--
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor
Native speaker of American English; posting from Taiwan.
"It has come to my attention that my opinions are not universally
shared." Scott Adams, The Dilbert Blog, 23 Jan 2007;
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/
teranews charges a one-time US$3.95 setup fee
--
Django Cat
>
> > No, I wasn't interested in the capitalisation. As Mark points
> > out, it's not unreasonable to use that 'in the w/World' in that
> > particular example sentence. But the Chinese speakers whose
> > assignments I read often use the phrase 'in the world' where it's
> > totally redundant (right now I can't find an example though).
>
> I should think that it's reasonable to distinguish between the region
> and the world. I don't know whether "in the world" is one of those
> necessary constructs in Chinese the way in "it's red color" the
> "color" is necessary, though, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear
> that it is.
That's exactly the sort of thing I had in mind.
>The students in my speech classes throw those kind of
> useless, redundant, uninformative phrases at me all the time in their
> direct translations, and I have to keep reminding them not to
> translate literally and directly form
Yo! Proxonym in the wild!
>one language into the other.
>
> My question for that writer would be why the "W",
I guess you go for lower case. What would you tell the st?
>but I'd comment on
> the redundancy of "in the world" if it were unnecessary in the
> context of the writer's essay.
>
> > In the past we've discussed Chinese speakers' overuse of the word
> > 'nowadays', being due to Chinese languages not having tenses, and
> > a time marker word being needed to show that it's past present or
> > future we're talking about. This gives rise to sentences like:
>
> > 'Nowadays globalisation is increasingly significant'.
>
> I would think that this is also indicative of a love of showing off a
> standard idiom they've learned in high school. I hate the word
> myself, although I'll use it when it seems reasonable, but it cloys
> when I hear it.
For that matter students' attempts to get bloody globalisation in
everywhere gives me the screaming habdabs.
>
> They are also fond of throwing in adages like "a penny saved is a
> penny earned" and "a friend in need is a freind indeed", which I must
> hear at least twice a week every week that I remain here.
Those I can cope with. It's the ones I see on the lines of:
"As everyone knows, 'it's no good throwing dumplings at your
grandmother's dog if this fails to bring forth the dragon of
prosperity'"
that really throw me.
>
> > To an English speaker that 'nowadays' is redundant; we know we're
> > talking about 'nowadays' because of the tense of the verb in the
> > sentence, but the Chinese writer thought we needed to be told. I
> > wondered if in a sentence like:
>
> > 'China is a major economy in the World'
>
> > that 'in the (W)orld' represented another type of word or
> > character that goes in Chinese writing and says 'we're talking
> > about places/ reality/location here, not abstract
> > ideas/opinions/thoughts '. There's also the fact that I read an
> > awful lot of student pieces containing sentences like:
>
> One of the problems with the way English writing is taught in China,
> Japan, Korea, and Taiwan is that students are forced to memorize
> stock phrases that they are told to throw in whenever they can fit
> them in, because if they've actually memorized them correctly, it
> will increase their ratio of correct to incorrect English. Therefore,
> on essay tests, they will get higher grades. That, of course, is only
> if low-level non-native English teachers are grading the papers.
> Native speakers and high-level non-native English teachers will
> recognize the padding for exactly what it is.
>
> These phrases are sometimes hilariously vapid, e.g., "It cannot be
> denied that" -- which provides the essay with five words in a row
> without a grammar mistake.
Yup, as an IELTS Examiner I see (and ignore) learnt material
continually. The stock phrases that really bug me are when you give
them a non-controversial subject to write about such as the wearing of
school uniform and you get things back like
"The issue of whether or not children should wear school
uniform" [this half of their opening sentence cut straight from the
rubric of the question] "has become a matter of considerable public
controversy and debate in recent years" [learnt stock phrase].
ARGHHHH!!!! NO IT F***ING HASN'T!!!! People are not sitting round in
pubs plotting bloody revolution over whether the kids wear school
sodding uniform or not. To repeat myself: ARGHHHH!!!!
Then there's that learnt one about 'in all discussions it is necessary
to carefully consider all sides of the argument before making a
decision'. Complete arse, that one gets the red pen toot sweet.
> > 'In my opinion China is a large country in Asia'.
>
> "In my opinion" is another one of those useless three-word phrases
> that concatenate without a grammatical clinker. This has nothing to
> do with a conscious choice of words that do any kind of active work
> in the paragraph or essay. Students are not taught to think
> critically but only to regurgitate. Even students who study abroad
> and do learn in foreign classrooms to ask questions, to challenge the
> teacher, to think critically, to write interestingly, etc., soon
> learn that it's dangerous to do so in Taiwan and Japan and China and
> Korea. They are challenging the authority of the teacher. My son
> sometimes tells me that the way he pronounces an English word is the
> way his Taiwanese teacher told him to pronounce it. I tell him it's
> wrong but not to say that to his teacher lest he be punished for it.
>
Yup. But (having never been closer to the Far East than my local
Chinese takeaway), I do think, generally, Japanese, Korean and
Taiwanese students are more outgoing and willing to participate in
class than when I first taught them 20 years ago, especially the
girls. It's only about five years since I first ever taught a PRC
student. They're generally OK, but you do get bolshy ones, which I
suspect is as much to do with the one child policy as anything else -
there's an awful lot of spoilt little buggers in the current
generation. Do you think things are changing?
DC, off to teach evening class, back tomorrow.
cybercypher
I know from nothing about Russian, but there are lots of languages
that require counters for everything except actually counting "1, 2,
3, ... 99, 100".
In Japanese and Chinese, the counter usually approximates the shape
of the objects being spoken about. An ice cream cone with two scoops
of ice cream on top requires one to ask for "liang cho" or "two
balls" of ice cream in Chinese. In Japanese, a sheet of paper is
"ichi mai" or "1 flat thing". Both languages have general counters
for things that don't fall into neat categories, just as English uses
"gimme five of those things". In stores, one almost never hears
shopkeepers or clerks as for "five-ninety-nine", but for "wu-bai jou-
shu jou {kwai/yuan}" or "five hundred ninety-nine dollars".
--
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor
Native speaker of American English; posting from Taiwan.
"It has come to my attention that my opinions are not universally
shared." Scott Adams, The Dilbert Blog, 23 Jan 2007;
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> 'Sneaky Words' is a term that's evolved in my writing classes over the
> last year or so to describe a particular type of spelling error. What
> happens is that a student misspells a word they intended to write, but
> the misspelling is, itself, a legitimate word. Crucially, it's a word
> which is recognised by the Word spell-checker dictionaries. This
> means that when the student looks back through their work there's no
> squiggly red underlinings to show up the error.
Since they get under the radar, how about "cruise missal"?
--
Jerry Friedman
cybercypher
>> penny earned" and "a friend in need is a freind indeed", which I
>> must hear at least twice a week every week that I remain here.
>
> Those I can cope with. It's the ones I see on the lines of:
>
> "As everyone knows, 'it's no good throwing dumplings at your
> grandmother's dog if this fails to bring forth the dragon of
> prosperity'"
>
> that really throw me.
This sounds like a stock Chinese proverb. It's too high-level for 99%
of our students, but if I saw it, I'd write it off as an
unintentional parody. If you just created it -- and it seems that you
did -- I'd call it a clever parody that captures everything funny
about "The influence of sheep and Charlie Chan movies on Far East
Asian education", a typical University of Iowa American Studies
dissertation topic.
[...]
>
> Yup, as an IELTS Examiner I see (and ignore) learnt material
> continually. The stock phrases that really bug me are when you
> give them a non-controversial subject to write about such as the
> wearing of school uniform and you get things back like
>
> "The issue of whether or not children should wear school
> uniform" [this half of their opening sentence cut straight from
> the rubric of the question] "has become a matter of considerable
> public controversy and debate in recent years" [learnt stock
> phrase].
>
> ARGHHHH!!!! NO IT F***ING HASN'T!!!! People are not sitting round
> in pubs plotting bloody revolution over whether the kids wear
> school sodding uniform or not. To repeat myself: ARGHHHH!!!!
>
> Then there's that learnt one about 'in all discussions it is
> necessary to carefully consider all sides of the argument before
> making a decision'. Complete arse, that one gets the red pen toot
> sweet.
Yes, yes, yes! Those are much too long for me to remember, but I
rarely see them at my school because our Applied English majors are
from vocational and technical schools and have never taken high-level
academically oriented English classes, i.e., those aimed at students
who want to go to National Taiwan University in Taipei.
[...]
>
> Yup. But (having never been closer to the Far East than my local
> Chinese takeaway), I do think, generally, Japanese, Korean and
> Taiwanese students are more outgoing and willing to participate in
> class than when I first taught them 20 years ago, especially the
> girls. It's only about five years since I first ever taught a PRC
> student. They're generally OK, but you do get bolshy ones, which I
> suspect is as much to do with the one child policy as anything
> else - there's an awful lot of spoilt little buggers in the
> current generation. Do you think things are changing?
I never see them here in Taiwan, and I'm happy about that. I used to
teach them and their professors at The University of Iowa twenty-six
years or so ago. I remember one who was looking for a private tutor.
My Linguistics Department advisor introduced me to him. He told me,
without cracking a smile, that he would let me know whether he
thought my English was good enough. We had a small department, and
half the graduate students were from Taiwan, Japan, Spain (two
Basques), and the USA. It was easy for my advisor to know whose
English was best. In addition to which, I had much more formal
education than my fellow students did, so I was able to talk about a
great many more academic topics. I told the guy to let me know if he
thought I was good enough to teach him. Of course I would have
refused, but he never called.
R H Draney
>
>Django Cat <vivju...@lineone.net> wrote
>>
>> "As everyone knows, 'it's no good throwing dumplings at your
>> grandmother's dog if this fails to bring forth the dragon of
>> prosperity'"
>>
>of our students, but if I saw it, I'd write it off as an
>unintentional parody. If you just created it -- and it seems that you
>did -- I'd call it a clever parody that captures everything funny
>about "The influence of sheep and Charlie Chan movies on Far East
>Asian education", a typical University of Iowa American Studies
>dissertation topic.
"Maybe it's a myth I'm seeking, you say.
Maybe it's a wild dragon chase anyway.
But still, I'm gonna listen to my heart and try
To pack up all my things. So long. Good-bye."
That's the English rap in the middle of Sun Yanzi's song "Green Light"...(I've
posted a link here before to the music video on YouTube, pointing out how much
the choreography looks like "Riverdance")....
From the first time I heard the song I've wondered whether "wild dragon chase"
is a standard Chinese (or Singaporean?) idiom...or is Stefanie just having some
fun with her English-aware listeners?...r
R H Draney
>
>In Japanese and Chinese, the counter usually approximates the shape
>of the objects being spoken about. An ice cream cone with two scoops
>of ice cream on top requires one to ask for "liang cho" or "two
>balls" of ice cream in Chinese. In Japanese, a sheet of paper is
>"ichi mai" or "1 flat thing". Both languages have general counters
>for things that don't fall into neat categories, just as English uses
>"gimme five of those things". In stores, one almost never hears
>shopkeepers or clerks as for "five-ninety-nine", but for "wu-bai jou-
>shu jou {kwai/yuan}" or "five hundred ninety-nine dollars".
Counting kittens in Japanese sounds is absolutely adorable to listen to:
"ippiki, nihiki, sambiki, yombiki"....r
Mike Lyle
[...]
> "Maybe it's a myth I'm seeking, you say.
> Maybe it's a wild dragon chase anyway.
> But still, I'm gonna listen to my heart and try
> To pack up all my things. So long. Good-bye."
>
> That's the English rap in the middle of Sun Yanzi's song "Green
> Light"...(I've posted a link here before to the music video on
> YouTube, pointing out how much the choreography looks like
> "Riverdance")....
>
> From the first time I heard the song I've wondered whether "wild
> dragon chase" is a standard Chinese (or Singaporean?) idiom...or is
> Stefanie just having some fun with her English-aware listeners?...r
Isn't "chasing the dragon" a way of taking heroin? Though maybe they
call it "chasing the goose" in Chinese.
--
Mike.
Robert Bannister
> It's awful for school kids. When their teachers aren't bitting their
> hands with rulers or slapping them or denying them the right to go to
> the toilet, their parents are harping at them all the time to get
> high scores on all their tests because "education is the key to
> success in life". They have tests all the time, and all they get to
> do in most classes after elementary school is listen and memorize or
> regurgitate and recite.
It's funny how things have changed. With the exception of that last
sentence, this describes exactly what school life was for me in England
up to the age of about 10.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
>
> Yup. But (having never been closer to the Far East than my local
> Chinese takeaway), I do think, generally, Japanese, Korean and
> Taiwanese students are more outgoing and willing to participate in
> class than when I first taught them 20 years ago, especially the
> girls. It's only about five years since I first ever taught a PRC
> student. They're generally OK, but you do get bolshy ones, which I
> suspect is as much to do with the one child policy as anything else -
> there's an awful lot of spoilt little buggers in the current
> generation. Do you think things are changing?
My 30+ years of teaching taught me that if ever I were to open a private
school of my own, it would cater solely for Chinese girls - a delight to
teach. The bolshie ones were the Indians, although I think that is a
fairly recent phenomenon. The less said about the white kids the better.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Lieblich
>
> On Apr 30, 3:33 am, Peter Moylan <p...@ozebelgDieSpammers.org> wrote:
> > HVS wrote:
> > > Since a lot of these are caused by touch-typing errors, how 'bout
> > > "qwertynym"?
> >
> > It's not any old touch-typing error, it's a special kind. Your fingers
> > are trained to follow a certain pattern, and they go ahead and do it
> > regardless of what your brain had in mind.
> >
> These sorts of errors often behave as if hard-wired, and can be
> remarkably long-lived. More than 35 years ago when I lived in Berkeley
> I found I nearly always typed it as "Berekeley" -- a real pain in the
> neck, too, because it meant getting out the Snopake, painting over the
> error, waiting for it to dry (or not waiting and having a horrible
> mess when one typed over it), and then retyping.
[ ... ]
The one that defeats me is "symphony," which, given my strong interest
in classical music, I have frequent cause to type. After the initial
"s", it's all in the right hand, and unless I make a conscious effort
to slow down, it comes out wrong every time. I also have trouble with
"-ion" at the end of words; it often comes out "-ino." I'd like to
clain that this is the result of my facility with the Italian
language, but it's just a case of crossed synapses.
I suppose most of us have similar betes noires.
--
Bob Lieblich
Whistling Beethoven's Seventh
Skitt
"Robert Lieblich" wrote:
[regarding typing errors]
> The one that defeats me is "symphony," which, given my strong interest
> in classical music, I have frequent cause to type. After the initial
> "s", it's all in the right hand, and unless I make a conscious effort
> to slow down, it comes out wrong every time. I also have trouble with
> "-ion" at the end of words; it often comes out "-ino." I'd like to
> clain that this is the result of my facility with the Italian
> language, but it's just a case of crossed synapses.
>
> I suppose most of us have similar betes noires.
>
> --
> Bob Lieblich
> Whistling Beethoven's Seventh
Good thing it isn't Schubert's 8th -- you couldn't finish it.
--
Skitt
Wetting his whistle
Robert Lieblich
>
> "Robert Lieblich" wrote:
[ ... ]
> > Bob Lieblich
> > Whistling Beethoven's Seventh
>
> Good thing it isn't Schubert's 8th -- you couldn't finish it.
Actually, I could finish it -- if I knew compositional technique.
In fact, there was a contest in 1928, the centennial of Schubert's
death, for the best completion of the Unfinished Symphony. After a
sizeable uproar, the officials changed the rules to invite complete
symphonies in a modern Schubertian spirit. The contest was won by a
Swede, Kurt Atterberg, for his Sixth Symphony. He received for his
troubles a substantial cash prize (which led to the label "Dollar
Symphony"), a published recording of the new symphony (no small deal
in 1928), and some fairly harsh criticism. Here's a summary of the
story -- not perhaps where you'd expect to find it:
<http://www.musicappraisals.com/sampleEvals.html> (scroll down).
I had an LP transfer of the original 78s, but it went in the general
cleanup. I don't consider the symphony much better than okay.
--
Bob Lieblich
Whistling the Unfinished anyway
Martin Ambuhl
> Skitt wrote:
>> "Robert Lieblich" wrote:
>
> [ ... ]
>
>>> Bob Lieblich
>>> Whistling Beethoven's Seventh
>> Good thing it isn't Schubert's 8th -- you couldn't finish it.
>
> Actually, I could finish it -- if I knew compositional technique.
>
> In fact, there was a contest in 1928, the centennial of Schubert's
> death, for the best completion of the Unfinished Symphony. After a
> sizeable uproar, the officials changed the rules to invite complete
> symphonies in a modern Schubertian spirit. The contest was won by a
> Swede, Kurt Atterberg, for his Sixth Symphony. He received for his
> troubles a substantial cash prize (which led to the label "Dollar
> Symphony"), a published recording of the new symphony (no small deal
> in 1928), and some fairly harsh criticism. Here's a summary of the
> story -- not perhaps where you'd expect to find it:
> <http://www.musicappraisals.com/sampleEvals.html> (scroll down).
I left that unsnipped, not being clever enough to figure out where to
snip. It might be worth noting that there have been a number of
"completions", several of which have not only been performed but
recorded. One of the more successful of these is the one by Frank
Merrick, who otherwise is of little interest. Gerald Abraham also
produced a completion in 1971. That one had some critical success. The
fact that he was one of the critics, writing for Grove and editing the
_New Oxford History of Music_ might have something to do with that.
These various efforts have been aided by Schubert's sketches for the
Scherzo, including two pages of orchestration.
Peter Moylan
> Those I can cope with. It's the ones I see on the lines of:
>
> "As everyone knows, 'it's no good throwing dumplings at your
> grandmother's dog if this fails to bring forth the dragon of
> prosperity'"
>
> that really throw me.
Don't knock it if you haven't tried it.
Maybe that's what's wrong with our economy. Not enough dumplings to
throw [1], therefore not enough dragons.
[1] Another one for the collection. I originally typed "through".
--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain
eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists, and I can no longer
receive mail at my newcastle.edu.au addresses. The optusnet
address could disappear at any time.
HVS
> Skitt wrote:
>>
>> "Robert Lieblich" wrote:
>
> [ ... ]
>
>>> Bob Lieblich
>>> Whistling Beethoven's Seventh
>>
>> Good thing it isn't Schubert's 8th -- you couldn't finish it.
>
> Actually, I could finish it -- if I knew compositional
> technique.
>
> In fact, there was a contest in 1928, the centennial of
> Schubert's death, for the best completion of the Unfinished
> Symphony.
The last theory I read (many years ago) was that it probably wasn't
"unfinished" at all, but that Schubert may have been trying out a
two-movement symphonic form which nobody recognised as such (and
which therefore was considered to have been abandoned).
I've no idea what the current thinking is on the issue, though.
--
Cheers, Harvey
Canadian and British English, indiscriminately mixed
HVS
-snip-
>> These sorts of errors often behave as if hard-wired, and can be
>> remarkably long-lived. More than 35 years ago when I lived in
>> Berkeley I found I nearly always typed it as "Berekeley" -- a
>> real pain in the neck, too, because it meant getting out the
>> Snopake, painting over the error, waiting for it to dry (or not
>> waiting and having a horrible mess when one typed over it), and
>> then retyping.
>
> [ ... ]
>
> The one that defeats me is "symphony," which, given my strong
> interest in classical music, I have frequent cause to type.
> After the initial "s", it's all in the right hand,
I'll toss in my dislike having to type "greatest" -- all left hand.
Martin Ambuhl
> On 03 May 2007, Robert Lieblich wrote
>
>> Skitt wrote:
>>> "Robert Lieblich" wrote:
>> [ ... ]
>>
>>>> Bob Lieblich
>>>> Whistling Beethoven's Seventh
>>> Good thing it isn't Schubert's 8th -- you couldn't finish it.
>> Actually, I could finish it -- if I knew compositional
>> technique.
>>
>> In fact, there was a contest in 1928, the centennial of
>> Schubert's death, for the best completion of the Unfinished
>> Symphony.
>
> The last theory I read (many years ago) was that it probably wasn't
> "unfinished" at all, but that Schubert may have been trying out a
> two-movement symphonic form which nobody recognised as such (and
> which therefore was considered to have been abandoned).
That "theory" doesn't explain why he produced a sketch for the third
(scherzo) movement, including two pages of orchestration. One would
think that if he were trying to write a two-movement piece he wouldn't
have been working on a third movement.
> I've no idea what the current thinking is on the issue, though.
That whoever came up with that "theory" didn't bother to learn any facts
first. And whoever calls an isolated hypothesis a "theory" is probably
a creationist.
HVS
> That whoever came up with that "theory" didn't bother to learn
> any facts first. And whoever calls an isolated hypothesis a
> "theory" is probably a creationist.
Collins has "a nontechnical name for /hyphothesis/ (sense 1)", so I
guess it was probably published by creationists.
Whoever insists on words being restricted to their pure technical
meaning in spite of idiomatic nontechnical usage is probably
insufferably pompous.
Alec Kojaev
tmah33t5jr3psv344...@4ax.com, Bob Cunningham wrote:
[...]
> I seem to remember that Russian has a word "ball" that's used with
> numbers when no specific units seem necessary.
>
> It's like in English saying, instead of "His IQ is 97", "His IQ is 97
> balls".
>
> But maybe I'm remembering wrong.
Actually, Russian <ball> is a unit -- a unit of grading. So, for
example, a figure skater can get "9.97 balls". As any unit, it can be
omitted, so if you get top grade in school ("5"), it can be read as
"five", but only as a shorthand for "5 balls"; same way as my height can be
"metre-seventy-eight", but only as a shorthand for "1.78 metres".
--
Alec Kojaev
St.Petersburg, Russia [30E18 59N56]
Django Cat
> Django Cat wrote:
> > Those I can cope with. It's the ones I see on the lines of:
>
> > "As everyone knows, 'it's no good throwing dumplings at your
> > grandmother's dog if this fails to bring forth the dragon of
> > prosperity'"
>
> > that really throw me.
>
> Don't knock it if you haven't tried it.
>
> Maybe that's what's wrong with our economy. Not enough dumplings to
> throw [1], therefore not enough dragons.
>
> [1] Another one for the collection. I originally typed "through".
>
That's in.
DC
Django Cat
> Django Cat <vivjunkm...@lineone.net> wrote
> [...]
>
>
>
> >> They are also fond of throwing in adages like "a penny saved is a
> >> penny earned" and "a friend in need is a freind indeed", which I
> >> must hear at least twice a week every week that I remain here.
>
> > Those I can cope with. It's the ones I see on the lines of:
>
> > "As everyone knows, 'it's no good throwing dumplings at your
> > grandmother's dog if this fails to bring forth the dragon of
> > prosperity'"
>
> > that really throw me.
>
> This sounds like a stock Chinese proverb. It's too high-level for 99%
> of our students, but if I saw it, I'd write it off as an
> unintentional parody. If you just created it -- and it seems that you
> did -- I'd call it a clever parody that captures everything funny
> about "The influence of sheep and Charlie Chan movies on Far East
> Asian education", a typical University of Iowa American Studies
> dissertation topic.
>
We Marshmallows know nothing of this University of Iowa of which you
speak. Yup, it was made up - my copy of the invaluable 'The Languid
Goat is always Thin: The World's Strangest Proverbs'[1]
is sadly in storage at the moment, pending a house move. My point was
that not only do my Chinese-speaking students often throw blindingly
banal English proverbs inot their supposedly academic assignments,
they often do the same thing with inpenetrable translations of Chinese
proverbs - generally introduced with the words 'as every body
knows...'.
[1] Which contains 'Do not throw dumplings at a dog which invades your
house' but unlike the things my students write for me, that makes
perfect sense. Ish. To some extent 'The Languid Goat is always Thin'
almost wilfully tries to build its humour on mistranslation, though -
'The *Lazy* Goat is always Thin' would have made perfect sense - but
not been funny.
Django Cat
> Django Cat <vivjunkm...@lineone.net> wrote
>
>
>
>
>
> >> m...@vex.net (Mark Brader) wrote
>
> >> > "Viv":
> >> >> Indeed. I think what we got was *"China and the US are two of
> >> >> the major economic (sic) in the World".
>
> >> >> Any idea what that 'in the World' is about?
>
> >> > Seems natural to me. Makes it clear that you aren't just
> >> > talking about the Northern Hemisphere, for example.
>
> >> That's obvious. But the obvious point of the question wooshed
> >> right past you, Brader: the majuscule "W".
>
> > No, I wasn't interested in the capitalisation. As Mark points
> > out, it's not unreasonable to use that 'in the w/World' in that
> > particular example sentence. But the Chinese speakers whose
> > assignments I read often use the phrase 'in the world' where it's
> > totally redundant (right now I can't find an example though).
>
> I should think that it's reasonable to distinguish between the region
> and the world. I don't know whether "in the world" is one of those
> necessary constructs in Chinese the way in "it's red color" the
> "color" is necessary, though, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear
> useless, redundant, uninformative phrases at me all the time in their
> direct translations, and I have to keep reminding them not to
>
Result! Not half an hour ago Catherine, from the PRC, wrote this in
class:
'I would like to compare and contrast two interesting sports which are
both popular in the world, skiing and swimming'.
so I asked her and her Chinese-speaking classmates about 'in the
world' and 'nowadays'. First of all I asked them to translate the
sentence back into Chinese; if they left 'in the world' out, would it
be bad grammar? Ming said yes, it would, in fact the sentence just
wouldn't work. Catherine, however, said a Chinese writer needs to put
in 'in the world' because otherwise readers would think she just meant
'popular in China'. (I was reminded of all those newsgroup posters
who write things like 'the Government has decided in its infinite
wisdom' or 'the President said last week' to which my usual reaction
is 'whose Government?' 'President of where'? AIWDK.) However, I'm
not sure of Catherine as a credible witness (and she did only arrive
two weeks ago). She went on to say that 'nowadays' was necessary in
all writing because the pace of change is now so fast in the PRC; Chia
Wei told me it was because Chinese doesn't have tenses and needs these
place markers, which is the explanation I've heard before.
Given Chia Wei is from Taiwan I wish I'd asked her her opinion of the
'if you don't say "in the world" people think you're just talking
about China' argument - I'm inclined to believe Ming that it's
actually a grammar thing. The clincher would be if a Taiwanese
student uses 'in the world' redundantly - watch this space.
Meanwhile, Yi Ling, who's also from Taiwan, came up with this rather
charming proxonym in the same lesson, which goes straight on the list:
'If a footballer breaks the rules he is given a yellow card for
warming'.
Bless.
DC
Django Cat
> "Django Cat" <vivjunkm...@lineone.net> wrote :
>
> .
>
> The other request I'd like to make of AUErs is for suggestions to coin
> a term for this phenomenon (unless one already exists, in which case
> I'd be glad to have it pointed out TVM). HopefullyT something ending
> in -nym. None of the words on my list are either homonyms or
> synonyms, and while there may be Sneaky Words that are one or other or
> even both (hear/here comes to mind), that doesn't get to the heart of
> sneakyism. I thought of 'Sneakynyms' but somehow, that just doesn't
> cut the condiment. What's Latin for 'spell checker limitation'?
>
> None of the vaguely appropriate Greek routes, I mean roots,
> looks memorable or trip-off-the-tonguable ... but how about
> a "proxinym", which has the additional advantage of sort of
> being one itself: "approxinym".
>
It's been a couple of days, and that's the one that's grown on me the
most - but following Donna's wisdom, spelt 'proxonym' with an
'o' (pronounced as a schwa). Let's see if it'll catch on...
DC
Philip Eden
> 'If a footballer breaks the rules he is given a yellow card for
> warming'.
>
Global Warning is, of course, a widely encountered verbal
(as well as typed) proxonym. Some might call it Freudian,
I suppose.
Philip Eden
Philip Eden
"Django Cat" <vivju...@lineone.net> wrote :
>> a term for this phenomenon (unless one already exists, in which case
>> I'd be glad to have it pointed out TVM). HopefullyT something ending
>> in -nym. None of the words on my list are either homonyms or
>> synonyms, and while there may be Sneaky Words that are one or other or
>> even both (hear/here comes to mind), that doesn't get to the heart of
>> sneakyism. I thought of 'Sneakynyms' but somehow, that just doesn't
>> cut the condiment. What's Latin for 'spell checker limitation'?
>>
>> None of the vaguely appropriate Greek routes, I mean roots,
>> looks memorable or trip-off-the-tonguable ... but how about
>> a "proxinym", which has the additional advantage of sort of
>> being one itself: "approxinym".
>>
>
> It's been a couple of days, and that's the one that's grown on me the
> most - but following Donna's wisdom, spelt 'proxonym' with an
> 'o' (pronounced as a schwa). Let's see if it'll catch on...
I, too, am obliged to Donna for her correction.
Philip Eden
cybercypher
This sounds perfectly reasonable given China's cultural history as
"Middle Earth", the center of the world, the rest of which was not
worth bothering with.
> (I was reminded of all those newsgroup posters who write things
> like 'the Government has decided in its infinite wisdom' or
> 'the President said last week' to which my usual reaction
> is 'whose Government?' 'President of where'? AIWDK.)
I think it can safely be assumed in all those cases that it's the
USA, the most recent Middle Earth.
> However, I'm not sure of Catherine as a credible witness (and
> she did only arrive two weeks ago). She went on to say that
> 'nowadays' was necessary in all writing because the pace of
> change is now so fast in the PRC; Chia Wei told me it was because
> Chinese doesn't have tenses and needs these place markers, which
> is the explanation I've heard before.
Again, it sounds reasonable.
> Given Chia Wei is from Taiwan I wish I'd asked her her opinion of
> the 'if you don't say "in the world" people think you're just
> talking about China' argument - I'm inclined to believe Ming that
> it's actually a grammar thing. The clincher would be if a
> Taiwanese student uses 'in the world' redundantly - watch this
> space.
>
> Meanwhile, Yi Ling, who's also from Taiwan, came up with this
> rather charming proxonym in the same lesson, which goes straight
> on the list:
>
> 'If a footballer breaks the rules he is given a yellow card for
> warming'.
This is the opposite of the Taiwanese pronunciation reality. Almost
every syllable-final [m] is pronounced as an [n]. I haven't noticed
how syllable-initial [n] is pronounced, though.
--
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor
Native speaker of American English; posting from Taiwan.
"It has come to my attention that my opinions are not universally
shared." Scott Adams, The Dilbert Blog, 23 Jan 2007;
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/
teranews charges a one-time US$3.95 setup fee
--
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> Django Cat <vivjunkm...@lineone.net> wrote
> > (I was reminded of all those newsgroup posters who write things
> > like 'the Government has decided in its infinite wisdom' or
> > 'the President said last week' to which my usual reaction
> > is 'whose Government?' 'President of where'? AIWDK.)
>
> I think it can safely be assumed in all those cases that it's the
> USA, the most recent Middle Earth.
...
Although if they write "the Government have decided in their infinite
wisdom", it's probably not the USA.
--
Jerry Friedman
Robert Lieblich
Unlike, say, Mozart with his Requiem or Bruckner with his Ninth
Symphony, this wasn't a case of trying to finish and losing out to
death. Schubert's 8th was written several years before he died. Best
guess remains that he put it in a drawer, got busy with other things,
and forgot about it.
I still remember a Playboy cartoon from at least three or four decades
ago (back when I still occasionally looked at Playboy). It shows a
bewigged gent in 18th century dress sitting on a piano bench and
putting the moves on a buxom young lady sitting next to him. Caption:
"But, Mr. Schubert, don't you think you should finish your symphony
first?"
Much recent scholarship purports to show that Schubert was gay. (I
don't think we'll ever know for sure.) Which reminds me, ...
--
Bob Lieblich
This post deliberately left unfinished
Eric Schwartz
> Although if they write "the Government have decided in their infinite
> wisdom", it's probably not the USA.
Because of the plural form, or the wisdom?
-=Eric
Robert Bannister
> This sounds perfectly reasonable given China's cultural history as
> "Middle Earth", the center of the world, the rest of which was not
> worth bothering with.
Unlike those advanced European people who named a sea the Mediterranean.
--
Rob Bannister
R H Draney
Governments don't do wisdom....
(Notice how cleverly I sidestepped the "collective plural" controversy
there?)...r
R H Draney
>
>Unlike, say, Mozart with his Requiem or Bruckner with his Ninth
>Symphony, this wasn't a case of trying to finish and losing out to
>death. Schubert's 8th was written several years before he died. Best
>guess remains that he put it in a drawer, got busy with other things,
>and forgot about it.
Been there, done that....
>I still remember a Playboy cartoon from at least three or four decades
>ago (back when I still occasionally looked at Playboy). It shows a
>bewigged gent in 18th century dress sitting on a piano bench and
>putting the moves on a buxom young lady sitting next to him. Caption:
>"But, Mr. Schubert, don't you think you should finish your symphony
>first?"
"Next to him"?...my memory suggests "cowgirl" position....r
cybercypher
While this is true, the only inhabitants of the Mediterranean Sea are
fish and their friends, and the only time they count is at Sea World.
R H Draney
>
>Robert Bannister <rob...@it.net.au> wrote
>> cybercypher wrote:
>>
>>> This sounds perfectly reasonable given China's cultural history
>>> as "Middle Earth", the center of the world, the rest of which was
>>> not worth bothering with.
Warning: I've probably mentioned the following here before....
Once noticed a novel in the science-fiction sectioon of a bookstore that looked
interesting...it was about a future in which the colonization of space had been
carried out mainly by the Chinese...I wasn't ready to buy it then, so I made a
mental note of the title, "The Middle Kingdom", to seek it out when my reading
list got shorter....
When the time came to do so, I couldn't find the book...I hadn't noted the name
of the author, and none of my searches were turning up anything....
When it finally resurfaced, the actual title was "Chung Kuo"....
>> Unlike those advanced European people who named a sea the
>> Mediterranean.
>
>While this is true, the only inhabitants of the Mediterranean Sea are
>fish and their friends, and the only time they count is at Sea World.
Or its defunct competitor, Marineland of the Coruscic....r
Richard Bollard
<r_s_li...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I also have trouble with
>"-ion" at the end of words; it often comes out "-ino." I'd like to
>clain that this is the result of my facility with the Italian
>language, but it's just a case of crossed synapses.
>
I don't think it is Italian. I do it frequently (competitino for
competition). I type the "ion" very quickly, with a sort of
right-hand flourish, so I suspect it is a timing error.
--
Richard Bollard
Canberra Australia
To email, I'm at AMT not spAMT.
Mike Lyle
"Robert Lieblich" <r_s_li...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:463A69E7...@yahoo.com...
There was an ad for one of those lagerish beers, Kronenbourg*, which
started with our composer being called down from his garret by pub-bound
friends and ended "Hey, Schubert! Vot about your unfinished symphony?"
"Huh! Vot about my unfinished Kronenbourg?"
*Unsurprisingly, now owned by Scottish & Newcastle.
--
Mike.
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> "jerry_fried...@yahoo.com" <jerry_fried...@yahoo.com> writes:
> > Although if they write "the Government have decided in their infinite
> > wisdom", it's probably not the USA.
>
> Because of the plural form, or the wisdom?
I had the plural form in mind, since DC's original example had "in its
infinite wisdom".
--
Jerry Friedman
Al in Dallas
wrote:
I tend to write sentences similar to Martin's last one above when I'm
in a foul mood. I'm glad that I've learned to delete most of those
before hitting send.
--
Al in St. Lou
Amethyst Deceiver
> On Apr 30, 3:33 am, Peter Moylan <p...@ozebelgDieSpammers.org> wrote:
>> HVS wrote:
>>> Since a lot of these are caused by touch-typing errors, how 'bout
>>> "qwertynym"?
>>
>> It's not any old touch-typing error, it's a special kind. Your
>> fingers are trained to follow a certain pattern, and they go ahead
>> and do it regardless of what your brain had in mind.
>>
> These sorts of errors often behave as if hard-wired, and can be
> remarkably long-lived. More than 35 years ago when I lived in Berkeley
> I found I nearly always typed it as "Berekeley" -- a real pain in the
> neck, too, because it meant getting out the Snopake, painting over the
> error, waiting for it to dry (or not waiting and having a horrible
> since I have rarely needed to type the word at all, but when I do it
> comes out once again as "Berekeley" unless I type it very slowly and
> think about each letter. I finally fixed the problem by using my
> abbreviation-expansion software to treat "Berekeley" as an
> abbreviation for "Berkeley".
I often have to contact academics in Stratchlyde. Why Strathclyde is so
tricky for my fingers to type, I don't know.
--
Linz
Wet Yorks via Cambridge, York, London and Watford
My accent may vary
Philip Eden
"Django Cat" <vivju...@lineone.net> wrote in message
news:1177849289.6...@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
'Sneaky Words' is a term that's evolved in my writing classes over the
last year or so to describe a particular type of spelling error. What
happens is that a student misspells a word they intended to write, but
the misspelling is, itself, a legitimate word. Crucially, it's a word
which is recognised by the Word spell-checker dictionaries. This
means that when the student looks back through their work there's no
squiggly red underlinings to show up the error.
For me, ration always comes out as ration, however hard I
concentrate. See what I mean? That is, R-A-T-I-O.
Philip Eden
LFS
Me, too! Why is that word such a problem? I have spent years teaching
ratio analysis and having to check all my handouts for superfluous 'n's.
--
Laura
(emulate St. George for email)
Peter Moylan
> I often have to contact academics in Stratchlyde. Why Strathclyde is
> so tricky for my fingers to type, I don't know.
>
Last week I had to type a long list of information about members of a
family called Doyle. The "Doyle" came out as "Doyla" every time, even
when I was trying not to do it. I can't explain this.
--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain
eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists, and I can no longer
receive mail at my newcastle.edu.au addresses. The optusnet
address could disappear at any time.
Oleg Lego
>Amethyst Deceiver wrote:
>
>> I often have to contact academics in Stratchlyde. Why Strathclyde is
>> so tricky for my fingers to type, I don't know.
>>
>Last week I had to type a long list of information about members of a
>family called Doyle. The "Doyle" came out as "Doyla" every time, even
>when I was trying not to do it. I can't explain this.
Doyla
Moylan
Possible? As soon as I read your post, I thought of you, and checked
the author, and there you were.
Django Cat
Nick Spalding
on Wed, 9 May 2007 15:00:24 +0100:
With me it's 'style' which always comes out as 'stype'.
--
Nick Spalding
Oleg Lego
I have had something happen to me now and again that is quite
baffling. I will be typing away, and suddenly notice that many words
are misspelt, but in a particular way. For instance, When typing
"hello", I might type "he;;o". This will be followed by other errors,
all of which share the same characteristic. The error letters will be
offset from the intended ones, and in the same direction.
"He;;o spm" for "Hello son", and so on.
If I just keep on typing (and making corrections) it seems to just
keep happening. I can slow down, hitting the keys more deliberately,
and stop the errors, but an even better solution is to consciously
move a little bit left (in the above example).
I know, intellectually, that it can't possibly have anything to do
with my exact position, but it does fix things up. Whenever it
happens, I look over my shoulder, expecting to see Rod Serling.
Peter Moylan
of my blind spot.
Robert Lieblich
[ ... ]
> I have had something happen to me now and again that is quite
> baffling. I will be typing away, and suddenly notice that many words
> are misspelt, but in a particular way. For instance, When typing
> "hello", I might type "he;;o". This will be followed by other errors,
> all of which share the same characteristic. The error letters will be
> offset from the intended ones, and in the same direction.
>
> "He;;o spm" for "Hello son", and so on.
>
> If I just keep on typing (and making corrections) it seems to just
> keep happening. I can slow down, hitting the keys more deliberately,
> and stop the errors, but an even better solution is to consciously
> move a little bit left (in the above example).
>
> I know, intellectually, that it can't possibly have anything to do
> with my exact position, but it does fix things up. Whenever it
> happens, I look over my shoulder, expecting to see Rod Serling.
You are not a;pme. I find that moving the keyboard is the simplest
solution.
--
Bpb :oeb;och
Unable to stp[
Oleg Lego
Mrbrt yjpihjy pg yjsy@