To wonder how people make it to adulthood without knowing

[Staffy1]

That a Christmas tree decoration is called a "bauble", not "ball ball"? Or how they make it through junior school without knowing the difference between "his" and "he's"? What happens in schools these days and don't people ever read anything?

I didn't have much formal grammar taught at school - we did nouns are naming words, verbs are doing words, adjectives are describing words, but that was about it. I learnt foreign languages to A-level and learned a lot more through that. But I also came from a family where we looked things up and discussed the etymology of words, and my grandmother wrote me letters saying things like, "practise is the verb, practice is the noun." Plus we had no TV, so I read all the time. But most people don't come from a background of language pedants...

I don't reckon many boxes will say "baubles" - I think most will say things like "silver tree decorations" or "multi-coloured glass balls". I think most are in clear plastic boxes. I'm not going through the box of decs to check, mind you. The only one I can remember is the one which says 1/6 and was bought by my parents when they were first married. The only writing is the price - most of it is a clear cellophane window, yellowed with age.

I don't mind things like Chester draws too much, because I know what it means. I do care about things where I can't work out what it is meant to be, and I do care when it's in a more formal context such as a published book, an advertisement, a CV or something where it would not be unreasonable to have someone else review it before it's sent out to the wider world.

I don't think Plato's cave would be general knowledge to many - I don't think many of my colleagues have even a basic knowledge of classical philosophy.

@lazylinguist, would you not think 'wrongly' is better there, though? I know you could attach 'wrong' to the noun 'thing' but it'd be more natural to use the adverbial form and attach it to 'spell,' because that's what the emphasis is on?

No. I think 'wrong' sounds perfectly good. Not because it's 'being attached to a noun', but because 'wrong' literally is an adverb as well as an adjective. Hang on......

wrong
adj 1. not correct or true, mistaken 2. unjust, dishonest
adv In an unsuitable or undesirable manner or direction, with an incorrect result.

Adverbs often do not end in -ly, as I'm sure you are aware. 'Wrong' is an adjective and a noun and an adverb. When it is used as an adverb, it is identical in meaning to 'wrongly'.

I'm also in the 'partially disagree' camp, and I teach. My DP is a huge reader, always has been, and reads more books than me. Her spelling and grammar is crap. My spelling and grammar are good when I'm concentrating and have enough time for proofing, but otherwise not great.

I think some of it probably has to do with the different ways different people learn to read. I don't mean just the different ways they were taught, I mean the different ways their brains process it all. I have really weak sight memory for words; I do the phonics more. My daughter is just learning to read and it's been really interesting to me to realise that she is doing the neurotypical thing and memorising whole words as a visual image.

I suspect if you do the latter for preference, you'll be more sensitive to spelling errors? But just a guess. I mean, things like connection and connexion don't bother me at all, because I can see they are both valid spellings of the same word. Whereas it bugs the heck out of DP that you can have two valid spellings for the same thing.

[quote SarahAndQuack]@lazylinguist, would you not think 'wrongly' is better there, though? I know you could attach 'wrong' to the noun 'thing' but it'd be more natural to use the adverbial form and attach it to 'spell,' because that's what the emphasis is on?

I take your point about the way these threads go, though.[/quote]
The issue here is what is wrong - is it the action of spelling that's wrong, or is it the result of the spelling?

Think of "He went pale" - not "he went palely", as it wasn't the going that was pale, it was him.

(However, this particular point, with this "wrong", is actually less black and white!)

@lazylinguist - thank you. I do understand it's an adverb, and so on. I just think it sounds more natural to say 'wrongly' because of the emphasis of the sentence. But that's probably just personal preference!

Sorry, cross post @ravenmum. I'm not disputing the grammar, just throwing out a thought about what sounds natural. Which, as you say, is a far less black-and-white issue.

People get stuck on the idea of adverts being -ly words which describe the manner in which an action is carried out. They often don't realise that gazillions of other common words like yesterday, here, never and soon are adverbs too.

OK, lazylinguist is using the other argument, ignore my version :)

This thread puts me in mind of those who think punctuation is unneccessary. Try this example:
"Lets eat Grandma"; instead of "Let's eat, Grandma".

My main gripe is the use of the word "like". It drives me nuts, it seems some people cannot make a comment without like every other word. What is there to like?

I mean, I watch telly with subtitles because I need to know how to spell names etc.

To be fair, some of the subtitles spelling is hilariously bad...

That's probably true about people getting stuck on the 'ly' ending, but in this case, I'd think the point is that adding 'ly' makes it unambiguous: you're putting emphasis on the act of spelling rather than the thing that was spelt.

@lazylinguist - thank you. I do understand it's an adverb, and so on. I just think it sounds more natural to say 'wrongly' because of the emphasis of the sentence. But that's probably just personal preference!

I suspect it's actually an 'over-correction'. I have a feeling that it used to be more the norm to use 'wrong' as the adverb, but people began to think that 'wrongly' sounded posher/more educated. A bit like when people say 'myself' instead of 'me'. I have no proof of that, but I think in all but very modern literature you'd more likely see 'wrong'.

If you saw someone making a glaring and dangerous mistake, would you shout "You're doing it wrong!" or "You're doing it wrongly!"? I know which I'd say. And I'd write it that way too.

As someone who uses English subtitles on a TV, I second or third that they are often bad. Not as bad as Netflix's dubbing though...

That's probably true about people getting stuck on the 'ly' ending, but in this case, I'd think the point is that adding 'ly' makes it unambiguous: you're putting emphasis on the act of spelling rather than the thing that was spelt.

No, it doesn't alter the meaning at all. There is no ambiguity. The word 'wrong', in that position in that sentence, could not possibly be an adjective.

Ds used to call eyeballs eye bulbs 💡 which I thought was just lovely. If he was still saying it at 18 I might not find it as cute.

4yo dd completely makes up the lyrics to songs to make it seem like she knows what she's singing, with hilarious results.

I confess I do little to put them right, as I love their innocence. Clearly there comes a time when you should step in though... or we'd all be singing "chicken tikka tell me what's wrong" to Abba songs and such like.

@Meruem

Some people just aren't that bright. I genuinely don't mean that in a nasty way. We all have different levels of intelligence and spelling is really difficult for some people. I feel like there's this assumption on MN that we all start from a level playing field and if we don't learn/achieve xyz, it's our own fault. Some people just aren't as bright as others, and that's ok. Or it should be.

yes agreed. but it's more than that even. how do people know anything if they have never heard of it. whether they are bright or not. many teachers do not know or understand point of grammar. i went through school and had never heard of/ was taught BODMAS for the order in which to carry out mathematical operations. it was never mentioned at school. i have taught myself much of the grammar that i know, or absorbed it by reading. i am lucky to have a facility and interest in that direction. but maths i did struggle with. no wonder. only heard of BODMAS on MN last week. what other unknowns are there ? how can i, or anyone, know ?

Advocado.

Advo-fucking-cado! Waaaah!

If something can be "writ large", with "large" as an adjective, how do I know that something "spelt wrong" isn't using an adjective, lazylinguist? Apart from looking it up in the dictionary, obviously? :)

@LippyChick that's a grocery delivery company, right?

@lazylinguist

Tbh it absolutely makes me cringe to hear people's smug, superior attitudes towards people with worse grammar and spelling than them. Good spelling and grammar are not a sign of moral worthiness. They are almost always the sign of a fortunate upbringing (probably with some fortunate genes thrown in). I've been a language teacher for 25 years, so I've had ample opportunity to observe this.

hear hear. here or there, everywhere. agreed.

I think the person complaining about "fine toothcomb" was pointing out that it should be "fine-tooth comb".

What is really starting to annoy me - and I've seen it from one of the complainers on this thread - is the irrational duplication of letters to indicate emphasis.

For example "this in spades": may be justifiably written as "this in spaaaaades", or if you're feeling quirky "this in sspaaaaades" or even "this in ssssssspppppaaaaaaddddddes"; but the moment it gets to "this in spadeeeeeees" you have a completely different word.

I'd have thought that someone complaining about the abuse of spelling and punctuation would have realised this.

@PattyPan

It does make me realise that for some people words are just sounds, with no inherent meaning.

I think you’re right. This also explains modern baby names!

This is so true (sorry I missed the original post) and I find it hard to understand- people who can retain the function of the word they have mangled but don't realise there's something a bit odd about it 'it was my right away' she obviously knew what she meant a nd so probably did the person she spoke to- but how come she didn't think to herself 'my right away what?' It must be the lack of a higher order language skill that is able to analyse the word or phrase itself rather than just use it in a correct context.

Ect. Makes my teeth itch!