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 definitely thought it was fine toothcomb, had no idea what a toothcomb was. Fine-tooth comb makes much more sense so thanks to this thread for teaching me that! Luckily I don't think it's something I've ever written down.

@Smallsteps88

You underestimate the role of parents. There's a lot of parents who seem to think education only happens at school, or even set homework whereas most the things mentioned here are not book learning type things. Both my kids started school being able to read, mostly this was reading books together, and reading signs etc in the bus. Maths was learned cooking and shopping.

Every day parents keep an about homework etc here, why not just make learning fun and cut down on screen time

What are apostrophes of mission??

Oh got it! Omission! The O was omitted. Actually, I wouldn't change apostrophes at all. The rules regarding apostrophes are so simple even the slowest (foreign) language learners grasp them pretty quickly. It's one of those mistakes that only native speakers tend to make because they aren't bothered about learning the rule.

I'm on tenterhooks whether tenderhooks will make an appearance (or re-appearance if I've missed it).

Fine-tooth comb makes much more sense

I have always said 'fine toothed comb'.

@ValancyRedfern I think there was a time when apostrophes didn't exist.

The King's horse would have originally been "the King, his horse" which became "the Kinges horse" which then became "the King's horse" (the apostrophe being used to denote the missing letter).

Apparently there was no female equivalent. .

Interesting factoid if true. Disclaimer: I read it on Gransnet.

What really strikes me is that average people in many foreign countries seem to have a much better grasp of written language, even when their language have far more complex grammar, and in some cases more characters. I have also found that the standard of written and spoken English is often higher among those for whom it is a second language. Therefore I do think a large part of the problem was the lack of rigorous teaching of grammar and spelling in schools in the UK for many decades.

As some PP mentioned, I learned grammar by proxy by studying foreign languages. When I was at school it was considered "elitest" to correct grammar and spellings in English so the only way to learn it was by osmosis from reading outside school.

Precise language is so important for critical thinking and many fields of study such as science, philosophy, logic. It's good that the education system in the UK is making some effort these days to focus on these basic skills that are the foundation of learning.

Has anyone mentioned Christmas Reefs yet? Might look nice with the ball balls/bubbles.

I've seen a lot of posts recently saying they wouldn't "step foot" somewhere. I can sort of see the logic but it's "set foot".

Also "per say" instead of per se. That really makes me cringe as it seems like people use a Latin term to try and look cleverer ... but it has the opposite effect when you can't even spell it.

My daughters school newsletter is always littered with mistakes. It is written by the head teacher! Full of "here here" and "dates for your dairies" etc. If teachers have such a poor grasp on the English language because they don't read enough (as posters have suggested) then that is really poor show.

There was a time when apostrophes didn't exist. But I don't think it is as simple as 'the king, his horse' because in Middle English (c. 1400, think Chaucer) you'd get 'the kynges horse,' to mean 'the horse belonging to the king' and at that point possessive pronouns haven't settled completely into their modern forms and you're still using 'hir' for 'their' and things like that.

Maybe someone more knowledgeable will explain.

@chuffedasbuttons, '-ize' as an ending isn't just American; it's also Oxford style (as opposed to Cambridge). I think focussed/focused might be the same.

It's good that the education system in the UK is making some effort these days to focus on these basic skills that are the foundation of learning.

I'm not sure they have the balance right, but perhaps I just see too many people wanting on about fronted adverbial and miss all the other stuff.

+s...

I once had my nails done by 20 something young girl who was educated in Wales (I know as we chatted about the fact that i worked in her old primary school at the time)

We got onto the topic of WW2 and I said that we were covering the holocaust which was upsetting for Y6 but needed to be talked about to stop it happening again!

She was aghast and had never ever heard of the holocaust.
She wanted to know more about it so I told her a little.
Even more concerning was the fact that when I talked about Adolf Hitler She had never ever heard of him! or Winston Churchill! (she asked if he owned the nodding dog company)

How does one get to age 20 without any knowledge of WW2!

That's hilarious and shocking regarding WW2, Hitler and Churchill the nodding English bulldog. I had a friend who seriously did not know about political parties and voting, circa 90's when Blair was voted in. Two spliffs later and much frowning with concentration she concluded that she sort of knew what I meant but didn't really understand it.

@minimum97 The ‘Christma’s Cards’ sign was hand-written, or rather printed, in block capitals on a bit of cardboard and propped up on the stall, it wasn’t a professionally printed sign. So I guess the stallholder just saw an ‘s’ at the end of the word and thought he’d better stick an apostrophe before it.

Keith Waterhouse started this wonderful group; www.writersandeditors.com/blog/posts/33097

@SarahAndQuack

There was a time when apostrophes didn't exist. But I don't think it is as simple as 'the king, his horse' because in Middle English (c. 1400, think Chaucer) you'd get 'the kynges horse,' to mean 'the horse belonging to the king' and at that point possessive pronouns haven't settled completely into their modern forms and you're still using 'hir' for 'their' and things like that.

Maybe someone more knowledgeable will explain.

@chuffedasbuttons, '-ize' as an ending isn't just American; it's also Oxford style (as opposed to Cambridge). I think focussed/focused might be the same.

The -es possessive form still exists in the German genitive, albeit modern German does it somewhat differently.

Weirdly, the 'apostrophe to signify plural' is starting to creep into German, which doesn't even use it (in correct use) to signify a possessive. And it's used by people who almost certainly aren't around English a lot.

I don't know how people make it to adulthood without realising that this sort of sneering makes them look awful. Shove your baubles up your superior arse.

@Dizzybintess

I once had my nails done by 20 something young girl who was educated in Wales (I know as we chatted about the fact that i worked in her old primary school at the time)

We got onto the topic of WW2 and I said that we were covering the holocaust which was upsetting for Y6 but needed to be talked about to stop it happening again!

She was aghast and had never ever heard of the holocaust.
She wanted to know more about it so I told her a little.
Even more concerning was the fact that when I talked about Adolf Hitler She had never ever heard of him! or Winston Churchill! (she asked if he owned the nodding dog company)

How does one get to age 20 without any knowledge of WW2!

To be fair it depends on the curriculum, in my day we did 1760 to 1870 Industrial Revolution . I ultimately went on to fail History and re-took it in college which included ww2.

Still wont' forget the Spinning jenny or Josiah Wedgewood though. Extremely useful

Weirdly, the 'apostrophe to signify plural' is starting to creep into German, which doesn't even use it (in correct use) to signify a possessive. And it's used by people who almost certainly aren't around English a lot.

I once had a German colleague launch into quite a rant about the Deppenapostroph.

Isn't an apostrophe used if a name ends in s? So Hendriks Auto for Hendrik's car, but Jens' Auto for Jens's car. I haven't done German for a bit, so I might be misremembering.

To be fair it depends on the curriculum, in my day we did 1760 to 1870 Industrial Revolution. I ultimately went on to fail History and re-took it in college which included ww2.

But it also means someone went through school without reading the Diary of Anne Frank or Goodnight Mr Tom or various other books with a setting of WW2. (We did Jill Paton Walsh's the Dolphin Crossing at one point.)

I think ven if you don't take history past 13, it quite hard to get through to adulthood without having even hearing of WW2, Hitler, Churchill or the Holocaust, even if that's all you know. I'm pretty sure if I turned the TV on at any time of the night or day, I could flick through all the channels and at some point would come across a war film or documentary covering that period, even if I only look at Freeview channels.

ven -> even

Probably always been said but spag bowl is the one that gets me.

To be fair it depends on the curriculum

Absolutely. We didn't study WWII in secondary, but my history teacher was a collector of the period and his classroom full of objects that fascinated me at the time. I learned a lot from him about the war from staying over in his museum, although I learned very little of the industrial revolution as I found it so incredibly boring I spent more time looking at my surroundings than listening to him.

@Dizzybintess

I once had my nails done by 20 something young girl who was educated in Wales (I know as we chatted about the fact that i worked in her old primary school at the time)

We got onto the topic of WW2 and I said that we were covering the holocaust which was upsetting for Y6 but needed to be talked about to stop it happening again!

She was aghast and had never ever heard of the holocaust.
She wanted to know more about it so I told her a little.
Even more concerning was the fact that when I talked about Adolf Hitler She had never ever heard of him! or Winston Churchill! (she asked if he owned the nodding dog company)

How does one get to age 20 without any knowledge of WW2!

Mind boggling. Even if it wasn't taught in school surely it's almost impossible to not know the most basic facts.