Originally posted by Seamaster:
Our previous Prime Minister (Mr Blair) speaks fluent French. The French were famously gob-smacked the first time he went there and delivered his speech to them in their language.
We're not quite as bad as the Americans, but the "speak English or die" attitude of some of my countrymen abroad mortifies me. I am fluent in French and get by in Italian and Spanish. None of which were difficult to acquire, and from which I derive a great deal of pleasure, both while traveling and at home via foreign magazines, websites and TV channels.
Those who won't even make the effort are, in my experience, either intellectually lazy or xenophobic philistines.
Seamaster, I don't believe I'm intellectually lazy, so I must be one of those other things. I'll look it up one of these days when I get the time and energy.
Chas, I agree that we mostly BUTCHER the English language. I get so angry at TV announcers who do not know that their constant use of such phrases as The Reason Why, Continue On, Whether or Not, etc. are teaching our children to be illiterate.
Also, the confusion of the meaning of words such as affect and effect, accept and except,
appraise and apprise, comprise, oh the list is way too long.
One of my pet peeves is the misuse of words such as Hopefully. Hopefully is what is knows as a "dangling modifier".
To say "Hopefully they will arrive on time," isn't wrong, as long as you mean they will arrive feeling hopefull. It does NOT mean you hope they arrive on time.
Is this nit-picking? It has been misused so often nobody seems to be aware that it is incorrect, so is it?
I gotta run. Not really, but I need to be somewhere else right now. Hopefully, I'll make it on time.
DonM
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