On 01/31/2013 03:38 PM, Craig White wrote:
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 15:55 +0000, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
Way way OT:
Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word "i", not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1) their Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet e.e. cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds want to know.
Sorry, this has been bugging me for ages and I had just had to get this off my chest. Feel free to ignore.
better get used to it and other language simplifications encouraged by SMS/tweeting/etc. It's only going to increase. There's younger generations that simply aren't likely to feel bound your rules.
Grammar snobbery is just going to turn you into an unhappy PITA.
My copy of this is back in the mid-90s:
Vy Knot?
Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, the European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways of improving efficiency in communications between Government departments.
European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is unnecessarily difficult; for example: cough, plough, rough, through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, be administered by a committee staff at top level by participating nations.
In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's' instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced by 'k' sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made with one less letter.
There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it was announsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'. This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty persent shorter in print.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double leters whish have always been a deterent to akurate speling. We would al agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop them and kontinu to read and writ as though nothing had hapend.
By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would be reseptiv to steps sutsh as replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze funktion of 'w' kould be taken on by 'v', vitsh is, after al, half a 'w'. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary 'o' kould be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou'. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls, difikultis and evrivun vud find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems of the Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.