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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Jack Clarke who wrote (43)1/1/1998 11:17:00 PM
From: Zeev Hed  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 4710
 
Jack, you forgot right(s) as in legal rights or a slightly different version the "right to something" (in term of ownership). I would not include in this category "rite" or "write", despite the fact that phonetically I cannot differentiate these from right or right.

As for its and it's, that is exactly what confuses me. You users of the English language do not use logic. In French, s denotes plural and if you must denote (in a verb) a person, the second is s and the third is t. But in English, you throw an s at everything, the plural, the third person and the possessive. So, I thought life would be relatively easy, differentiate the other s's (is that the correct plural for s?) from the possessive s by apostrophing the latter. And just as I thought I knew the rule, here you come with "its" (belonging to it), an unapostrophied (or is it unapostrophated?) s to signify the possessive. Life in the English lane is tough. In Hebrew it is much easier, even vowels have little significance and do not merit being written down, you either know it or you don't (g).

Zeev

Note added in proof, in a thread professing to teach us better usage of the language, what exactly is "nite" (as a parting greeting, I believe on a recnt post here), is that mispelling of nuts, note, night or knight?



To: Jack Clarke who wrote (43)1/1/1998 11:45:00 PM
From: don ryndak  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 4710
 
Jack,
As a late entrant into the void of the English language, having been brought up on the Westside of Chicago. Let me suggest for your reading pleasure, a book written by Edwin Newman, "Strickly Speaking." Which discusses in a funny fashion, if America will be the death of the english language. I guess it kinda fits in with this discussion.
don