Messages

1

English & Linguistics / Proven v. Proved

« on: August 31, 2005, 06:31:10 AM »

I consider "proven" to be either an adjective or a future or present perfect verb. If I am using past tense, I pretty always use "proved."

I don't really consider them to be interchangeable, though I am, of course, interested in the official work from the linguistic geeks.

What's the context in which google objected to it?

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English & Linguistics / Words that you can never, ever say right

« on: August 15, 2005, 03:42:35 PM »

I generally do too. That's exactly what I'm talking about: Rs and Ls that other people don't pronounce, I generally do.

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English & Linguistics / Words that you can never, ever say right

« on: August 15, 2005, 03:26:33 PM »

I pronounce the L in Salmon, unless I make a specific effort not to.

(Come to think of it, I may finally have been trained out of that one . . . )

-o-

There are a few other words (really common ones) that I pronounce exactly as written that a lot of people apparently don't, but I can't remember right now what they are. Just that I get funny looks sometimes.

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English & Linguistics / You wanna' come with?

« on: August 13, 2005, 07:35:32 PM »

Okay, if you're gonna start talking about spankings again, I'm getting the heck out of here.

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English & Linguistics / Words that you can never, ever say right

« on: August 13, 2005, 07:11:36 PM »

You have a hard time saying "Mary"?

That must be awkward. Do you say it incorrectly, or do you simply say some other name?

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English & Linguistics / You wanna' come with?

« on: August 13, 2005, 06:54:08 PM »

I said pedant, not pissant.

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English & Linguistics / You wanna' come with?

« on: August 13, 2005, 03:53:55 PM »

The deja vu I'm getting from this thread is so thick it's giving me a headache.

And, ironically enough, I have no memory of writing the above post by me. It doesn't even sound like me to me. (I don't think I'm usually that pedantic.)

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English & Linguistics / Words that you can never, ever say right

« on: August 13, 2005, 03:48:29 PM »

Heh. I have a hard time pronouncing "rural" as well.

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English & Linguistics / Proselyt(iz)e

« on: July 31, 2005, 04:04:33 PM »

*preen*

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English & Linguistics / More Comic Sans

« on: July 31, 2005, 09:57:00 AM »

I'm largely with Porter here.

And I think signs and such done in Comic Sans do look amateurish, but I think that typically either they are intended to look this way, or they simply are done by amateurs.

As far as readability, Comis Sans is one of the more readable typefaces out there. I think the vast majority of typefaces that people get all snobby about are rather unreadable. I think all of your basic needs are met by a nice serif font like Times Roman and a nice sans serif like Helvetica/Ariel. Anything else ought to be reserved for titles or not used at all, pretty much, but I consider Comic Sans to be an exception, in that, unlike most of those fifty thousand fonts that come with most software these days, it actually is pretty readable. (Another exception is Courier, in case for some reason you want something to look like a typewriter typeface--though in general I find Courier hideous.) I certainly would not want to read a paper written in Comic Sans, but for a little paper sign or personal web page or AIM font, I see nothing at all wrong with it.

Most people who complain about Comic Sans are not referring to "professional" products or thinking of the poor graphic designers driven out of business. Mostly they just make fun of people's personal web pages (or those of small businesses) or their AIM fonts, and I can't distinguish between that and being a snob.

-Icarus

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English & Linguistics / Proselyt(iz)e

« on: July 31, 2005, 08:16:33 AM »

I've never heard of proselyting as a word at all, so I'm going to guess that this might be a regional thing. I think the difference in connotation you are sensing might really be completely innocent, if so, and here's why: Most of the people on Hatrack/GC who are "proponents," as it were, of proselyting, live geographically close to each other, mostly out west. So they might tend to use the same word for purely regional reasons, while people who are not, say LDS or JW, come from a wider range of locations and may be more likely to use "proselytizing" for that reason. In other words, you may have a correlation but not a causality.