Friday, December 9, 2011

The English We Use.

I was thinking this morning how similar reading is to walking in the woods. We have a head full of words, grammar, spelling and punctuation, and as we go along the pages, if everything fits with what is in our head, it is like smooth walking. But if something different comes up we stumble a bit, just like tripping over a tree root in the woods. Today for me it was a new word. The word was "Fluvage". I have come to the conclusion that this is a word made up by Mike Roberts on his weather forecast broadcast on TV. It isn't in the dictionary!
Time for Coffee with Friends

Time for Snowboarding

Time to go home

The Road Home (All photos from Apex Mountain)
We can also trip and stumble on "wrong" grammar or "wrong" spelling. In the local stores they have started this as a means of getting your attention. For example they are now using "z" instead of "s" for plurals. They also invent new words. e.g. "bogo" means "buy one get one". Nowadays there is supposed to be a consensus on correct English, not like centuries ago when one spelt a word as one wished, even differently each time it was used. I hope this doesn't come back again. I think they tried it for a while in schools. Then they called it "phonetic spelling" !
We hope your reading today is all smooth walking in the woods! Or should I be saying "smooth sailing"?

1 comment:

Desiree said...

I think those times have already returned.