Word Court Thoughts

I was doing extra credit for a class by reading word court articles and they were all really interesting. If you ever get a chance you should check out the links that I have posted. Under each link is all my comments to the articles that are from that link. I only kept the comments partially serious because I was turning it in. I was thinking a whole lot of sarcastic things though.

Word Court Articles

http://www.wordcourt.com/archives.php?show=2003-09-03

For Pete’s Sake

          Well I never knew why people say “For the love of Pete” so that was interesting. I also did not realize that there was an Oxford Dictionary for Slang. Guess slang is more official than I had thought it was.

a or an MPA
         
          I learned that even if a word starts with a consonant, if it sounds like a vowel if still uses “an” instead of “a”. Oh and I think it is really extreme for a fistfight to break out over proper grammar.

Myself

          I now know how to use “myself” correctly. That meaning I would use myself if I refered to myself twice in the same sentence. Which brings a question to my mind, would you use myself if you were to refer to yourself in the same sentence more than twice?

http://www.wordcourt.com/archives.php?show=2003-09-10

Lay and lie

I think that Barbara makes a good point in saying that the “everybody does it” excuse is a pretty good excuse when it comes to language. Though if we did not go by that reasoning, we might still be speaking more sophisticated than all the slang and text lingo that we use now. Also I hadn’t known the difference between lay and lie.

Rest bit?

          Minuscule definitely does look strange. I never would have known it was supposed to be spelled that way instead of miniscule if I had not read this article. Also this friend that Mara Filo was emailing must have been from the 1980s.

http://www.wordcourt.com/archives.php?show=2003-09-17

RSVP

          I would say someone needs to come up with a way to say RSVP in English instead of French so that people don’t say “please respond please” or people could just not take it as curt.

Comma before Inc.
         
          Well my first thought did not exactly have anything to do with the article. My thought was that if Monsters Inc. were to drop the Inc. they would just be Monster.Anyway, I agree with Barbara, why is there a comma between the Business’s name and Inc. Don’t those two things go together?

Sneaked or snuck
         
          I personally don’t think that sneaked sounds right.

Unlike no other

          We use double negatives in Spanish. I don’t think that we use double negatives as often in English, at least I was taught not to do that, but I think that people still use double negatives for some reason. Probably because they think it makes them sounds cooler if they use double negatives while everyone else doesn’t.

http://www.wordcourt.com/archives.php?show=2003-09-24

What to call married men

          Well first of all, I thought that the whole gay marriage movement had just started recently, maybe that’s just because I pay more attention to the world now but I think that if this movement has been going on since before 2003 I would have noticed sooner than a couple years ago. I do like that Barbara wants to know what the difference between a civil union and marriage is, because I would like to know the difference myself.

Sights or sites

          I did not realize that people did not know the difference between sights and sites.I thought it was pretty self explanatory.  Also why would anyone say “historical sights” that just does not  look correct at all.

http://www.wordcourt.com/archives.php?show=2003-10-01

Different than or different from

          So when a word result is awkward, change it to something less awkward sounding.  Does that work for more than just different than and different from?

Dilatate

          First of all, I did not know  that dilatate was a word.  And I don’t think that using longer words when there is a perfectly fine word that most people know. Plain English is better than trying to completely confuse people.

Plural e-mails

          Considering e-mail means electronic mail, e-mail message is redundant.  As long as a word is in the dictionary, then it perfectly acceptable to use the word. Also I care whether e-mail is hypenated. That would be like not write nonetheless all together, to me at least.

http://www.wordcourt.com/archives.php?show=2003-10-08

Whence bulldozers?

Now this article is interesting. I could’ve guessed the bull part, since bulldozers are not something to mess with, just like bulls. Never would I have guessed that the dozer part came from medicine though.

Alot and alright

Alot is not a word. Also, Barbara just told me how to find “alot” in newspapers.I learned how to properly use awhile from this article, and why google spell check only likes awhile sometimes.

http://www.wordcourt.com/archives.php?show=2003-10-15

Two pair or two pairs

          Two pair just sounds funny.

Adjectives after nouns

          There are different names for adjectives. I did not realize that there were postpositive adjectives, and those are adjectives that modify pronouns.

Entitle or title

          First of all, I found someone that wrote in from Mount Vernon.  Going into what the article says though, I just learned that I can use title or entitle interchangeably.

http://www.wordcourt.com/archives.php?show=2003-10-22

Over or more than

          I have never heard someone use the word decried before. That word is going into my vocabulary! Of course language authorities have different opinions, they are human.  I like that someone just went and banned the use of “over” and “above” though. That is pretty awesome.

Classical or classic

          So I sort of knew this already, but I have always used the words interchangeably anyway just because  both of those words can be used for music and they both mean timeless music to me.

Issues or problems

          I also use issues and problems interchangeably., but I guess that is not accurate according to Barbara.

http://www.wordcourt.com/archives.php?show=2003-11-19

Oriental vs. Asian

          According to Barbara, people from Asia could be offended if they heard that Lisbon has an Oriental restaurant. Also , I’m not sure that Lisbon should have an Oriental restaurant now, unless they are serving old recipes, because it is a new restaurant and certainly not dated.

http://www.wordcourt.com/archives.php?show=2003-10-29

Die or pass away

          I use these words interchangeably, which is making me start to realize I use a lot of words interchangeably when Barbara does not want me to do so. People give me strange looks when I say someone died. I don’t think die is a harsh word at all, pass away just seems to be trying to avoid facing reality.