Leding (sic) from the front

[Leman]

Yes folks, the wargames press is at it again. It must be very confusing for people who have English as a second language to be constantly baffled by the appearance of this heavy metal completely out of context, or is it a dog's lead they have come across? So, once again, for the benefit of illiterate copywriters (or whatever they are called):

1. LEAD - pronounced led - a heavy dull grey metal once used for the manufacture of toy soldiers.

2. LEAD - pronounced leed - either the present tense of the verb to lead or a length of leather, rope etc. to take a dog for a walk.

3. LED - pronounced led - the PAST TENSE of the verb to lead (it also means dirt cheap lighting as well these days).

Just one quote from the current WI, "By 1916 the air war had become a deadly affair as improved engine design lead to better armed planes and mastery of the skies ......" Now that sentence was either written by someone foreign who can't write English properly, or all the lead in that plane is going to cause it to masterfully plummet from the skies.

Yours, disgusted of Tonbridge Wells.

[FierceKitty]

Or it's the characteristic work of a normal first-language speaker who despises every other language but won't give himself the trouble of learning his own.

[Leman]

More than likely; my point being that WI does not appear in that many languages and a foreigner trying to read it is going to wonder what's going on, thanks to the inept grammar of the author (not to mention the irritation felt by a native speaker). What bugs me though is that this mistake is becoming more and more prevalent. Next thing you know people will be making simple mistakes with apostrophes! 

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Me thinks that this should have been left alone - as no doubt we will soon become overwhelmed by the insane mewings of a mad cat.....

IanS

[Leman]

Look more closely at the previous posts Ian.

[Ithoriel]

It is, as is so often the case with this sort of complaint, modern usage.

The language as she is wrote.

Therefore not wrong, merely the written language evolving.

Written English would be a much more useful tool if the symbols used and the sounds pronounced matched rather more often and if declension were somewhat more consistent, IMHO.

[Leman]

That is utter b******s! By that reasoning anyone with dyslexia is just evolving and anyone who can't be arsed to spell properly or use the correct form of a verb is just evolving. My goodness1 Tosh in spades. Tel yu wot den lehs jus evlvencworapns.

[Ithoriel]

One person using it isn't evolution of the language but when that trickles out to tens, hundreds and eventually thousands it is.

Usage, spelling and pronunciation have been changing for millennia, the Grammar Canutes are not going to stop that.

[Subedai]

There is language evolution and then there is language devolution which seems to be the more prevalent of the two. For example the word 'awesome' has crept in under the radar and now the world and his brother are using it to describe something even mildly interesting or the exacerbating over use of the word 'like'. This has started to appear in sentences making it completely nonsensical. Case in point is ' I was like...' or 'they were like'; it's as if the word is now almost exclusively a verb.

[Norm]

If memory serves correct, language historically has corrupted at the rate of 1% every 19 years, it is one of the ways that they tracked the various migration of man through remote islands, where the common tongue is not so common the further the population is from its original source.

I am only guessing, but I imagine that language corruption is now probably accelerating due to multi-media allowing faster penetration of any corruption, so the almost unnoticeable 1% every 19 years might now be say 1% every 3 years (I am just guessing ... wildly).

You can even see it with tonal use of sentence construction, hence we have come through a period in which a proportion of a generation started putting a high tonal inflection at the end of their sentences - what is commonly known as the 'Australian Question'. The esteemed Radio 4 people did an article on it and suggested that employers at interview would tend to mark down candidates who used the Australian Question as it suggested they were too easily subject to peer pressure, as they have modified the way they speak sub-consciously over a relatively short period of time, to fit in.

A few years ago I came across an important document that had essentially been hand written in TEXT speak!

For my own part, I know that I make some quite basic mistakes and that my sentence construction is weaker than it should be. I don't however like seeing very obvious bloomers, but I am also a little chilled that essentially we are all at different places on the written language spectrum and that within certain parameters, acceptance of that is important if we are to promote the involvement with the internet as being an inclusive thing. I have worked with people who can only write their name and cannot read and a tolerance is necessary in maintaining respect for each other (by the way I just spelt (spelled) tolerance with two L's, thank  you spell checker :-) ).

The bough of a tree, Frank Bough, I bow down, I tie a good bow, Bo-Peep. It all starts off with A- is for Apple and it gets much harder :-)

[Ithoriel]

Filched from a friends Facebook feed

[Techno]

One particular 'thing' I'm never sure of......is with the use of the words "a couple"

Which IS correct ?

A)...A couple was arrested by police on charges of blah, blah, blah......

or

....A couple were arrested by police .....etc, etc.

Part of me thinks that grammatically A) is correct, though it (to me, at least) sounds completely wrong.

I await the answer with interest. 

Cheers - Phil

[Leman]

Sounds wrong but is correct:

A couple was......

Two people were....

[FierceKitty]

One particular 'thing' I'm never sure of......is with the use of the words "a couple"

Which IS correct ?

A)...A couple was arrested by police on charges of blah, blah, blah......

or

....A couple were arrested by police .....etc, etc.

Part of me thinks that grammatically A) is correct, though it (to me, at least) sounds completely wrong.

I await the answer with interest. 

Cheers - Phil

One of those depressing reminders that language is an imperfect system.

[Leman]

Probably stems from the English language being such a mongrel.