How is it even possible?

TheBigCheese said:
A real annoyance - spoken only (hopefully)

"choo" instead of you, "didn't choo", "don't choo" etc.
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it's the concatination of the t and the y, so it would be "didn choo" or "don choo"

There are accents where the difference between the two would barely be noticeable, especially some US accents.

My personal bugbear of late is unusual/inappropriate use of the word this, usually in place of "that" but sometimes just added on to the end of a sentence. Especially in the case of this/that it seems a daft difference, but to me there is definitely something wrong hearing it said out loud.

My girlfriend has a tendency to do it when she's overthinking what she's saying.
 
One that I have always wondered about, (maybe an English teacher can tell me) is why we say that "as punishment he was hanged" instead of "as punishment he was hung" ?

Also always wondered why we say Leftenant for Lieutenant.. given that we say I will have 2 days off in lieu and not 2 days off in lef.
 
Tombstone said:
One that I have always wondered about, (maybe an English teacher can tell me) is why we say that "as punishment he was hanged" instead of "as punishment he was hung" ?

Also always wondered why we say Leftenant for Lieutenant.. given that we say I will have 2 days off in lieu and not 2 days off in lef.
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Because the English language is messed up.
cholmondeley is pronounced chumley, and there are a lot weirder than that.
 
cokecan72 said:
I'm not normally one to join the ranks of grammer nazi's as I'm probably just as bad as a lot of people with grammer and spelling but:

"That'll learn them!".....errr you mean 'teach' right?
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Ugh, "grammer" and "nazi's" :mad:

You don't use apostrophes for plurals. It's "Nazis".

Also, I think people say "That'll learn 'em" sarcastically, I don't think they're being serious.
 
Dont know if its been posted but I hate it when people spell can't with an R in it so they spell it carn't. How is that even possible?
 
Tombstone said:
One that I have always wondered about, (maybe an English teacher can tell me) is why we say that "as punishment he was hanged" instead of "as punishment he was hung" ?
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In the 16th Century, the word 'hanged' was the correct past participle of 'hang', and was used in legal writings to refer to the method of execution. While the word 'hung' took over from 'hanged' in most cases, 'hanged' remained in use when referring to executions because of its prevalence in still used legal documents

Tombstone said:
Also always wondered why we say Leftenant for Lieutenant.. given that we say I will have 2 days off in lieu and not 2 days off in lef.
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The word 'lieutenant' is borrowed from French (from lieu, meaning place or position, and tenant, meaning to hold). The Old French version of lieu was luef, which was around when we started using the word, hence the pronunciation 'leftenant'.


Or at least that's what I was told when I asked my GCSE English teacher those same questions. He probably hated me, I always asked awkward questions like that.
 
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