Your vs. You're vs Yore

[Angrboda]

For what it's worth, I find competency in spelling and grammar to bear no relation to intelligence or wit.

So if I tlk lyk diz wuld u styl fink om cleva?

Still?

[jonb]

This is the nearest I could find to my the accent my wife had when I first met her, but she was more west country mummerset.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVcjF_6Fnn4

[Violet]

Now, to put this thread back on track...

[Red Celt]

It's fairly safe to say that Birmingham has the worst accent in the UK. I forget who I'm paraphrasing here, but a comedian mentioned that they don't sound stupid; they sound like a victim.

That sounds familiar; now I'm going to be stuck with that until I remember the name.

I think that it might have been Russell Howard on Mock The Week, during a conversation about the accents of pilots.

[Cyberman]

Possibly; the Mock The Week bit sounds about right but I'm not connecting it with Russell Howard. I'll have to dig out the "Too Hot For TV" DVDs when I get home, or see what YouTube's got.

[Angrboda]

Allow me to put to rest the notion that this is a knowledge problem.

While it is indeed true that my skills with language and writing are some of my weaker skills, I'm nobody's slouch. I was teacher's pet of more English teachers than I can count on one hand. (And that's not just because I only have one finger — it's a figure of speech, damnit!) When I graduated high school, I had impeccable spelling and grammar, and a vocabulary that frequently employed words of eight or more syllables. When I started BBS'ing, I noticed my grammatical skills starting to slip over time. The real eye opener was when I started hanging out on IRC and I noticed these grammatical errors start to blossom like flowers on the chin of the morning. And it wasn't because I had been sipping cocktails of mercury and lead paint chips, either. It's something about these interactive media that results in an increase in certain types of grammatical errors. And if you'll notice, the bulk of those which so-called grammar Nazis pick up on are all homophones — parts of speech that are spelled differently but sound the same. You don't notice these self-appointed policeman of perfection nattering on about the improper use of who/whom, which/that, and dangling participles. It's all the low hanging fruit, the mistakes that most people make. I have a rudimentary theory, but it's just barely that. I have the suspicion that the interactive, social and so-to-speak "conversational" nature of this type of activity uses the centers of the brain associated with verbal speech and sound more than other types of written discourse do, or in a different way. That's why I think the most common errors in electronic communication are homophones (and notice that spelling errors can also be homophonic in character as well).

I don't have any evidence for my specific hypothesis, but there it is.


(Notice how "poinh!" isn't as funny unless you imagine the sound in your head.)

[Darth]

Their's just no excuse for making a mistake in english, its such a simple language.

Simple language, is it? Ignores half its 'rules' half the time, multiple letters that by all means should not exist (x, q, k->c<-s, ph->f), letters that get pronounced differently for no reason at all, homonyms out the goddamn wazoo (including shit like bear and bear and bear (and not to forget bare and bare).

Oxford commas, messing up participles (will be, been, being, has been/will go, gone, going, has gone), fucking up word order and tone ("Where is McDonalds?" can come off as quite demanding), understanding the semicolon, when one should use parenthesis or a footnote or simply not elaborate, capitalization of pronouns and first letters of a sentence, misspelling words because it sounds right and goes through spellcheck but means something else, how nonphonetic half of our words sound (including phonetic)... apostrophes and word contraction, and a bunch of other unmentioned bullshit: English is 'so easy' that most of us don't even notice half the time we screw it up.

Native english speakers who've been in honors/advanced english since the start, read and reread classical novels in their spare time, and immediately grasped concepts put forth by teachers... even they have the potential to fuck up a sentence in English.

[Ryantology]

Jesus it's irritating to read a post when someone uses "your" when they mean "you're" or "you are" so could we just do a little refresher here?

Your - as in "your religion"

You're - as in "you're religious" - you are religious

Yore - not used much, just including it to be a complete asshole about this - of old; long ago

Thank you for taking care of our English language.

Using apostrophes correctly is very important. All other punctuation is apparently optional!

[Darth]

And everyone is having a go at the brummie accent

My mum has a brummie accent , my dad has a glaswegian accent, mine is a meld of the two . It's true though, on british t.v a brummie accent usually means 'criminal' or something .

Edit: Damn my spell checker!

[Violet]

@Stue: I am nit teh olny 1 taht can eisely raed tihs bulshlit. Tuhs I em knot an eNgilsh theatcher. Waht iz spelin werth enywai?