And another thing ... why do people say "see you later" when they're not expecting to see the other person again that day? This seems to be happening a lot lately. At first I'd reply "Oh, will you?" but then I realised the first party meant "goodbye".

Or when it just gets shortened to "Later" or "Laters"

GAHHHHHHHHHH. What gets this Bag's basket well and truly rattled is the response "I'm good, thanks" when I ask how a pupe is. I am NOT asking about your standard of behaviour, I rant, I am asking you HOW.YOU.ARE.

That's another thing that p****s me off. People who put full stops after words to emphasise a point.

Mulled-Bag x

"Take care" is just as bad, particularly when said to you by someone you've never even met.

The "how are you" / "I'm good" / "take care" etc thing used to trip me up to no end when I was living in the US. It took me a while to learn that they didn't want to know how I was, it was just a greeting. I didn't have a problem with it once I figured that out. After all, in the part of Asia that I come from it was common to ask someone "have you eaten yet" as a greeting, which would seem very strange to us here.

What an irritable bunch you all are!!!!

I have to agree with Bagpuss regarding 'I'm good'. I find it really w e i r d.

I tried to reply to Czerny when he said he was irritated by pupe. but I can't seem to find where he said it now. What is a pupe?

Don't know about anyone else but if I have an outlet for my irritability, like here, it acts as a valve and the Real World never sees it

O blimmin' eck. New I should of resisted the temptation to drop in on this thread.
Totally awesome.
Kind of addictive, like, lol.
Later, guys...

Ok, maybe somebody can clarify for me a constant disagreement between myself and the landlord of my local.

I say that sometimes, the correct wording is "....... and me" rather than "......... and I".

For example,
"the present was for Me and ............." Whereas in this sentence
"......... and I bought you a present" would be correct.

I always thought the rule was, if you were just talking about yourself and would use "me", the same would apply when adding somebody else.

If this makes any sense at all, please put me out of my misery

The rule with me/I is that the sentence has to make sense without the other person.

For example, "Matthew and I went shopping..." This sentence would make sense without Matthew - "I went shopping."

However, "Matthew and me went shopping..." would not make sense - "Me went shopping..."

And you always put the other person first.

Ha, that's what I thought Not that he'll accept it mind

Your two examples are basically correct (although Celeste is right about putting the other person first) - I think it's to do with whether you're using nominative or accusative case (i.e. whether you are the subject or the object of the verb).

But why do you need to use "myself" in your first sentence?! It's an argument between you and the landlord, surely?

Oh ****. I will now go away and beat myself with a copy of the OED

Does that mean it would be an argument between the landlord of my local and I?

Aargh! No! Between the landlord and me!

May I recommend "Between You and I" [sic] by James Cochrane?

Oh dear! I really am rubbish at this..
Is there any hope?

Not for I.. I's rubbish at this too.

Oh wow, that's now in my Amazon basket, thanks

It wasn't Czerny (who is a 'she') who said this but Bagpuss.

It's Bag's pet abbreviation for 'pupil'.

It is not at all fussy!

My favourite reply when someone asks me if they can do something is stolen from a film: "You can, but you may not."

Envelope or Onvelope?

Is onvelope the posh version of envelope or the more common pronunciation? I'm in the envelope camp, unpretentious pleb that I am

No it was Czerny who also sent me a message to explain that she had deleted it after I read it which was why it disappeared and to get me to do the same but I think its too late now as its been quoted. I don't think she intended any offence by saying that.

I can't understand why you would think Bagpuss would say he/she was very irritated by the word pupe if it's his/her own pet abbreviation!!!!?

Thanks for explaining the word 'pupe', I couldn't work out what the word meant and googleing didn't help.

No, I didn't mean any offence at all which is why I deleted it almost immediately, as soon as I realised it could be interpreted as being less light-hearted than it was intended, being in the written medium. Apols...

Gives us all a chance to moan about our pet grammar hates!

My pet hates are things like " I was sat on the bed" and "I was laid down on the sofa", both of which imply that some sinister person had imposed these things on the speaker. Let's hear it for participles!


Actually, most of the possessive pronouns are the same: hers, yours, theirs, ours, its. None of these needs an apostrophe, as the pronoun itself tells you how many people are involved.

Apostrophes are used after nouns to make clear the difference between singular and plural possessives, e.g. "the boy's school" and "the boys' school".

Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) called this "verbising". As he once said to Hobbes on this subject:

"Verbising wierds language"

Edit: A particular hate of mine is leverage, used as a verb (and, of course, pronounced "levverage" ); however, as was recently pointed out to me, it is now in the Oxford Dictionary, and to be fair, I can't think of a traditional word with quite the same meaning...

There is a new restaurant at Bluewater which will remain nameless, which has a huge sign on the back wall, with some of the food they sell written on it. Things like "pizza's", "nacho's" etc.

It should always be written envelope and is (usually? traditionally?) pronounced onvelope - anthough I think that "envelope" is perhaps becoming the more usual

I believe envelopes are a French invention : hence the French style of pronouncing the word.

In which case the English ought to spell it phonetically as pronounced by the French - "onvlopp"

I think we should definitely instigate that spelling!

Czerny - your inbox is full!

Not any more!!

Talking of linguistics, is there such a thing as a linguistic? I.e. is the word is singular or plural?

(Decided to put this here instead of the Teaching Dynamics thread.)

If you take the 's' off 'linguistics', it becomes an adjective.

I know this (or it could equally be an adverb) but am just wondering why dolce@piano chose to treat the word as a plural (when, for example, "mathematics" and "physics" are treated as singular nouns - i.e. "maths is fascinating").

I think "linguistics" should be treated in the same way as "mathematics", or "physics".

It annoys me when road names don't have apostrophes in e.g. St. Catherines Street. I am so tempted to put them in!

Didn't somewhere (Birmingham, I think) actively go round all their road signs taking out apostrophes?...

I'll put them back in when I go back to work then

Would putting them back in with a permanent marker count as vandalism?...

Apparently Australia have abolished all apostrophes in place names.

I was reading in my local residents' association magazine about some new rustic place name signs (copses and other areas) which have been made for our local wood/bird sanctuary.

The article told us that all apostrophes had been missed out on purpose because it cost extra to have them put in...

I have just caught up with this thread and since no one seems to have answered one of Czerny's first questions:



When I first started teaching English as a foreign language this was one of the points I found very complicated.

The most obvious difference is that you can't use "that" in a non-defining relative clause (but as a native English speaker you probably wouldn't make this mistake anyway). So, for example, you can't use "that" in the following sentences:
"My neighbour, who is very house-proud, spends three hours a day doing housework."
"His new book, which was published in June, has sold over 100 000 copies."

If you want to be strictly grammatically correct, you ought to use "that" (not who or which) when talking about something/someone which is unique so:
"This is the best book that I have ever read."
"The only time that I saw them was in 1988."

These examples are not particularly good as you don't need a relative pronoun but I can't think of anything better as I'm typing.

On the subject of American/British English; when I was at school I had an English teacher who objected violently to the expression "train station" and insisted on "railway station". His reaction was so extreme that I still avoid saying "train station" but last week I flew into Gatwick Airport and noticed that all the signs were to the "train station." I can imagine him (if he's still alive) demanding to see the airport manager...

I am annoyed My inner language pedant and my inner geek pedant are at war with each other. I am ripping some DVDs to mp4 format so I can watch them on my laptop, and if I use the track titles as the file names, the apostrophes in those cause a hassle on the command line (clue: I do not like Windows).

The geek has won; the file names do not contain apostrophes. I am still annoyed

(has anyone else suddenly become really self-conscious about their grammar since starting to post here or is it just me )

I think the examples above are fairly clear. The grey area occurs with sentences such as the non-unique case:

"this is something which I believe in" (this is something in which I believe)
"this is something that I believe in"

Here, both sound OK, but I think I was taught that where that/which or that/who, etc were interchangeable like this, it was supposedly better to use 'which' or 'who' instead of 'that' - especially in writing.

I've noted that Microsoft US Englishg grammar checker will suggest the opposite. It applies a rule where 'that' introduces essential clauses while 'which' introduces nonessential clauses.

Ex1: I do not believe in ideas that cannot be rationalised. (second clause (after 'that') is essential for the sentence to make sense)

Ex2: I do not believe in your ideas, which cannot be rationalised. (second clause is not essential as the first part of the sentence can stand alone)

Whilst I would agree that 'which' is correct in the second example, I would also tend to use 'which' (especially in writing) in the first example as well (on the basis that where it is interchangeable, which or who is the preferred form). This would seem to be a difference between American and English usage?


I'm being more careful here! I feel it's a very dangerous place to enter!

Why does this leave a taste of Ashes in my mouth?

Maybe they were already thinking of that when they named Alice Springs. I would allow that Alice's Springs doesn't roll off the tongue so easily, though. (Is someone going to roast me and tell me Ms Springs was a person?)