Stop Misspelling "Losing" as "Loosing"!!!

[Misirlou]

There is no such word as "irregardless" either; the proper word is regardless.
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Yes, I was including it deliberately to express my irritation. Makes my skin crawl nearly as much as the odious "orientate."

[JohnKoerner]

Upon hearing a friend use the word "irregardless" once, I remember my brother telling this fellow that his word use was "irridiculous"

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I like it! "Irridiculous"! I'll have to add that to my illexicon.  

I sometimes wonder if the folks who abuse "lose" and "loose" can tell the difference between a Canon 40D and a 400D.

[jjj]

I like it! "Irridiculous"! I'll have to add that to my illexicon.  
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Summat to help embiggen your illexicon. -   There's a phrase to make Rob's skin crawl  
[a href=\"http://www.freerice.com/]Free Rice - word test[/url]
Did well over 5000 grains of rice with it last night and managed to reach level 49!
Learnt some new words too. Nudnick was my favourite.

[Petrjay]

Which one of you guys is going to tell Tony Soprano that there's no such word as "irregardless?"

[Jeremy Roussak]

Learnt some new words too. Nudnick was my favourite.
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Then you need to read "The Joy of Yiddish" by Leo Rosten. Wonderful book.

Jeremy

[David Sutton]

Learnt some new words too. Nudnick was my favourite.
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A chap who can use nudnick in a sentence is indeed a force to be reckoned with. My favourite has always been remembering the difference between abnegate, abrogate, derogate, abdicate and arrogate. David

[Rob C]

A chap who can use nudnick in a sentence is indeed a force to be reckoned with. My favourite has always been remembering the difference between abnegate, abrogate, derogate, abdicate and arrogate. David
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This will eventually lead to Watergate and end up in tears.

Rob C

[NikoJorj]

My favourite has always been remembering the difference between abnegate, abrogate, derogate, abdicate and arrogate. David
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Thanks for the free rice link! I had a bit of fun too...
To get back to philology, I was amazed, and amused, that many of these unusual-or-supposed-so english words were simply englishicized (oops?) french words (in your case abnégation, abroger, déroger, abdiquer, et s'arroger - all relatively common).

[mode on va pas commencer à pardonner pour Jeanne d'Arc, non plus!]
Hey, you did invade us some time ago, after all!
[/mode on va pas commencer à pardonner pour Jeanne d'Arc, non plus!]

[jjj]

To get back to philology, I was amazed, and amused, that many of these unusual-or-supposed-so english words were simply englishicized (oops?) french words (in your case abnégation, abroger, déroger, abdiquer, et s'arroger - all relatively common). [a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=170918\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

That's not unusual, I'm sure I used some French words above somewhere that are 'English' but not used that much. I think one was 'quotidian' [= daily in English], but also means 'ordinary' in the day to day sense. It's not that unusual to find a synonym for an 'English' word to be a French word, usually without the accents.

Another thing to look for to find French words in English, is 'et' in French is sometimes 'st' in English, etude=study, my brain is a bit fried at moment and cannot think of any others.

Anglicised is the word you were loking for. 'English', the word comes from the Angles who along with the 'Germans' from Saxony gave us the phrase Anglo-Saxon.

[Provokot]

On every forum I participate in people constantly misspell "losing" (as in "losing sleep") as "loosing".  It is easily the most common misspelling on the 'Net.  Stop it!
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There so inilliterate that their going to fail they're English exams and loose all incredibility. Ur lucky u can spell, m8.

[Provokot]

I like it! "Irridiculous"! I'll have to add that to my illexicon.  

I sometimes wonder if the folks who abuse "lose" and "loose" can tell the difference between a Canon 40D and a 400D.
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There's a difference?

[jjj]

[mode on va pas commencer à pardonner pour Jeanne d'Arc, non plus!]
Hey, you did invade us some time ago, after all!
[/mode on va pas commencer à pardonner pour Jeanne d'Arc, non plus!]
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?? I thought you invaded us!? 1066 and all that.

[NikoJorj]

?? I thought you invaded us!? 1066 and all that.
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Okay, we're not going to talk about Mers el Kebir then... How do you spell "Ennemi héréditaire" in English?

[mode even-degree-humour-challenged-oriented insertion]
 
[/mode even-degree-humour-challenged-oriented insertion]

[jjj]

I don't think that incident had much impact on either language and it wasn't even France.  Though interestingly a single French word may have had a significant impact on this event

"The words “under German or Italian supervision” ultimately found their way into Article Eight of the armistice agreement which had been drafted in French. It immediately sounded alarm bells in the British Admiralty because of inclusion of the French word contrôle. In French it means to keep custody of and to inspect, but not to exert operational control. The British, never known for their interest in foreign languages, quite naturally took the word to mean that the Germans would take over control of the French fleet. Feeling betrayed, a meeting of the British War Cabinet on June 24, 1940 concluded that Article Eight’s assurances were to be disregarded. This resulted in a cascading distrust between two nations that had every need--and reason--to feel solidarity with one another, even though one had been beaten by a common enemy."



Hereditary enemies.

[Rob C]

Hey, Futt Futt!

Glad to see you are still actively engaged in helping the world get along...

Two things, whilst I remember:

a. yesterday, Sky News announced that the BBC was spending 25 million pounds to float a television service in Gaelic for 60,000 people;

b. the auld alliance, as the Scots would have it, between Scotland and France is perhaps partly to blame for the semi-hatred of some of them up north towards some of them down south.

On a different level of madness, I was amazed to learn that India now wishes to be seen as a donor country for aid to Africa... On the other hand, with our own British unresolved domestic problems of urban squalor, decay and crime, I wonder which is the pot and which the kettle in this respect.

Rob C

[jjj]

b. the auld alliance, as the Scots would have it, between Scotland and France is perhaps partly to blame for the semi-hatred of some of them up north towards some of them down south.
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There's a forum local to me which I rarely bother with as there are too many numpties ranting and raving, but when I looked the other day one of the resident idiots was going on about how the Scotish never, ever hated the English who went there to live!  And the Scotish and English always got on OK.
Apparently this was true as she was Scotish and she knew best.

I always thought the Scots hated the English for doing the usual English things like murder/torure/seizure of assets/imposing their own culture.. etc.
 The French were certainly allies of Scotland  at points in history, my enemy's enemy may have been a part of the bonding process.

[bernie west]

Someone mentioned the phrase, as used commonly by americans, "I could care less about .....".  I've always found this strange as the australian version (and presumable the anglo version) is "I couldn't care less about .....".  The australian version implies that there is nothing in my world about which I care less than the thing in question.  Whereas the american version implies that there are actually things which I care less about, further implying that the thing in question may not actually be that bad after all.  Perhaps the american version should be "I should care less about ..."

The other thing that bugs me (*) is the practice (or is that practise??) in business speak of turning nouns into verbs.  For example, "let's call a meeting and workshop this through"

And on the issue of Gaelic, what's wrong with promoting and taking pride in your indigenous language?  Why are you so ashamed of it?

And finally, as you saw above, I am Australian.  So the issue of strange words and strange spellings is actually the way of life down here.

[NikoJorj]

And on the issue of Gaelic, what's wrong with promoting and taking pride in your indigenous language?  Why are you so ashamed of it?

I don't know the particular case of Gaelic, but know the ones of some french regional languages : provencal, savoyard...
They're wildly used in city signs, and sometimes even street signs, these days - halfway between seek of regional identity and eye-candy for tourists. But they are indeed very rarely spoken apart from a few elderlies, not to say written (even if there has been indeed literature in Provencal, mainly around Frederic Mistral, Nobel prize in literature 1904)... In France, the only really spoken regional language I know is Basque (I mean, spoken by young people).
Actually, these languages have died from themselves for a very practical reason : the significant discrepancies between spoken languages from village to village, from valley to valley, made oral communication difficult when roads, coaches and trains began to make these places closer to each other.
These people had to unify their language, and due to what has been called Linguistic imperialism, and that I personally consider as belonging to a progress, the french language was proposed (better to say imposed) as a much wider-based standard.

I think this may well be the main question of the original post : we all need a common language.
Sharing that language, means it should at the same time keeped stable, but evolving - I still think the idea of an authority regulating language, in the sense of publishing an official reference about it (eg dictionaries, grammar books...), may be the least worst way to manage that.

No, I wouldn't give up french, because I feel that something as beautiful as what Proust or others have written shall not die - or at least, I don't want to be deprived of that.
But I'm glad to have learnt (even very imperfectly) english - the first reason here being it gives me access to a rather huge knowledge about photography, that we just don't have in french (I'm thinking to people from Ansel Adams to Norman Koren or the Steinmuellers, with many others of course, including Michael Reichmann and this forum).

The progress here would be, imho, that bilingualism becomes the norm.
As it's quite hard to teach to your children another language than your mother language, all the language that are reasonably widely spoken now will still be spoken - including national languages as french, or even some regional ones as the numerous german ones, but we will need a common world-spread language. Will it be english, or spanish, or hindi, or chinese, or icelandic? Wait and see...

[Sunesha]

After study english language for 6 years like all swedish people. I can say english is great language. Especially in describing things, as there is such large vocabulary it becomes easier. I read alot off english books as not all books are translated to my first language Swedish. I always have pro-found love for the english language.

So at least my language is consisting off fewer words than the english language.

But I must say there is hard twitch to learning to speak english. In sweden we have two schools off english teachers. The ones that only allow brittish way off pronounce words and the teachers that have a more laid-back way that allow american english. As none off our movies gets dubbed, more than children's movies. We are fed with american english, which seems to get into our learning.

Anyway after living in England and also worked with Americans for 4 years. I feel confused almost feels that I learnt two languages. Even that there are only minor differences.

I think spelling in the english language is quite hard as there often one way to spell and one way speak the word.

I think for example for second language guy like me, lenses made sense. Which was the way I thought you spelled the word. As for losing and loosing, I at least pronounce the word similar so to my understanding I can get way you would spell them wrong.

Otherwise I think English is a simple language for us swedes. As we dont dub any movies we grow up with english. Another way to see a diffrences how you learn languages. The younger generation off cable TV in sweden never learnt the danish language and doesnt understand it.

Myself when we didnt have many channels in Sweden watched danish childrens shows as swedish. Can both speak and understand danish. The kids today dont watch danish TV any longer. As we as all have gotten silly many TV channels.

But to say so, I can feel a bit angry on the internet as the first language english speakers sometimes get irritated if you cant spell perfectly. Which I think it is silly. Internet is a global thing and we can meet and discuss as many people from non-first language have learnt a second language.

I also sometimes meet in spanish and german forums to discuss with people. To be a bit harsch, I think native english speakers are more picky about the language to my experience. Myself have been bashed, not here thou. If I dont make clear that I dont have english as native language.
It very hard to learn the spelling off language more than speaking it. All people have the language police to morally enforce others to be better spellers. On internet I find this silly. Internet is a global platform.

This has led to many second-language english speakers have to excuse their lack off knowledge in the english language even if they are understandable.

I dont care if people write "lenses" or "loosing" as I am smart enough to put the words in a context and understand them.