[Duo2400] Re: off topic jargon

[Gregg Eshelman]

--- Fred Satterwhite <bfs19 at adelphia.net> wrote:

> The most irritating one for me is using "less"
> instead of "fewer" when 
> referring to quantities of individual items- for
> example, "I have less 
> Duos than most people on this list" instead of "I
> have fewer Duos than 
> most people on this list." This one is like a nail
> across a chalk board when I hear it (or read it).
> 
> It's "fewer trees", "less wood"; "fewer lakes",
> "less water"; "fewer 
> vegetables", "less food"; and so on...

Less singular, fewer plural. ;)

How about You've got? You have got mail! Damn AOL. :P
Same with I've got, we've got, and they've got.
See also contractions of has combined with got.
Ie. "She's got a nice arse." ;)

Some proper usage.

"You have mail!"
"Have you gotten the mail?"
"Yes, I got the mail."

Note that "the" seperates the word got and the
subject of the sentence.

"You've got mail!" No, you don't.

You may *have* mail, but you have not *gotten* it
until
you go and get (download) it or do something to
get to a point or place or situation where you can
read it.

Assuming the mailman has made a delivery, you *have*
the mail. It's in your mailbox or can otherwise be
termed to be in your legal posession. But until you
go to the mailbox and lay hands on the mail, you
have not got it.

I assume the confusion over the usage of get, got
and gotten comes from how it is used with pronouns.
The different rules for nouns and pronouns seems to
trip up many people.

Proper usage.

"Did you get him?"
"I got him!"
"Get him now!"
"Get that, please."
"Get the door, please."

Improper usage.

"Did you get car?"
"I got car!"
"Get car now!"
"Get the that, please."

In the district where I went to grade school, the
kids a year behind me got subjected to the "new wave"
methods of education. No phonics training to actually
learn how to pronounce words aloud and I have no
idea what they did (or didn't) teach about the rules
of grammar. I had phonics in Kindergarten but not
in later grades. I was taught the rules of grammar,
nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives,
conjunctions, prepositions which would've been easier
had the teacher noted that those refer to the
position or direction or motion of the subject.
"The dog went OVER the fence." "He is BESIDE the car."
Another vital element of learning english is the
words (thankfully there aren't a great many) that
are exceptions to the general rules of grammar and
especially pronunciation. Most of them were covered
under homonyms ans synonyms. Those are easiest to
just memorize or learn by rote. I'd say 90% or more of
English words fall under the general rules.

That is just one thing I hated about school. I had
fully absorbed the rules of American style English
by the second or third grade and was quite annoyed to
have to continue to go over and over the same stuff
year after year, wasting my time that could (should!)
have been spent learning something else that would
interest me.

Maybe I should've been an English teacher? :) I'd
certainly have tried to make sure my students were
literate enough to read aloud without stumbling over
words. Writing down pages and pages of rules off
the blackboard every day (as my 7th grade English
teacher wanted her students to do) would not happen
in _my_ classroom. I knew too many kids that could
run stuff from eyes to fingers without one bit of
information lodging tight inside their minds. ;P

=====
"When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins." Hiro Protagonist

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