Why not American? Oh… I think I get it… 'cause his English was too good… huh? :raspberry: Yeah… yeah… ok… [/quote]
Good lord, no, QM! Why on earth would you read that into my words? I’m sure I don’t have a history of posting anti-American comments, do I? I’m certainly on record as criticising Bush, and very proud to be so, but that hardly amounts to anti-Americanism, does it?
There’s no particular reason why I thought he was a Canadian or Brit, it was just a vague impression I’d picked up, though some British spellings and usages (as adopted by most of our fellow Europeans) might have had a bearing on it.
Why not American? Oh… I think I get it… 'cause his English was too good… huh? :raspberry: Yeah… yeah… ok… [/quote]
Good lord, no, QM! Why on earth would you read that into my words? I’m sure I don’t have a history of posting anti-American comments, do I? I’m certainly on record as criticising Bush, and very proud to be so, but that hardly amounts to anti-Americanism, does it?
There’s no particular reason why I thought he was a Canadian or Brit, it was just a vague impression I’d picked up, though some British spellings and usages (as adopted by most of our fellow Europeans) might have had a bearing on it.[/quote]
I wasn’t upset and I wasn’t really criticising/criticizing you. I was joking with you. Hence the smiley at the end. Sorry that didn’t come across.
Though, it does seem that some people (non-American) seem to think that Americans can’t speak English well. While it is true that many Americans don’t remember (or never learn grammar rules), have trouble with pronunciation, etc… from Standard English, I would venture to say that many Brits, Aussies, Canadians, etc… do, as well.
I don’t know about the others, but in the U.S. a large proportion of people, especially younger ones, ignored so much of their education that they can’t express themselves clearly in any way. One of my current roommates is one such. He is practically unemployable for anything beyond menial labor – he can’t write worth a damn, can barely do basic arithmetic, and his reasoning ability is nonexistent.
The media tends to focus on his sort when they talk about “our failing schools” or “the underclass”, but it rarely does stories about successes (other than occasional individual genius), so it’s not surprising that internationally, people think Americans are all illiterate dolts. The stories they see are about failures like my roomie.
Hey! Did you know that if you type “loosing” , it auto-corrects to losing? Dang!
I got round it by inserting [ b ] [ / b ] (no spaces), a trick Bassman taught me, who learned it from Fluffy.
I have the screen shot saved in Word in case they change it. (I have the PROOF!) How do I save that as a jpeg or whatever so I can put it up at photobucket.com and then link it to this post?
[quote=“Spack”]I got round it by inserting [ b ] [ / b ] (no spaces), a trick Bassman taught me, who learned it from Fluffy.[/quote]…who perfected a trick by Cranky.
[quote]I have the screen shot saved in Word in case they change it. (I have the PROOF!) How do I save that as a jpeg or whatever so I can put it up at photobucket.com and then link it to this post?[/quote]Press Alt+PrntScrn (That button you thought wasn’t even wired up) to copy the current window, then you can paste it into your favourite drawing program. PrntScrn by itself will copy the whole desktop.
I propose that the noun ‘looser’ be officially incorporated into the Forumosa lexicon. It’s such a fun word it deserves to be allowed into everyday usage, and could be used to describe any alleged English teacher who can’t spell.
Can the auto-pinyiniser/word censor thingy be adapted to correct anyone who accidentally spells it with just one ‘o’?
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