The 'Beautiful Game' strikes again

[APJones]

Apparently apostrophes do not always represent a missin' letter any more.
It was a general grammatical rule when I was at school but no longer.
It's the same with Americanisms creeping in.

e.g. in our office this morning
Bloke "No problem man "
Woman replies "Yeah I'm gonna kick some ass "

Leave the poor donkeys alone, stop kicking them !

[Eon B]

There are three uses of the apostrophe in British English. I won't speak for other dialects except Lallans Scots.

These are all related to the idea of elision, although the one relating it to a early possessive form, or case, is probably spurious.

a) used to indicate a glottal stop in phonic representations. eg pass the bo'le (for bottle) in Bristol and other subdialects.

b) to indicate the omission of a letter or group of letters which is omitted in speech or informal writing. eg can't for cannot or possibly though less conventionally psycho's for psychopaths.

c) indication of possession when attached to a proper noun, eg 'John's bottle', 'Dr Polygon's Psychopath'. This is commonly attributed to being derived from 'John his bottle' being elided. However this is little evidence of this process in late medieval English.

However within the chaos that is our language this matters very little and very many people who pronounce on these issues do so for reasons that are more superstitious than informed, and smack of tribalism.

It is better to speak kindly than correctly because courtesy is the best manners.

[Johnnyg]

Yes. It may be true but does it need saying BJ?
The truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent. In other words being correct can often be cruel, demeaning and patronising.
The reality is that some of us have better grammar than others, but that does not mean we need to point out petty errors to people whom we do not know and who do not wish to hear it.

[Jimmy Skitz]

Yes. It may be true but does it need saying BJ?
The truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent. In other words being correct can often be cruel, demeaning and patronising.
The reality is that some of us have better grammar than others, but that does not mean we need to point out petty errors to people whom we do not know and who do not wish to hear it.

thank you, if I were writing a University thesis I wouldn't mind, but this site is essentially, a chat room, so long as the posters avoid using "txt spk" I think that's all anyone needs to demand, so unless "perfect grammar" is in the site T's & C's then frankly pointing it out is just someone trying to put someone else down

[h's dad]

Yes. It may be true but does it need saying BJ?
The truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent. In other words being correct can often be cruel, demeaning and patronising.
The reality is that some of us have better grammar than others, but that does not mean we need to point out petty errors to people whom we do not know and who do not wish to hear it.

thank you, if I were writing a University thesis I wouldn't mind, but this site is essentially, a chat room, so long as the posters avoid using "txt spk" I think that's all anyone needs to demand, so unless "perfect grammar" is in the site T's & C's then frankly pointing it out is just someone trying to put someone else down

I can't help but note the double standard and hypocrisy of using and condoning poor grammar and then demanding that text speak is avoided.

[Jimmy Skitz]

Yes. It may be true but does it need saying BJ?
The truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent. In other words being correct can often be cruel, demeaning and patronising.
The reality is that some of us have better grammar than others, but that does not mean we need to point out petty errors to people whom we do not know and who do not wish to hear it.

thank you, if I were writing a University thesis I wouldn't mind, but this site is essentially, a chat room, so long as the posters avoid using "txt spk" I think that's all anyone needs to demand, so unless "perfect grammar" is in the site T's & C's then frankly pointing it out is just someone trying to put someone else down

I can't help but note the double standard and hypocrisy of using and condoning poor grammar and then demanding that text speak is avoided.

Well I believe text speak is banned, also not everyone would understand it

[h's dad]

I can't help but note the double standard and hypocrisy of using and condoning poor grammar and then demanding that text speak is avoided.

Well I believe text speak is banned, also not everyone would understand it

Ok, fair enough. If you could just point out where this is stated. All I can find is Bill saying it's all right. And didn't you just use it?

And not everyone can follow sentences that follow unconventional grammar and appear to have missing words.

[h's dad]

Come on, please can we live and let live? Even if it annoys you, any grammatical errors are allowable on the forum, it isn't against rules to make spelling or grammatical mistakes

Sorry Rizzo. I'm just glad to see some traffic on Chit Chat. It's been rather moribund of late.

[Jimmy Skitz]

I can't help but note the double standard and hypocrisy of using and condoning poor grammar and then demanding that text speak is avoided.

Well I believe text speak is banned, also not everyone would understand it

Ok, fair enough. If you could just point out where this is stated. All I can find is Bill saying it's all right. And didn't you just use it?

And not everyone can follow sentences that follow unconventional grammar and appear to have missing words.

As point out above, "Psycho" is an abreviated word so there were missing letters

[Rizzo]

Text speak isn't banned as sucgh, it's just actively discouraged and if people do use it we tend to edit the posts to show full words. I suppose text speak is like localised slang, it is only polite to explain or use words and expressions everyone will understand so everyone (whether English speaking or not) can join in.

Anyway - back to the subject matter.

My nephew is an avid football fan, plays for his local team & is a good decent lad - as are his team-mates. My daughter's boyfriend coaches football for youngsters (we have yet to introduce him to live rugby) and he says mostly the kids are great, but they see one or two of the big name football players acting up, challenging the ref, spitting and swearing etc and like most kids they try to emulate their hero. In young players this behaviour is squashed rapidly, no one seems to squash the badly behaved big names.

Having said that, bad behaviour is not confined to football as we all know. Cricket people piddling on the wicket isn't exactly the thing we'd want our kids to imitate!

[Jimmy Skitz]

the football refs could go a long way to stopping all that, they have the authority to show yellow and red cards for that behaviour (not sure if spitting is included, but the bad language and aggressive behaviour is), but they simply fail to do so, they as a group, need to decide that they will take a zero tolerance view on it, it would take a month tops to stop it dead as players would get hammered by their managers and fined for costing their side.

I personally would treat diving as a professional foul and thus a straight red card instead of what ever it's categorised as currently, sadly none of them have the stones to do it.

[Rizzo]

What do people think about Robbie Fowler (I think?) apologising on the football Final Score for referring to two players fighting and pushing "like a pair of girls"? Apparently some people got up in arms and offended saying he was being sexist and a misogynist - and then he apologised (although the BBC claims it did not instruct him to do so) and started talking about he didn't mean to offend and he was a big fan of women's football.

Now - as a woman - I (a) did not and would not take offence at that phrase (b) don't consider it sexist or misogynistic and (c) didn't see it as any reference at all to women's football - just to the two silly players who were pushing and so on.

Is the next logical step that no one dare to use the expression "handbags" in case that's viewed as anti women or sexist or something?

[Jimmy Skitz]

What do people think about Robbie Fowler (I think?) apologising on the football Final Score for referring to two players fighting and pushing "like a pair of girls"? Apparently some people got up in arms and offended saying he was being sexist and a misogynist - and then he apologised (although the BBC claims it did not instruct him to do so) and started talking about he didn't mean to offend and he was a big fan of women's football.

Now - as a woman - I (a) did not and would not take offence at that phrase (b) don't consider it sexist or misogynistic and (c) didn't see it as any reference at all to women's football - just to the two silly players who were pushing and so on.

Is the next logical step that no one dare to use the expression "handbags" in case that's viewed as anti women or sexist or something?

that is sadly more to do with the victim mentality brought over from America, people seem to look to take offence at absolutely everything they can, just look at the whole Russell Brand Jonathan Ross thing, more people complained then their show even had listeners, people were complaining just to complain, if its the BBC it's especially bad

[BJ.]

The 'beautiful game' continues. Courtesy of the BBC

[BJ.]

Or there is this example.