291–300 of 316 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
By your logic, you didn't put in much effort into your message. Besides not capitalizing the first letter of every sentence, everything else looks great though for me, and I'd imagine it was low effort for you. Those messages between billionaire read like the worst texts from low IQ teenagers.
I dunno, misspelling "grammar" as "grammer" isn't a great look in context.
British aristocracy has been pronouncing their own surnames wrong for centuries on purpose. Cholmondeley is "Chumley" Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw." If you read it phonetically you mark yourself as an outsider. The misstake is the membership card. (Heck, even in Portland we locals hear about misprouncing Couch St probably every year in local press as some bar for membership to our own locals only vibe.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penistone
https://www.norfolklive.co.uk/news/norfolk-news/rude-funny-s...
British aristocracy has been pronouncing their own surnames wrong for centuries on purpose. Cholmondeley is "Chumley" Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw." If you read it phonetically you mark yourself as an outsider. The misstake is the membership card. (Heck, even in Portland we locals hear about misprouncing Couch St probably every year in local press as some bar for membership to our own locals only vibe.)
Featherstonehaugh pronounced Fanshaw is apparently something made up by P.G. Wodehouse for one of his characters. It's just Featherston-haw for everyone in reality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76tVgne0gOA
But he's less a British aristocrat than a brittle prep-school martinet in a cheap tie who rants at a secretary over three typos like a duke defending the realm, sneers about Kelly girls and office decor as if guarding the Social Register, treats sleeping with his own employee as proof of authority, and then sneaks off to bathhouses while running his typing pool with equal parts class anxiety, closet panic, and a middle manager's superiority complex.
I think a more likely reason, that for some reason, a lot of people don't want to talk about, is that these "Global Elite" aren't really that smart, creative, or articulate. That they've gotten to where they are despite, not because of their communication skills. They're not being "typical unconventional / quirky entrepreneurs." They're simply C students who knew the right people.
I see all these example emails and such and my first thought is "oh, so how many of my relatives write emails and text messages then".
It reminds me of the whole "scammers use bad English to find easy marks" concept. Yeah, maybe some do. But again, it feels like people giving them way too much credit for what could easily have been an accidental situation.
Like, you suck at writing English because it's not your first language and you've got no professional reason to do so, and try scamming someone on the other side of the world with those skills. If the recipent is smart or internet savvy, they'll ignore your message. If they're not smart/are overly greedy/aren't internet savvy in general they'll fall for it.
So, why would you try and improve your English skills in that situation? As far as you know, they're good enough to get you money from gullible folks elsewhere. You're succeeding at what you want to suceed at, so you don't really think twice about it.
You can certainly try and find some psychology related reason behind every random disrepetency and questionable decision, or assume that people are often pretty dumb and do pretty dumb things, and that they won't stop doing those things unless they've given a reason to.
British aristocracy has been pronouncing their own surnames wrong for centuries on purpose. Cholmondeley is "Chumley" Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw." If you read it phonetically you mark yourself as an outsider. The misstake is the membership card. (Heck, even in Portland we locals hear about misprouncing Couch St probably every year in local press as some bar for membership to our own locals only vibe.)
Here in Toronto area city of Vaughan pronounced as (/vɔːn/ or /vɑːn/) like in "dawn" or "gone" Imaging me fresh from USSR asking someone how do I get to ... and getting blank stare
Earlier quoted context omitted.
America is at least as guilty of mispronouncing non-english words it's just natural drift. As to fillet and valet, they joined english before the contemporary french pronunciation, and are much closer to the middle-french.
>America is at least as guilty of mispronouncing non-english words it's just natural drift. See also: Cairo, IL or Versailles, KY...
As others have said, my money is on the banal. They're just morons. Successful morons, but morons non the less. The fact that neither you or I are part of the global elite isn't entirely due to a lack of merit, but a lack of luck and, quite possibly, a lack of psychopathy. Just the other day, or so I assume, one of them ran out of toilet paper and awkwardly shuffled towards a solution. We're all just apes.
The irony of replacing one coping mechanism (the elites are 4D chess players) with a different one (the elites are morons) is not lost in me.
I don’t know why this needs to be a class issue. Using auto-correct as a scapegoat for spelling and grammar issues has now made them socially acceptable to the point that most people don’t call it out anymore, or use it as a means to discredit someone’s underlying argument. As auto-correct has become seemingly worse, I think a lot of people have just given up fighting it all the time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve always said that one key difference between British English and American English is that a British speaker will intentionally mispronounce a foreign word, while an American will attempt to pronounce it correctly but get it wrong anyway.
It's much deeper than that probably because the kludge of english is in large part french. But I also completely disagree, I don't think americans are attempting to pronounce croissant correctly for example, whereas brits will be much closer with no attempt at intentional mispronunciation, it just happens that brits are much closer on some and further on others, and vice versa re americans. and I don't think there is…
Mon dieu Rodney!
Most of these people are legitimately stupid. This article is also pretty stupid for focusing on grammar and spelling when the content of these emails is also quite moronic. I don't think Larry Summers was fired for hanging out with Epstein and talking terribly about women with him; I'm sure plenty of people knew that he was an Epstein-type and hung in Epstein-type circles, and he publicly said horrible things about…
Yet they absolutely controlled the parties they were a part of, wielding enormous power for decades. They were loathed by the base of the parties and demonstrably hurt the parties politically. Their policies were politically toxic.
They maintained their control through an air of super-competence: they were the faultless mandarins willing to say the unsalable and serve bitter medicine; they were selfless servants of the country.
That whole facade was torn apart not just because they were shown to be sex-pests if not outright abusers. But because they were shown to be inarticulate, incompetent, petty, and self-interested.