41–50 of 576 posts
As a matter of fact, if you look up prepone in Wiktionary "prepone" is mentioned as being used in India, so it's not that weird that the teacher in the article used it.
As a Commonwealth inhabitant, having to deal with a multitude of formalized language variants, each with a small number of differences in orthography and vocabulary, strikes me as a useless waste of energy. Difference and local particularity for its own sake may please the odd local jingoist, but it is simpler to simply take the mother version to be definitive.
I think you've missed the point of English, which is a collection of languages that evolved over time. Unlike e.g. French, there is no definitive, latest version of the language decreed from above. The dictionary is post-hoc, and long may it stay that way.
"Prepone" makes sense even if it's not a word. Closest equivalent I can think of is "move up."
As a Commonwealth inhabitant, having to deal with a multitude of formalized language variants, each with a small number of differences in orthography and vocabulary, strikes me as a useless waste of energy. Difference and local particularity for its own sake may please the odd local jingoist, but it is simpler to simply take the mother version to be definitive.
I think you've missed the point of English, which is a collection of languages that evolved over time. Unlike e.g. French, there is no definitive, latest version of the language decreed from above. The dictionary is post-hoc, and long may it stay that way.
I'm trying to learn German at the moment, and it's fascinating seeing the similarities between the languages, and the things we used to have in common but got dropped or modified in English.
As a Commonwealth inhabitant, having to deal with a multitude of formalized language variants, each with a small number of differences in orthography and vocabulary, strikes me as a useless waste of energy. Difference and local particularity for its own sake may please the odd local jingoist, but it is simpler to simply take the mother version to be definitive.
I think you've missed the point of English, which is a collection of languages that evolved over time. Unlike e.g. French, there is no definitive, latest version of the language decreed from above. The dictionary is post-hoc, and long may it stay that way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you've missed the point of English, which is a collection of languages that evolved over time. Unlike e.g. French, there is no definitive, latest version of the language decreed from above. The dictionary is post-hoc, and long may it stay that way.
> Unlike e.g. French, there is no definitive, latest version of the language decreed from above. What do you mean by this? French is spoken differently with different dialects over the world - eg. Quebecois French is not the same as France French. And while French may be one of the roots of English, there are also French words with their roots in English. It's all a mishmash.
No such institution exists for the English language.
I'm a native English speaker who's lived in other countries a lot and speaks three languages, now trying to learn a fourth. The weirdness of "English" is something I think about often. For starters, you have to live in it before you can really speak it. And our spelling is the least rational, least consistent thing I've ever seen. In addition to the weird way we spell a lot of things, many of the sounds are not prono…
I think there are differences in accent, but I don't recognise anywhere as being "pretty much incomprehensible".
I speak "standard" German as a foreigner, and have definitely found dialects that are "pretty much incomprehensible". I haven't found differences to such a degree in English.
Wait prepone is not an English word, what!? I use it all the time.