Wednesday 10 February 2010

The wrong end of the stick

As I was deleting a piece of spam, I couldn't help but smile wryly at the phrase " ... only by living in the USA can you become truly fluent in English ... "

5 comments:

Rob F said...

Yer wot?!?

I dunt understand, innit.

Oldrightie said...

Well, you would do better there than in Londistan!

microdave said...

What, from the nation that wears pants on the outside, and pours gas into their fuel tanks????

Sod It said...

"...only by living in the USA can you become truly fluent in English..."

Actually if you know anything about the history of the English language they're probably right.

Yep. Pedant's Corner, I know. ;o)

Anonymous said...

Fluent ?? Or effluent ?
This is the place where they say innernational, nucular, annardica,put out fires with warder. Many hours of fun.

I also love some English expressions that regularly defeat the poor souls.

Like "--his name was bantered about--", "--tow the line--", "--let me some this up---", shoe in for shoo-in ."Could care less" instead of "could not care less"--this is amazingly common.
I loved "distinct cousins" and how about "--the root core of the problem--" Lovely stuff.

However on many USA blogs and websites the quality of the comments is extremely high IMHO compared with the UK offerings.