<p>
</p>
<p>planely! </p>
<p>(sorry)</p>
<p>stowmom’s D: I was flipping channels one night and came across “Are you smarter than a fifth grader?” The contestant was getting ready to decide whether a chicken was a mammal or not. He was virtually positive it WAS a mammal and was debating whether to get “help” from the 5th graders. The part that killed me was when Jeff Foxworthy asked him about HIS STUDENTS. Yes, the idiot who thought chickens were mammals was a TEACHER. Yikes.</p>
<p>You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, and the American people all of the time.</p>
<p>A chicken is a mammal?? Oy!</p>
<p>I keep thinking that somewhere at some high level, there is attention to detail that includes proofreading, but apparently not. Even the NYT did this yesterday:</p>
<p>"Like other employees interviewed for this article, the Bank of American employee spoke on the condition of anonymity. "</p>
<p>Bank of American??</p>
<p>[Wall</a> Street Exodus - Fear, Panic and Anger - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/business/25pain.html?em&ex=1211947200&en=60590c8bfbc3bbc4&ei=5087 ]Wall”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/business/25pain.html?em&ex=1211947200&en=60590c8bfbc3bbc4&ei=5087 )</p>
<p>And this on Yahoo news today</p>
<p>Study: Ancient, flying reptiles may have ate dinosaur babies</p>
<p>The story itself refers to ‘landlubbing runts of the dinosaur world’, which I think is a little awkward too, but I guess ok.</p>
<p>bz2010: you may have read somewhere that texting is contributing to the demise of our language… but I read that it’s not true. </p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/05/textmessaging_scourge_of_civil.html]Text-messaging:”>Text-messaging: Scourge of civilization? LOL - cleveland.com]Text-messaging:</a> Scourge of civilization? LOL - Cleveland Metro News </p>
<p>I can remember as a youngster mispronouncing words that I had read but never heard spoken. I suspect some of these mistakes are the result of the opposite phenomenon–terms that the writer has heard but never read, such as “air” for “err.” That doesn’t excuse it, of course, especially when it is nonsensical, but it might be an explanation, along with over-reliance on spellcheckers.</p>
<p>Hunt, I agree that it’s the use of a common phrase and the reporter not knowing what word goes in there. But part of my issue with that is that a curious and bright reporter would think ‘gee, “air on the side of caution” doesn’t make any SENSE, I wonder what that means’ and then ASK someone and get it right. I have a guy I work with who does this all the time, uses phrases that aren’t right for the occasion, but he’s not a REPORTER. </p>
<p>Kind of reminds me of the line from The Princess Bride ‘You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.’ </p>
<p>There is an article in Newsweek this week about the younger generation not knowing as much (as far as memorized facts) as the older generation, but being much better at knowing where to FIND information. Which is great, but if NO ONE knows the difference between ‘air’ and ‘err’, then the language is going to be in trouble.</p>
<p>And I have to confess to mispronouncing ‘bossom’ to this day. And ‘bourgeois’. Someone ought to spell them differently. :)</p>
<p>“bossom?” You mean “bosom?” for pronounciation, see:
[bosom</a> - definition of bosom by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.](<a href=“Bosom]bosom - definition of bosom]bosom by The Free Dictionary”>Bosom - definition of bosom by The Free Dictionary)
“Bourgeois” is French and is spelled exactly as it should be pronounced. French is massacred all the time by Americans. If Americans want to spell things differently, they should create their own words. Merci beaucoup.</p>
<p>sorry, yes, I meant bosom. So not only can I not say it, I can’t spell it either. But I know what it means!</p>
<p>I KNOW how to pronounce it, but everytime I see it written, in my head I say it like ‘blossom’. </p>
<p>And I don’t think anything spelled with ‘eois’ but pronounced ‘zhwa’ is spelled exactly as it should be pronounced. But I guess that’s just me.</p>
<p>I see cite, sight, and site confused all the time. Grrrr.</p>
<p>In a checkout line last night I overheard a girl saying something about “so her and him broke up.” Say what???</p>
<p>bour-geois.
The etymology is “bourg” (equivalent of burg, or burgh or borough). “geois” is pronounced the same as “jois” (silent s). Hamburg, Williamsburg, Edinburgh, Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Cherbourg, Les Bourgeois de Calais.</p>
<p>Anything that ends with a ough should be pronounced off as in “enough.” I don’t have enough dough to carry that off.</p>
<p>You can see that my native language is French (failry logical pronunciation even if the grammar is not) and that English pronunciation was as baffling to me as French must be to Americans.</p>
<p>Have you seen the Dr. Seuss book, “The Tough Coughs As He Ploughs the Dough?”</p>
<p>All newspapers that I’m aware of – including the NY Times – are cutting back on staff (including copy editors) due to budget cuts because of revenue problems since fewer people are reading newspapers.</p>
<p>It’s easy for overworked reporters to make that kind of error. It’s easy for such errors to get into print due to the lack of copy editors.</p>
<p>^^ Which likely leads to fewer people reading papers, which leads to more cuts…</p>
<p>I am surprised here when their is an error that jumps out at me </p>
<p>in the major newspaper’s columnists’ space. Wouldn’t you at least </p>
<p>have someone in your family read it first?</p>
<p>Um…cottonwood? Are you joshing us? If not…</p>
<p>OK, “when there is an error”…whoops.</p>