Sometimes, spelling counts.

[crikkett]

In Latin the word plebs is a singular collective noun, and its genitive is plebis. Multiple "plebs" are "plebes".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plebs

The plebs was the general body of free land-owning Roman citizens (as distinguished from slaves and the capite censi) in Ancient Rome. Members of the plebs were also distinct from the higher order of the patricians. A member of the plebs was known as a plebeian (play /plɨˈbiːən/; Latin: plebeius). This term is used today to refer to one who is or appears to be of the middle or lower order; however, in Rome plebeians could become quite wealthy and influential. In fact, Nero, a Roman emperor, was born a "pleb". His success was not uncommon and approximately 30% of Roman emperors were "plebs".

So it's plebes or the plebs. Thank you very much.

[wordspeak2]

Thanks for the info. Sometimes grammar counts, too. One doesn't need a comma after "sometimes."

[crikkett]

However, it's not improper.

[brainpanhandler]

We all, I assume, have words that we habitually forget how to spell.
Usually for me they are words that have two consonants next to each other:
Recommend
Aggressive

Aggressive never looks right to me.

Or words like:

manageable

where I'm not sure whether to include the e before able or not.

And sometimes my brain just refuses to work right and a word I've never had any problem spelling suddenly looks foreign.

It's little glitches like this in the way that I recall words, their spelling and meaning and associations, that made me tend to wonder about Hugh's kwh theory for so long. I still do.

I've done a lot of reading on word recall trying to find some answers to why our brains get stuck in ruts, like a record skipping.

[Nordic]

We all, I assume, have words that we habitually forget how to spell.
Usually for me they are words that have two consonants next to each other:
Recommend
Aggressive
.

Yes! So it's not just me.

I can never remember embarrassed. Unless I type it out. I have muscle memory for proper spelling, while typing, of almost everything.

I always have trouble with definitely, too, although muscle memory takes care of that, but only typing on a keyboard. Definately is what I'm always wanting to spell.

[Simulist]

When it comes to a select few spelling and grammar items, I can really be a snob sometimes.

For example: people who don't appear to know the proper spellings and/or usages of "there," "their," and "they're" tend to irk the hell out of me. In other words, the habitual misuse of those words can become a big red flag for me that might as well have the words printed on it, "Don't bother listening to what I'm trying to say! — 'cause I don't give enough-of-a-damn even to try and say it right."

(But, admittedly, those would be a lot of words to print on a flag.)

[82_28]

When I first started this hobby of finding funky stories from the past, I was at first amazed at misspellings -- or so I thought.

Employee today was Employe

Cigarette today was Cigaret

Kidnapped today was Kidnaped

and so on.

The conventions of lexicon and language usage have always fascinated me.

Ever notice how people, at least Americans talked back then too? I'm sure all have. It's an accent that is so hard to describe in text. More proper, I suppose? More proper to the point of modern ears hearing it as pretty dorky sounding. It wasn't just reporters and television anchors and shit either. Like, Ted Bundy and stuff talked this way. Does anyone know any source about speculations for this accent shift?

Another thing is the deplorable condition of otherwise cogent comments on websites. I'm trying to think of the litany of them I've seen over the years.

Worse case scenario becomes "worst case scenario" for example.

It shows a total breakdown in English/literature education. Which reminds me. . .

Rude Pundit, just wrote about just this:

A Tale of Two Nations and Their Future Teachers:

A few years ago, the Rude Pundit was an English professor at a not bad, not great Midwestern university. Many of his students wanted to go on to be elementary and high school English teachers. He remembers distinctly one student, call her "Jenny" because that's not her name. Jenny was not bright. Her papers in this lit course were filled with errors and sentences so incoherent that they made Sarah Palin seem like Judith Butler.

A senior, she was shocked that her writing was so bad. The Rude Pundit asked her how other professors had not brought this to her attention, and she said she had always done well enough, getting by with Bs and Cs. Instead of thinking that she needed help, she insisted that the Rude Pundit was grading her too harshly. You'll just have to take his word for it that he was not. When she revised her papers, she made as many errors. When she took tests, she wrote answers that were not in any way connected to the questions or a realistic notion of comprehension.

However, she was in her last semester of school before she went into student teaching, which was the last step before she achieved her dream of becoming a full-time elementary school teacher. When the Rude Pundit learned that, he was appalled. He had taught mediocre education students before, but this was beyond the pale. The idea that she would be teaching children how to write actually sickened him. He spoke to other professors about her, and they all said the same thing, which could be reduced to, "Yeah, but what are you gonna do?"

The Rude Pundit flunked her because that was the grade she earned. She angrily confronted him about how he was delaying her becoming a teacher because she would have to take the course again. He replied, "You have no business being a teacher until you learn how to write." She took the course again with another professor, who passed her. Right now she is teaching 5th graders. He knows many other excellent schoolteachers who would find her reprehensible.

Flash forward a year later. The Rude Pundit is overseas in Denmark. He's been brought there to teach interactive political theatre workshops at a couple of colleges or "seminariums." The seminariums he visited were devoted to teaching teachers how to teach. There are eighteen such schools in Denmark, and they train new teachers, who must already have degrees from colleges, and offer in-service additional training to established teachers. In other words, you better be good or you're not teaching the children of Denmark. And why do people do it? Because Denmark values teaching, paying the people who do it well, keeping schools in good shape, and more.

The students the Rude Pundit taught there were not special in terms of the seminariums. But they were incredible. They asked him questions about U.S. involvement in the wars. They developed and performed pieces about torture and sexual harassment and school policies without any prompting. They questioned, constantly, everything about power and authority. And they wrote English better than most of his students back home. He wanted these students to be teachers. Any one of them would have been excellent in the classroom.

This compare/contrast essay was prompted by an editorial in today's Washington Post by Matt Miller. In a thoughtful, ambitious piece, Miller avoids blanket condemnation of teachers' unions and instead focuses on a part of the puzzle that doesn't get as much attention: the actual way in which America gets teachers. Miller offers the shocking heresy that "The top performing school systems in the world have strong teachers unions at the heart of their education establishment." The difference is that "[t]he chief educational strategy of top-performing nations such as Finland, Singapore and South Korea is to recruit talent from the top third of the academic cohort into the teaching profession and to train them in selective, prestigious institutions to succeed on the job."

What Miller proposes is a radical alteration in the way the United States approaches the profession of teaching, which he and Paul Kihn offered last year. And it has nothing to do with bullshit bandages like charter schools, school choice, and privatization. No, in fact, it's quite the opposite. It's to treat education like the foundation of a strong society that it actually is:

"What about starting salaries of $65,000 rising to $150,000 for teachers (and more for principals)? And federally funded 'West Points' of teaching and principal training to model for the nation how it can be done? And new federal cash for poor districts now doomed by our 19th-century system of local school finance, so they can compete in regional labor markets for the talent that today gravitates to higher-paying suburbs? And shrinking today’s 15,000 unwieldy, archaic local school districts (where we’re also an international outlier) to, say, a more manageable 60 — one in each state plus 10 big urban districts?"

Miller and Kihn put the cost at $30 billion a year. Or roughly 4.5% of the current military budget. Which means it'll never happen. And we will continue to try to cobble together our education system through bits and pieces and budget cuts and private companies instead of actually behaving as if it matters.

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2012/05/ ... uture.html

[Canadian_watcher]

Worse case scenario becomes "worst case scenario" for example.

It is 'worst case scenario'.. as in what's the worst thing that could happen. I agree about the accent change, though. I've heard it theorized that newsreading is responsible for it. Max Igan has a show about language, too, which gets in to the mechanical nature of American English and how it's changed society. The Crow House radio or something like that. For all I know everyone at RI hates Max Igan's guts because he's a confirmed anti-semite or something but I know nothing more of him than he seems to be a really zen, smart Aussie.

[82_28]

Worse case scenario becomes "worst case scenario" for example.

It is 'worst case scenario'.. as in what's the worst thing that could happen. I agree about the accent change, though. I've heard it theorized that newsreading is responsible for it. Max Igan has a show about language, too, which gets in to the mechanical nature of American English and how it's changed society. The Crow House radio or something like that. For all I know everyone at RI hates Max Igan's guts because he's a confirmed anti-semite or something but I know nothing more of him than he seems to be a really zen, smart Aussie.

Honestly I meant it the other way around. Whoops!