Re: English is a crazy language

From: "John Cowan" <jcowan@...>
> Muke Tever scripsit:
>
> > Also, I thought there was a difference between "alright" and "all right",=
> >  one
> > being an expletive ("all right, we'll do it your way") and the other an
> > adjective ("are you alright?"  "he's an alright kind of guy".)  (of course
> > according to thou it should be 'alrite' anyway ;)
>
> Standard orthography allows only "all right", though this might change,
> as with the American spelling "anymore" (as if parallel with "anyway,
> anyhow, anyone", etc.)  So making distinctions between "alright" and
> "all right" is currently purely idiosyncratic.
True, but standard orthography also requires that compound adjectives used
before nouns are hyphenated (three-year-old child, black-and-white TV) and I'm
not aware that "all right" ever gets hyphenated (*an all-right place to
live?).

-- Well, a Google search on "all right place" finds two hyphenateds in the
first
five pages of results (compare to 13 for hyphenated "black and white TV").
(of
course, "alright place" finds 300 pages compared to "all right place"'s
116...)

And of course there is a distinction between 'anymore' and 'any more'.  (I
don't
want any more vs. I don't want any anymore).

    *Muke!
--
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