Re: OT: I'm Just Sic [sic.], Peeves: (was: Re: OT: graffitum)

Douglas Koller wrote:
> From: R A Brown <ray@...>
>
>>No, as a plural, surely, just like the French do: 'les spaghettis'. We
>>had a French student staying with us once who habitually carried this
>>habit over into English and, when cooking, would tell us the "The
>>spaghetties are ready." Note also the plural verb - which would be used
>>in Italian also.
>
>
> I could live with this, sans "s". Man, talk about overanalyzing.
I go away for three days and come back to this grouchy rubbish!!!!

You may talk about over-analyzing - *I WAS NOT*.

*I* (and of course my family) actually lived with this young lady for a
year, we still keep in touch with her and now she actually works in
England and, indeed, lives not far from where my wife I now live. She
would tell you, if you cared to ask her, that when she was first in
Britain she treated "spaghetti(e)s" as a *plural* noun. It took her a
while to get used to our (British*) usage of treating "spaghetti" as a
mass noun with singular agreement.

* maybe the Americans are different in this respect, but I certainly was
not aware of it.

I merely report a fact - the French certainly (I have many connexions
with France, including a 100% French daughter-in-law from the center of
the Hexagon[e] itself) treat 'les spaghettis' as a plural just as we
(Brits) treat "oats" as a plural.

It was merely an observation. Pray, where on earth (or anywhere else?)
is there over-analysis in that???

But if "pease" and "cherries" get reanalyzed...wake up and smell the
pease porridge.

Irrelevant remark - I have been quite familiar, thank you, with the
histories of "pease" and "cherries" for more than 50 years. I fail to
see what relevance medieval English borrowings from Norman French have
to do with a young modern French girl learning English in the late 20th
century.

But the rudeness of the remark is not what I have come to expect on this
list in more recent years. It reminds me of the bad old days of 10 or so
years ago - and that really does make me sic[k].

[Other irrelevant stuff snipped]

>  It's capricious, I know (maybe Brits are writhing over my use of "analyze" for "analyse").
Good grief! Has the writer never noticed that I habitually spell the
word 'analyze'? I've been around on this list long enough for most
members to have noticed that I am British.

The word is, according to pedants, a shortening of *analysize (Yep -
quite a few of us Brits do actually use the spelling -ize, including
both Oxford and Cambridge University presses). So I guess any of
following spellings are theoretically really as good as any other:
analize, analyze, analyse. I've never seen the first, and I prefer the
second; but I will not be peevish about anybody using the third.

Ray.

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