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Isn't that a southern US or Texan dialect?

You have to see the movie Sweet Home Alabama, you will see Reese Witherspooon often switching between South and North US dialects.

If you want to make a list like this,

First, you have to understand that "firstly" would be wrong.

Second, you have to not use "secondly".

... and so on.

Whatever may be acceptable in American, and whatever may have become acceptable by common usage (dumbing down), this version is the correct English version!

I don't know why. It may be just that adding the -ly is unnecessary, thus undesirable. It may be that first and firstly are different parts of speech. It may be just one of those rules somebody one made up! Maybe Sam can shed some light?

... and so on... till we come to last, but not the least.

Never heard anyone say, "Lastly, but not the least", or "Lastly, but not the leastly"!!

@Sam Kapasi "Like this:I love all kinds of girls. - This is a correct (and true) sentence."

LOL!! Man! That rocks!rl:

Two points I would have like to add is :

1. There is nothing called "Second of all". You have to use "Second,".
2. A word called prepone does not exist. The antonym of postpone is advance. The exam is going to be advanced by 2 days.

Sorry, if what I have posted is redundant.

Slightly OT

Came across this awesome book about English language

Who Put Butter in Butterfly...and Other Fearless Investigations Into Our Illogical Language

In case you have not done so, you should read Nandana Sen's statements. Agreed that she has inherited great genes. Could be that is her way of speaking or could be that she replies in writing (and thus edits for impression as I have done in this post).

I mean The exam is about to be advanced by 2 days.

Excellent thread , this ! Looking at the number of pages, I skipped to the end - is there any post that covers borrowed words , from say, Latin , French , German and so on ? Foreign language words incorporated into common English tend to mess up pronunciations .

I mean, who'd have thought that words like rendezvous, lingerie , faux pas, etc. would be pronounced the way they actually are ? Latin at least seems to be spoken as it is written ( ad hominem , quid pro quo ). But French , oh dear.

Such a huge amount of English is borrowed that if you were to remove from it the Latin, French, German --- and Indian-language words, there wouldn't be a lot left.

England is a mongrel country; that is why we have no national typical physical type, and we have a mongrel language to suit.

Latin, by the way, is only spoken with an English accent (by the English; perhaps other countries impose their own pronunciation on it?) because no-one knows how it was pronounced.

Spelling my own language drives me crazy, and has done since my first days at school. Look in the last paragraph at pronounce and pronunciation; who could guess? Speech and speak; you must be kidding! emigration and immigration ; surely not! And those are just three examples of the many that trip me up daily! Thank goodness for spell checkers (which ought to be called spelling checkers, as they do not check spells).

Don't think I'm being rude about my country (apart from the spelling; I am being rude about that ;)), I'm rather fond of it!

There was a very interesting programme, earlier this week on the impact of globalisation of English as a language. The anchor of the show travelled the length and breadth of the country, right from Scotland, all the way through to oxford (to talk to the experts) via Bradford, where there is a large Asian community. This appeared to be a series, the earlier ones of which, I missed. Some interesting words were being discussed, and were finding their way into the Oxford Dictionary, (some where far off from being in the Dictionary, and some where finding their way). The list, in no particular order,

- Kasmi: Promise
- Aur: how are things going
- Nip/Nipped (Glaswegian) as in I nipped this girl, there was no meaning attributed.

The programme also discussed Galic influence into English, introduced a new form of English, called as Singlish, as spoken by Singaporeans- with every other sentence ending with "lah..".

The other interesting things in the programme was a bit that was read out, of a popular sentence, the way the Anglo Saxons would have written and read it and went on to say, how the ENglish of future generations might be incomprehendible to a time traveller into the future.

Thanks,
Prasad

I'd say French is much more predictable and regular in its pronunciation than English is! The words you mentioned may sound odd to you, but they are easily worked out if you know some basic rules of French pronunciation. For instance, if you know that "ch" is pronounced "sh" and the last consonant is almost always silent, you can guess that a French word such as chat (cat) will be pronounced somewhat like "shah". It's wrong to drop the final T-sound in words such as roulette (a gambling game) or vinaigrette (a salad dressing) because they do not end in a consonant.

However, there could be exceptions. Early imports to English, such as "valet", may have the final consonant omitted or pronounced. "Va-leh" seems to be more common though. Incidentally, "duplex" is another oddity. It's commonly pronounced "dooplay" in India, but "d(y)ooplex" is the preferred international pronunciation. The word comes from Latin and literally means "double-folded", but these days it's more often used to refer to a particular type of house or apartment.

Whats wrong grammatically with this popularly used phrase

" You yourself once said that all politicians are corrupt"

there is nothing wrong in using you and yourself together to emphasize or contrast a point.

Seems perfect if you ask me. Why do you presume it is wrong?

BTW, a new movie has been released---'Avatar'. Yet another exampe of Indian works merging into English (of course, yahoo avatars were common a few years ago).

BTW, did you folks know that Bandicoot was derived from a Telugu word? And Pariah from a Tamil word?

Dunno. But somehow it doesn't sound right ..plus I have never heard it in any English speaking country. Its a very 'Indian English' usage.