• Members 1290 posts
    Jan. 24, 2026, 10:11 p.m.

    The Japanese SOS Exposure Index definition:

    Meanwhile, one of my camera Manuals describes a grayscale image as being monotonous.

    Long ago, as an engineer working in Houston I sent a 'Happy New Year' email to a PEMEX engineer.

    I said "Feliz Ano Nuevo" only to be politely told that I had wished him a happy new anus.

    Back then a Windows computer didn't easily let one type "Año" so what he told me that they did was to write "A~no" ...

  • Members 606 posts
    Jan. 24, 2026, 11:19 p.m.

    A. A. Milne 1882–1956
 English writer for children.

    "He respects Owl, because you can't help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn't spell it right; but spelling isn't everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn't count."
    The House at Pooh Corner (1928) ch. 5

    Chapter V
    In Which
 Rabbit Has a Busy Day, and We Learn
 What Christopher Robin Does in the
 Mornings.
    en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_House_at_Pooh_Corner_%281961%29/Chapter_5

  • Members 1290 posts
    Jan. 25, 2026, 4:56 p.m.

    Psychology: I know a guy who always spells "affect" as "effect" but never vice-versa ...

  • Members 1742 posts
    Jan. 26, 2026, 1:38 a.m.

    We learn language usage at a young age just by hearing it spoken - essentially rote learning. We may or may not understand the structure of the language. We were forced to do French somewhere in high school. In the very first class the teacher started with the French versions of the verb to be - "Je suis, il est, elle est, tu es, etc". I was completely lost because I didn't understand the concept of the verb to be in English - I don't think we had never been taught it! I just used it as I had heard it.

    At some point in my adult life I had to learn the difference between affect and effect because I had never properly understood that one was a verb and the other a noun. I also had its and it's wrong - for some reason it seemed natural to me that the apostrophe version was the possessive and maybe a teacher never got through to me - I can remember being taught it. To this day I still subconsciously write it the wrong way and have to remember to check.

    I used to go to Indonesia surfing for many years and started to learn some Indonesian language. I learnt more about the structure of the English language in that process than all the English classes at junior high school - after which I was happily allowed to drop English and stick to maths / science.