Pronouncing years

My grandparents spoke of the first decade of the twentieth century from their own experience and they never said "nineteen-oh-one". It was "nineteen one".

"Oh" evolved as a way to pronounce telephone numbers, being more distinctive than "nought" on a crackly line. Its usage in pronouncing a year arose afterwards, incorrect because unnecessary: "nineteen-one" is unambiguous.

Unfortunately we cannot say the same of 2001. "The year twenty one" sounds like "the year twentyone". I am happy to say "two thousand and one" for I am not in a hurry.

I prefer to say "the world-wide web" than "double-you double-you double-you". there are far fewer syllables.

Before decimal currency came in to the UK in 1971, the old pennies were spelt "d" - abbreviation for "denarii" and pronounced penny or pence. For some incomprehensible reason, the public after decimalization consented to call the new penny a "pee": one pee, two pee, half-pee (now obsolete). Why?

The apostrophe

It’s easy to give it its due.

So why don’t we? All we have to do is remember that one sentence above and know how to apply it.

Why don’t we? Because we desert what we once knew, what we were correctly taught, and follow the ignorant till we too become ignorant models for others to copy.

We are reaching a point where everything is lowered to the standards of those on the outside, knocking to come in. Am I a snob? No. I believe there should be an open door, but on entering you should receive kindly instruction and retain it confidently. I’m speaking of the door into literacy.

Internet-linked computers have given public literacy to millions whose English composition would never before have been seen publicly in print. Those millions have assumed that Microsoft spell-checker is all the tutoring they need. The risk is that schoolteachers don’t teach orthography and punctuation any more, or teach it wrong; or that we think the majority must be right.

The “rules” of political correctness are further examples of how we copy one another’s poor usage. You might say that a person makes up their mind, but to me that will always be incorrect. As I’m male I will say that a person makes up his mind. A woman could say her instead of his and a balance would be maintained that way.

I note the increased use of partner as if husband or wife were taboo words like nigger. Partner is no good in many contexts because it might mean business partner. Though they never married, in common speech I refer to my son’s wife alias my daughter-in-law. They’ve been together ten years and have two children of their own, my grandchildren. They are married in every sense but the legal one, which doesn’t concern me, since I am not an official.