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 #17 (permalink) Wed Aug 20, 2008 12:43 pm difference between dumb and stupid |
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Hi Jamie,
So you've decided to join the war of attrition. Clearly I am often ignorant of American English as you clearly must be often ignorant of British English. But to say I am frequently dismissive of the former is complete rubbish. And for your information I have never 'pretended' to be open-minded.
Quite frankly your comments are a great shock to me. I credited you with more perception than to join in with the personal snipes that have been paraded by Amy over the years.
Alan
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Alan
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| #18 (permalink) Wed Aug 20, 2008 12:49 pm difference between dumb and stupid |
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| Alan wrote: |
| I credited you with more perception than to join in with the personal snipes that have been paraded by Amy over the years. |
There's the pot calling the kettle black for the umpteenth time. :roll:
So, what about it, Alan? Are you going to repair the test or simply continue to cloud the issue?
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Yankee
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| #19 (permalink) Wed Aug 20, 2008 13:45 pm difference between dumb and stupid |
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Maybe we should try and think about the message this discussion is sending to our users. They come here to learn English and many of them have been surrounded by constant ethnic conflicts. There are so many materials on our site which are written by British, American, Canadian, Irish, and Australian authors which means our users get exposed to a variety of "Englishes". In addition, we frequently discuss differences between American and British English so anyone interested can get any information about any variant of English on our site.
TOEIC listening, talks: Promoting the services of a fitness center |
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Torsten
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| #20 (permalink) Wed Aug 20, 2008 18:54 pm difference between dumb and stupid |
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| Torsten wrote: |
| Maybe we should try and think about the message this discussion is sending to our users. They come here to learn English and many of them have been surrounded by constant ethnic conflicts. There are so many materials on our site which are written by British, American, Canadian, Irish, and Australian authors which means our users get exposed to a variety of "Englishes". In addition, we frequently discuss differences between American and British English so anyone interested can get any information about any variant of English on our site. |
I take it that is a code message for "No, we are not going to correct the incorrect test because I have no influence over my partner."
And, yes, there are a variety of Englishes, Torsten. However, this is a case in which a question about usage has been asked. The test has not been identified specifically as being limited to "UK usage and meaning" and therefore a learner ought to be able to assume that a choice that is specifically identified as "wrong" is actually universally wrong in most any form of English.
As I see it, you can't have it both ways, Torsten. Either you acknowledge and accept that there are differences between AmE and BE, or you close your eyes and pretend there are none. If you acknowledge that there are differences, then you ought to be willing to point them out rather than to simply mislead learners.
When you present a choice in a generic English test as 'wrong' which is in reality 'correct' in one of the primary versions of English, you succeed in presenting incorrect information and misleading learners.
This particular test can be repaired extremely easily. You only need to change one of the two correct options to a word that would be a universally incorrect choice, and you're done. As far as I'm concerned, the only reasonable explanation that you apparently are not going to do this is the pigheaded refusal of the author to admit that he doesn't know much about American English and his pigheaded insistence on not wanting to know.
Ethnic conflict? Yes, it does sometimes appear that your partner is intent on providing some sort of ethnic cleansing of the English language. And your removal of my initial comments from the test-thread only succeeded in making you appear to be equally biased. Your initial choice was to make the information I had provided inaccessible in the test thread itself (where it was clearly on-topic and relevant), and to place my information about American usage somewhere else -- where a test-taker would be much less likely to find it.
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Yankee
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| #21 (permalink) Wed Aug 20, 2008 19:02 pm difference between dumb and stupid |
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| Very articulately put, Amy. I agree with all of it. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #22 (permalink) Wed Aug 20, 2008 22:45 pm difference between dumb and stupid |
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I think "dumb" for "stupid" has its place in BrE. "Dummy", which derives from "dumb", has indicated a "blockhead" since the late 18th century; British schoolchildren have called each other "dumbo" for several decades.
Cf. Robert Graves's play on the word in:
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Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.
But we have speech, to chill the angry day,
And speech, to dull the rose's cruel scent.
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.
There's a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.
But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,
Throwing off language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children's day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad no doubt and die that way.
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(I'm not sure why "crazy" should be excluded, either, in that particular test: "thin partitions", etc.)
MrP |
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MrPedantic
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| #23 (permalink) Thu Aug 21, 2008 0:29 am difference between dumb and stupid |
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You're right, MrP. Come to think of it, the word 'crazy' isn't that far-fetched a choice for the test sentence either.
.
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Yankee
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| #24 (permalink) Sun Aug 30, 2009 15:01 pm difference between dumb and stupid |
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There is a book called What's the difference written by Norman Moss. There are many words that differ from British English and American language.
/Maria |
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 MariaEbb
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| #25 (permalink) Sun Aug 30, 2009 15:05 pm difference between dumb and stupid |
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| MariaEbb wrote: |
| There is a book called What's the difference written by Norman Moss. There are many words that differ from British English and American language. |
Be careful of those lists of "differences" in British and American English, because many of the items are not true. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #26 (permalink) Sun Aug 30, 2009 15:11 pm difference between dumb and stupid |
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Well I am Swedish so I have to trust the dictionaries until I get a better word or expression by a native.
I know that the English language changes very fast. The word "hey" has changed it's meaning for example and it puzzles me :-(
/Maria |
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MariaEbb
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Location: Sweden
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| #27 (permalink) Sun Aug 30, 2009 15:20 pm difference between dumb and stupid |
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| "Hey" used to be a noise to get people's attention. Now more and more Americans are using it in the same way the Swedish word "hej" is used. I think it's because it has always been used that way a lot in the deep south, where the language has old, old Nordic influence, probably predating the split of the various Germanic languages. |
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Jamie (K)
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Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| run vs ran | Some links to practice articles in English |
