I couldn’t count the number of times that young players in our team have asked me before a game, who are we “versing”?
Versing I yell back, what sort of word is versing? 10 push-ups and never say it again.
They could say.. playing, competing against, up against, which are all acceptable terms but there is no such word as versing.
Versus, vs, but not versing, so imagine in 50 years of internet?
My rant about ‘versing’ came about while reading how they think the internet will transform spelling. Not only spelling but words themselves. I know I write a lot of things that are bad English. I know this because my brother Deej corrects me (as he should) when I get it wrong. I am OK at spelling words (most of the time) but when it comes to English and grammar, then I am shot.
So, if I write half a dozen articles a week that are not corrected by my brother, how many people are reading bad grammar and assuming its correct grammar, and most likely going on to use that grammar themselves?
And kids take what they read and see on the internet to be verbatim and 100% correct, maybe not too dissimilar to the way we grew up thinking everything we read in the newspaper was correct. KAPOW… not true. My son often comments how many of his friends use OnlyMelbourne for research (God bless them). Kids often write to us asking who the author is. We don’t have one author, we have hundreds in the form of content providers, editors, reviewers and advertisers. I think what they really should be asking is, who is the author of a particular page.
But, I fear it is true.. the internet will transform spelling and the use of words…
The internet to transform spelling
The internet will make some English misspellings acceptable, according to one of the country’s most senior linguists, who predicts that in 50 years many common words will be spelt without ‘‘ irritating’ ’ silent letters.
David Crystal, professor of linguistics at Bangor University, said that it would be ‘‘ inevitable’ ’ that people would drop the ‘‘ P’ ’ from receipt, and change the ‘‘ C’ ’ from necessary into an ‘‘ S’’ , as well as ‘‘ simplifying’ ’ other words.
‘‘ Is it one ‘C’ and two ‘S’s in necessary or two ‘C’s and one ‘S’ ?’’ he said. ‘‘ At the moment it matters, but over time one spelling will emerge and probably a simpler spelling will emerge.’’ Professor Crystal said he started monitoring the word ‘‘ rhubarb’’ 10 years ago, by typing the correct spelling into a search engine, and then typing in the word without the ‘H’ .
He said: ‘‘ I got millions of hits for rhubarb with the ‘H’ , and just one or two without the ‘H’ .I did the same job a few years later, and without the ‘H’ got hundreds of hits, and then a few years later hundreds of thousands of hits.
‘‘ But think ahead 50 years –and this is the timeframe over which spellings change –and rhubarb with the ‘H’ and rhubarb without ‘H’ will be equal.’’
He said that the ‘‘ H’ ’ was illogical and was never included in Middle English.
‘‘ The internet will influence spelling ,’’ he said. ‘‘ It will get rid of some letters that irritate us, the letters that instinctively we feel shouldn’t be there. But it will take time.’’
He said it was neither good nor bad that spelling was changing, but it was ‘‘ inevitable’’ .
Professor Crystal also criticised Michael Gove and the UK Department for Education’s insistence on teaching phonics. ‘‘ To be told by the government that it has to be entirely phonics is absurd, because the English language is a mix of phonics and whole words.’’
Source: The Telegraph, London