I just can’t get him out of the habit. My friend A will call, as he did on Friday night, and say things like, ‘We were thinking of going for a walking later and would be pleased if you could join us’.
I’m certain that I have corrected him a number of times – but you can’t do it every time, can you?
But it’s the same with our Engineering Manager here. His level of English is very good but there are couple of things that, at this advanced stage, are difficult for him to shake.
>One is the use of ‘or’ and ‘or’. Whereas we use ‘either one thing or the other’ in Italian they actually use ‘o one thing o the other’ – ‘o’ standing for ‘or’.
Unsurprisingly, then, he will use ‘or one thing or the other’. I have corrected it a couple of times but this one is deeply ingrained.
Similarly, his use of the word ‘terrific’. When he uses it he means awful or terrible. This one is, almost, funny because he will start a sentence with something like ‘It will be terrific when something happens….’ and then follows it with the details of why it will, in fact, be close to a disaster! It makes me smile, inwardly. I’m not sure I have corrected him on this one and because he uses it quite often, he might find it ‘terrific’ (using his interpretation) if he knew that all this time he’s been using the wrong word!
Hi Andy-
I, being one of those you have “corrected” a few times truly understand that which is ingrained. And throw in my “terrific” typing, (to use a word in your post) sometimes Iam less that literate. I manage to make my point though, albeit less than gramatically correct, at times.
I love your mind.
Love Gail
peace……
Terrific, terrible, disaster, they will kill us, we will never be able to do that…shall I continue? All the days, 5 days a week…
Hi Gail,
You do indeed make your point. As do all the people I mentioned above. Sometimes it’s just funny though.
Hi Pietro,
My point exactly. All the words mean, more or less the same – except terrific – which actually means wonderful or fantastic and that’s why I find it so funny. It’s like me using sticazzi to mean ‘fantastic’ (sorry if the spelling is wrong)
As a teacher of Englsih you should not that ” terrific” from latin” terrificus”, until very recently meant “terrifying, dreadful, causing terror”
Well, G, that’s interesting. I didn’t know that. I’m afraid that I don’t know the origin of every word in the English language. I’m interested as to how recently we changed the meaning of the word – and to something so very opposite? Do you know?
sorry, you should know (not “not”)
Here a very good site:
http://podictionary.com/?p=469
Yes, it does look quite good. I was relieved when the ‘recently’ you mentioned turned out to be the 1800s
Even I am not that old!