hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2558.txt

Episode: 2558
Title: HPR2558: Battling with English - part 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2558/hpr2558.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 05:33:29

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This is HPR Episode 2558 entitled Battling with English Part 1.
It is hosted by Dave Morris and in about 11 minutes long and can in an explicit flag.
The summary is misunderstanding about English drama, spelling, punctuation, etc.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org forward slash donate.
Hello everybody. This is Dave Morris. Welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
I'm starting a series today which is not related to IT or tech or anything like that.
This is one I'm calling Battling with English because I think English is a funny language.
It's a complicated language and there are problems with ink like spelling and use of punctuation and that type of thing
that I thought would be interesting we're useful to talk about.
It's also been a discussion with Ken Fallon over a period of time and he sort of suggested I do this.
So it's his fault. Though the English language is old as you realise and it's had a long history.
It's changed or evolved in many ways over the years.
It has come from a multitude of sources. Don't know them all myself.
I know that there's quite a lot of French and Norwegian and German and that type of thing in it.
Plus also other languages that you've been absorbed in from other parts of the world.
So it's hard to say what's correct when it comes to English in an absolute way because it's moving.
It's a moving target.
So my example in the notes here was that when I was at school we were taught not to use the word nice.
We shouldn't use that in written material and at that time it was becoming common to see things like
I had a nice time meaning had a pleasant time and that seemed quite a bland sort of thing.
And at that time or a bit later on actually in 1976 I've got a dictionary here which defines it as
agreeable and this is marked as a colloquialism so it was a usage that was not regarded as main line
mainstream. Nowadays you won't see that. It's pretty much mainstream usage so it's obviously changed
over that period of time. It's used a wrong word in the wrong context.
You might choose one that sounds similar to the word you want and there are also problems with
spelling and spelling in English is not always logical. You might as I said before find punctuation
confuses in particularly apostrophes. In this series I want to examine some of the problem areas
and try and give you a means of remembering the right way if I can. I'm no authority on this.
I've tried to teach myself not to make these mistakes over the years so I thought it might be
useful just to share what I've learnt. I've put links into authorities who can give a definitive
answer where I can't necessarily do so. I've put together notes here which in which I've tried
to give various meanings of words and examples of them. I've also linked to the dictionaries and
the etymology sources and stuff so you can go and look and research more once you've
found stuff that you might want to check or memorize. I don't think I'm going to try and avoid
reading all of these out because basically it's a list and I think it will make it very
boring and I want to make these quite short episodes. So I'm going to skim over the lists
to some extent and leave you to read the notes. So let's start with the case of using the wrong
word. I'm one of the ones I see a lot on the web and in emails and so forth are then and then.
There's definitions of both of these words. Start with then. Then is about time so you might say
the lecture is that one I'll see you then or it might be sequence regarding a sequence of things.
Add the eggs then mix thoroughly. You might also use it in the context of consequences.
If we don't buy fuel here then we might not reach our destination. If this didn't work then I was
all out of ideas. You might also see it in the context of something back in time so you might say
I went to school in the 1960s and back then things were different. What it's often confused with
is then. Now then is about comparisons mainly. So you might say am I taller than you or are you
taller than me? You might say I talk about why you stuff is often better than you stuff. Other than
fish, John eats no meat. Here's one from the HPR documentation on the website. We do not filter
the shows in any way other than to check if they are audible and not blatant attempts at spam.
You can also use it in a context where it means one thing happened after another. No sooner
was the concrete poured than someone walked over it. What you'll often see is these words being
used incorrectly. Somebody might say I like to listen to jazz every now and then. I'm not
not noticed that they've used then rather than then but the expression should be now and then
not now and then. Now and then means occasionally or every so often. You might also see something like
wine is better than beer. What was meant there? Wine is better than beer. Because it's written
sounds as if you drink some wine and then follow it would be a, which I think would be pretty
unpleasant but it's a comparison. So that's all I'm going to say about then and then I hope that
so give you some starters for if this is a thing that's that you find yourself being confused
over that you'll find the the links here help you to get these separated in your mind.
Here's another one where people confuse three words quite often. The three words are there
spelled T H E R E, there T H E I R and there mean spelled T H E Y apostrophe R E. It sounds
the same. Nobody yet that I know of anyway can separate these out by their sound. So it's very
easy if you hear the words being spoken even if you sort of sang them in your head to choose the
wrong one. But there T H E R E is about the placement of the thing. So you might say over there
is the nearest pub. It's also used in calling somebody's attention, attracting somebody's attention,
might say hey there be careful. Here's another one from HPR. HPR has existed for more than 10 years
and there are over 2,500 shows in its archives. I think I found that. I might have made that one
up actually. I'm not sure. So you can see there is about places or existence. There are other
meanings which you can find if you follow the links. So let's look at the second one,
there T H E I R. This is a possessive word. Here's one from HPR. The story of a Lancashire
community and their high-speed network. So it's a possessive thing, their high-speed network.
This one's from Ken Fallon's episode about B4RN, the high-speed network in amongst farms and
small villages in Lancashire. The last one there is about T H E Y apostrophe R E is a contraction
of they are. So you might say I was just at my friend's house, they're busy redecorating.
Meaning they are busy redecorating. What you often see and what you shouldn't write is things
like look over there where where the there is spelled T H E I R. What was meant was look over
there the place, a location. It should have been T H E R E. Another example I climbed into the attic
and there was a wasps nest there and this one's been spelled with a T H E Y apostrophe R E
was a wasps nest there T H E I R. So the grammar's completely wrong in the sentence. I've made that
up. I've never seen that particular one but you know you do see both of those things used
incorrectly. The first one should have been T H E R E and so should the second one. So here's
the last one in this particular episode and these are two words which sound very similar if they're
not spoken in a very clear way. I was listening to somebody on a podcast saying this one of these
words today and it was really hard to to to know whether they were saying the right one or not.
And the words are tenet t-e-n-e-t and tenant t-e-n-a-n-t. So a tenet t-e-n-e-t is a principle or belief.
So this is this one, this quote, this example is from the hacker ethic on Wikipedia. There's a link
in the notes. The tenets of the hacker ethic are sharing openness, decentralization, free access
to computers and world improvement. So tenet is the principle of the hacker ethic.
The second one tenant t-e-n-a-n-t is either a person who rents land or property from a landlord
or it's the act of occupying as a verb that is act of occupying the property. So you might say he
used to rent some rooms over a shop but he didn't like being a tenant. You could also say,
as an next second example, I used to tenant some rooms over a shop. One of the sites I often
refer to is Grammar Girl who often gives useful hints about how to remember the difference between
these words and as a link to her on in the notes here she suggests that remembering the tenant,
the second one, where a person lives, ends with a-n-t and you might imagine that ants might also live
there. That's a sort of silly mornick that sticks with me, I tell you, but maybe it will stick with
you too, you might find it useful. If you if you get these confused you might not. So there's a
couple of made up examples of getting it wrong. The tenet of Wild Fell Hall is not a novel by
Anne Bronte, so that would mean the belief of Wild Fell Hall. It was tenant T-E-N-A-N-T,
you see original book title, and also you would not say the tenets of the agarethic in my earlier
example. It would mean the people who live inside the half of the agarethic, which does not make
no sense. So that's it. I'm going to try and do quite short episodes in the future and just cover
a few, few words, few concepts, and leave you turn to read further if you wish. I hope you find
that useful. Okay then, bye.
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