General Chat

I don't really know how to put this without upsetting somebody but I have just read a piece of grammar that is used almost universally now but which still jars with me.

The only person who volunteers rather than that surely.

I'm sorry, it is just my personal bugbear and I am not trying to be superior, it digs me every time I see or hear it said and I am very well dug I can tell you.

How about...the only person to volunteer? Unique is another of my pet hates when it is used with "quite" "fairly" etc. It is either unique, or it ain't. I also dislike the use of "for free". Either "free", or "for nothing". But them I am rather old.

bob - careful!

'Free Fat' is not the same as 'Fat Free'. ;-)

There was no such thing as an "A" level or "O" level before 1951!

Rollo I took my O levels in 1951 the first year and still have my certificates to prove it.
That was the year I went to Paris,just before my O levels.

IN November of the same year,I had a cancerous tumour removed from my parotid gland at the age of 16 and had radium needles....and still here to tell you.i do know my dates.

The last School certificate was in 1950.

Well there you go then - no uni. could have been asking for A level anything in the 1940s.
Did you go to Manchester? The Victoria and UMIST were two of the very few places offering a high quality degree for working people.

I am sure that yr school encouraged studying Latin but UK universities did not demand anything beyond O level Latin unless reading classics/Greats. Even the medics didn't ask for Latin beyond O level. I was offered a place at UMIST in the 1960s and Latin was def. not required.I didn't take up the offer though.

There has been a resurgence of Latin in schools despite next to no encouragement from the DOfE. Now the DOfE is trying to kill off the subject by raising the bar too high.

Holts Hill School ?
fwiw two of my rellies were vice chancellors of northern universities post ww2.

I get annoyed when I ask someone if they would like e.g. a drink.
The answer always seems to be "I'm good".
I have been known to reply "I wanted to know if you want a drink, I was not enquiring about your morals".

or another answer is "you're alright thanks" :-S

To which the rejoinder is "I wasn't enquiring about your health"!

In ‘The Story of Civilisation’ (by Will Durant 1885-1981), there is an interesting discussion on the origin of ‘words’ for, as the author intimated, ‘with words, man became man’.

‘Without those strange noises called common nouns, thought was limited to individual objects or sensorial experiences’.

Rollo,
I was trained during the days of school certificate .when it came to 1950 we were told there was a change but it was more or less the same except they just gave you a pass or fail...instead of the grade of pass.
The O level was the same as school certificate and the A level was Higher school cert.
So When I started the High school and put in an A grade where we were taught Latin as well as French,it was to train for University and Latin was necessary then for University,I am talking long before this was relaxed.

I remember the year .it was a very significant year for me In every way.