English language...I must be old school

My 9yr old daughter brings her spelling book home every week, in which test her everyday. She sometimes copies a few words off the board wrong but that's ok, as i change it for her. But this week was a word that i thought was wrong..

"Disinterested" :confused:

It just didnt seem right, i thought it was uninterested...so i rang my mum and she also said uninterested. Hmmm so i got out my trusty dictionary and yes there was uninterested and disinterested.

Am I old school ...should we be saying disinterested, its a word ive never used

Also so many times ive heard

"That will learn her" Which i think is so wrong. [:0]

I have always said "That will teach her" So am i old school again or is it a Kiwi thing?? Or maybe my English is not that great (hmmm we do talk kinda funny up North of England...but [])

next she'll be writing in TXT.
GR8

Jan - you hang in there and do not apoloogize for anything. Yes I definitely use the word disinterested but "that will learn her". That is disgusting abuse of the English language.

Here is my challenge to you and anyone else interested:

"It is yours for free" Happy with that?

thatal learn yuh or that will learn her are both slang or throw away type saying not to taken as proper sorry not good at this and the other is what they call the language evolution(sp)Racing cars now race cars, swimming coach now swim coach I cant keep up or trying too:) I am toooo old to try:) just grin and !!!!!!!!!!

Jan, both disinterested and uninterested are correct but their meanings are slightly different. Disinterested is to be impartial or free from self-interest whereas uninterested is to have no interest at all for any reason. So it isn't the word, it's the useage.

"That will learn her" grates on me too but I was once told by somebody I met eons ago with fancy letters after his name (English degree) that it was correct English.

But it probably doesn't grate as much as the Kiwi habit of sticking "eh" on the end of everything they say, thereby turning a statement into a question.

Cheers,
Ronnie

I love the use of words, and tend to find more unusual ones to use just for the hell of it. I also play with words depending on the circumstances.

As sod says 'that'll learn ya' is slang and not to be used as correct English! [}]

I must admit to being partial to one Bushism that I use occasionally when I am not being serious: misunderestimated. Love it! The man mangled the English language like no-one else . As someone suggested, that would make a great title for his (as yet unsnapped-up, surprise surprise) autobiography.

There is a great article in the Listener this week entitled 'Mangling the Queen's Unglush' about pronunciation and how it is changing. Afraid 'pronounciation' grates and 'schtudents/schtrength' etc drives me mad. So guess that makes me old school too

Tigger, it's 4.20am!!!!! Shouldn't you be in bed?

Motel blues, Kate, had some sleep but woken up and can't nod back off! On the road for work again

There's no place like home...and I should know

Had my cuppa, so off to try sleeping again one more night and then I am home again, yay!!

I have a lot pet peeves about the use and abuse of the English language, but have also learned that there are a lot of idiomatic usages in every English speaking country which are perfectly acceptable, but which are largely ignored by the Oxford English Dictionary types.

I actually haven't heard 'uninterested', but grew up with 'disinterested'. I would hear 'uninteresting', but not 'uninterested'. I suppose both the 'un' prefix and the 'dis' prefix mean 'not', but as Ronney pointed out it's the useage that changes the meaning of the word.

Andrea
Oxford

It is the floccinaucinihilipilificators who really brass me off: those who tell us that our concern for clear communication is of no account. If we all wrote with no punctuation, in t(e)xt without vowels and with unexpected consonants, we would not be understood, and yet it has become more and more common.

Firstly, let me say that I hate some of the mangling that goes on with the language but English is a living and evolving language. The way we speak is different to the way our grandparents spoke and that is way different to the use of English in even Dickens' day, let alone Shakespeare's! I suppose it is simply the constant battle that exists between generations. This is perhaps most evident in the use of slang and how that changes over a very short period of time but funnily enough sometimes goes in circles. Has anyone else noticed the increasing use of "cool" by younger folk? I thought that went out with Flower Power but it seems to be increasingly common over the last few years.

Some of what we consider to be foul language was in regular use several hundred years ago!

Gosh and I thought Tiggs had woken and thought only of me!!!! how many others got a neat message from her last night...
Having lived down in Chch back in the 70's it amazed me at how different the words / sentence making and pronunciation was, and even today when a southy comes up here they still have a different aspect on the english language.. I know my english is BAD and I've forgotten all the proper ways the words should be strung together.. so I dare not make any comments really.. but agree it gets confuzzling

One word that drives me mad that is used here is "furtherest"

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/furtherest

What made it worse (not worser or worserer, more that drive me nuts) is that it was used quite regularly in MD's previous schools newsletter, by the vice-principal who then later became the Principal! What hope is there for those children! Argggh!