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~ The Write Way ~
Friday 28 April 2000
Real Estate Peeves ...
Greetings,
Last week's discussion
of expressions like "anyways" struck a chord with many :) It prompted
Richard Briscar, one of our group, to send in his Pet Peeves:
"Things that really bug me.
1. Radio announcers who can't pronounce Jaguar. I don't know anyone who owns a
Jag Wire.
2. Bob Serpentini. * Need I say more?
3. Radio announcers (again) who offer "congrads". Congrats is the
abbreviated form of congratulations.
Maybe they didn't cover that at the Connecticut School of Broadcasting.
4. Un-believable. Unbelievable is one word, honestly.
5. Waitpersons who greet me and my wife as "you guys".
Are you guys ready to order?
6. "Presidentual" elections.
7. Announcers who don't know how to read an address aloud. 19415 Euclid Avenue
is either
One-Nine-Four-One-Five Euclid Avenue or One-Ninety-Four-Fifteen Euclid Avenue.
It is NOT
Nineteen-Four-Fifteen. Confused? Let me explain someday.
(Maybe I could do an entire section on announcers.)
8. A person who is licensed to sell real estate is a Realtor (Real-tor), not a
Real-a-tor.
9. Nobody has problems to solve anymore. They have "issues" that need
"closure". And some of them even come with "baggage".
10. Like every sentence begins with like. Like, you know, every sentence, like.
11. The response to "Thank you" is "You're welcome", not
"No problem".
12. The expression is "In like Flynn", not "In like Flint".
It refers to Errol Flynn, Hollywood's greatest swashbuckler.
13. People who carry on a conversation with someone else or yell at their kids
while on the phone with me.
-----
14. I just reminded myself of this one this morning. "Nucular"
testing.
* FYI - Bob Serpentini owns an automobile dealership and does his own
radio commercials. His one-minute commercials consist of 45 seconds
of government bashing and 15 seconds of advertising his business. He
is very annoying, but since he pays for the air time I suppose he feels that
he can say anything he likes."
If you have any you'd like to add, feel free to share them with the rest of
us!
Moving right along ...
One of my previously
published articles ("Enough Stuff")
dealt with the need to exercise those little grey cells in order to replace the
ubiquitous "Free Stuff" with something a tad more imaginative. In this
article, I referred to some interesting statistics about the frequency of words
used in the English language. As a result of the number of requests I had for
more details, I thought we'd spend this issue looking at all those questions you
never knew you wanted to ask about English!
This is an extract from the article:
"Shakespeare, who was one of our most prolific and enduring writers,
used approximately 22,000 different words in his published works. Well-educated
people today, use about 5,000 different words when speaking and about 10,000 in
their writing. Most of us have a 'working vocabulary' of 2,000 (which means that
there are over 788, 000 words that are gathering dust on the shelves of our
minds). Of those 2,000 words, the most commonly used are: the, of, and, to,
a, in, that, is, I, it.
"Those ten little words (and I do mean little), account
for 25% of all speech.
"There are fifty words, which make up 60% of everything we say - and
only two of these have more than one syllable ... "
Many people wanted to know what those fifty words were, so here is a list
from the British National Corpus. The BNC is a 100 million word collection of
samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to
represent a wide cross-section of current British English, both spoken and
written. ( http://www.rick.harrison.net/langlab/bncfreq.html
)
This survey of the British National Corpus, was prepared and made available
by the Information Technology Research Institute at the University of Brighton.
The material that was surveyed includes millions of words of transcribed
conversation, printed text, and lectures and oratory.
The figures in my original article are based on research that dates back to
the eighties and you can see there are a couple of words that have fallen from
favour in the latest list ("big" words like 'that' are no longer up
there in the Top Ten!) and there are now NO words of more than one syllable in
the top fifty ...
The list below shows the 50 most frequently used words in English:
|
1-10
the
at
of
and
a
in
to
it
is
was |
11-20
I
for
you
he
be
with
on
that
by
are |
21-30
not
this
but
's
they
his
from
had
she
which |
31-40
or
we
an
n't
were
been
have
their
has
would |
41-50
what
will
there
if
can
all
as
who
have
do |
I mentioned Shakespeare's writing earlier - and to give you an idea of the
frequency of words used in his plays, I've taken one of my favourite plays,
'Hamlet.' In this play (one of his longest), Shakespeare uses a total of 39,476
words. The number
of different words is 4,686.
If you want to while away a pleasant half-hour, visit http://www.mta.link75.org/shake/
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Hamlet Word Frequency
by Frequency
These lists are derived solely from
words spoken by characters -- all act/scene designations, stage
directions, and speaker names have been removed.
This is just a sample of the most frequently used words in the play -
you can view the whole list by clicking on the link at the end.
(The number of times the word has been used is noted next to each word)
The, 1101; And, 898; To, 726; Of, 657; I, 561; You, 544; My, 508; A,
498; In, 414; It, 414; That, 389; Is, 334; Not, 315; This, 296; His, 292;
But, 265; With, 257; For, 247; Your, 242; Me, 235; As, 228; Be, 226; Lord,
218; He, 216; What, 203; So, 197; Him, 189; Have, 179; Will, 169; Do, 150;
No, 143; We, 140; Are, 131; On, 125; O, 121; Our, 119; By, 116; Shall,
114; If, 113; Or, 112; All, 110; Good, 109; Come, 104; Thou, 103; Now, 97;
From, 95; More, 95; They, 95; Let, 94; How, 88; Thy, 87; Her, 86; At, 84;
Was, 83; Most, 82; Like, 80; Would, 80; Hamlet, 78; Well, 78; There, 76;
Know, 74; Sir, 74; Them, 74; May, 71; Tis, 71; Go, 70; Us, 69; King, 67;
Love, 66; Did, 65; Very, 64; Speak, 63; Which, 63; Hath, 62; Then, 62;
Why, 62; Must, 61; Thee, 59; Give, 58; Should, 58; An, 57; Their, 57;
I'll, 56; Make, 56; Where, 56; Here, 54; Such, 54; Out, 53; Upon, 53;
When, 53; Am, 52; Man, 52; Say, 52; Father, 51; Some, 51; Much, 50; Than,
49; Too, 49; These, 48; One, 47; Think, 47; See, 46; Had, 45; Time, 45;
Heaven, 43; She, 43; Tell, 43; Thus, 42; Yet, 42; Who, 41; Ay, 38; Death,
37; Mine, 37; Nor, 37; Own, 37; Can, 36; Look, 36; Night, 36; Take, 36; |,
36; Mother, 35; Play, 35; Soul, 34; Hear, 33; Laertes, 33; Up, 33; Could,
32; Life, 32; Might, 32; Again, 31; God, 31; Indeed, 31; Whose, 31;
Horatio, 30; Made, 30; Nothing, 30; Pray, 30; Dear, 29; Heart, 29; Hold,
29; Been, 28; Cannot, 28; Leave, 28; Were, 28; Dead, 27; Doth, 27; Into,
27; Matter, 27; Nature, 27; Both, 26; Does, 26; Great, 26; Never, 26;
Queen, 26; Down, 25; Nay, 25; Sweet, 25; Thing, 25; Away, 24; Earth, 24;
Even, 24; Itself, 24; World, 24; Against, 23; Eyes, 23; Head, 23; Part,
23; Put, 23; Though, 23; Comes, 22; Done, 22; Seen, 22; Set, 22; True, 22;
Call, 21; Day, 21; Fair, 21; Follow, 21; Himself, 21; Mad, 21; Madness,
21; Show, 21; Those, 21; Before, 20; England, 20; Fear, 20; Friends, 20;
Means, 20; Old, 20; Ophelia, 20; Poor, 20; Son, 20; Till, 20; Two, 20;
Believe, 19; Blood, 19; Denmark, 19; Once, 19; Without, 19; Words, 19;
About, 18; Else, 18; Father's, 18; Hand, 18; Is't, 18; Keep, 18; Many, 18;
There's, 18; Any, 17; Art, 17; Cause, 17; Ear, 17; Farewell, 17; Find, 17;
First, 17; Little, 17; Long, 17; Noble, 17; Still, 17; Welcome, 17; Young,
17; Body, 16; End, 16; Faith, 16; Has, 16; Hast, 16; Majesty, 16; Marry,
16; Question, 16; Since, 16; Speech, 16; Sword, 16; That's, 16; Thoughts,
16; Use, 16; Within, 16; Youth, 16; Better, 15; Between, 15; Drink, 15;
Last, 15; Live, 15; Makes, 15; Off, 15; Other, 15; Players, 15; Rest, 15;
Said, 15; Stand, 15; Therefore, 15; Tongue, 15; Watch, 15; Yourself, 15;
http://www.mta.link75.org/shake/hamfreq.html |
There's a lesson for us all in here ... somewhere.
This week's quiz
Form nouns from these words:
1. phlegmatic
2. parsimonious
3. unctuous
4. magnanimous
5. ignominious
Form adjectives from these:
6. delirium
7. clergy
8. provoke
9. contumely
10.omen
Last week's quiz
Substitute one word from the list for the expressions below:
Estuary, franchise, scald, quadrilateral, infallible, posthumous, referendum,
scabbard, impatient, inexplicable
1. citizens' vote on a special issue - REFERENDUM
2. a figure with four sides - QUADRILATERAL
3. not able to be explained - INEXPLICABLE
4. the mouth of a river up which the tide runs - ESTUARY
5. the right to vote - FRANCHISE
6. happening after one's death - POSTHUMOUS
7. to hurt with steam or liquid - SCALD
8. a case for the blade of a sword - SCABBARD
9. incapable of error - INFALLIBLE
10.unwilling to wait - IMPATIENT
If you have any friends who might enjoy The Write Way - please send
them a copy and tell them they can subscribe just by clicking on this link: mailto:WritingTips-subscribe@onelist.com?subject=Tips
If you've just joined this group and any of the spelling worries you, please read
this.
Tautology of the week: a composite
collection made up of a number of different examples this week -
Sign on local shop: 'antiques and old things'
Headline for women's magazine: 'This week we have a warning for pregnant
mothers-to-be'
Extract from children's nature book: 'the female grasshopper carnivorously
consumes its mate'
Critique of research paper: 'As an example of bogus pseudo-scholarship this
work is priceless'
A Latin phrase this week for those times when you're feeling very charitable
towards your fellow man:
Capillamentum? Haudquaquam conieci esse! (A wig? I never would have
guessed!)
Regards,
Jennifer
http://www.write101.com
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