Conference thebay::joyoflex

 I already listed this under "Mispronunciations", but I am perfectly
happy to see it come up again. I hear "ek cetera" all the time. It's a
dead giveaway that the speaker doesn't know what it means.

-John

  "Et al." isn't used as much as "etc.", but I have seen it run together as
  "etal."  

  "E. g." and "i. e." are often run together as "eg." and "ie.".  They are
  also often misused one for the other.

--Simon

 I also saw "et. all." in one of the Notes files. Today, in fact. All
of them dead giveaways that the writer doesn't know what it means.

-John

 Something has to be done about this, folks. More than a year after
the original note, some people still have not gotten the word. I sat
through a four-day meeting last week at which at least six people,
most of them high-powered marketeers who represent DEC before the 
public, said "ek cetera". Over and over and OVER... Some of these
people were even British, for Heaven's sake.
 If someone had said "et cetera" after all this, I swear I would have
burst into sustained applause.
 This is not an issue of language constantly changing and developing
and all that stuff: e-t spells "et", not "ek". Always has, always will.

Peevishly,
-John

Since the 't' in "et cetera" is pronounced as a glottal stop, there is
*very* little audible difference between the 'correct' pronunciation and
'ek cetera'.  Are you sure you're not just mis-hearing the speakers?

Jeff.

       I, for one, am shocked to think that some people are not fully
       cognizant of the spelling, pronuciation, and, yes, even meaning
       of the Latin expressions that they use.  
       
       --Don

I suspect that one reason people mispronounce "et cetera" is that:
people misspell the abbreviation as "ect.".  [Do I put in both those
periods?  *I* feel this is right; I suspect the grammarians feel
otherwise.]

Once you believe in this "ec" sound, the rest of the mistake is easy.

    						-- Ann

P.S. Hi, Jeff!  -- Ann (McCutchen)

Re: .6

         Let's face it.  There are a lot of people who are not fully
         cognizant of the spelling, pronunciation, and, yes, even
         meaning of the ENGLISH expressions that they use. 
         
         ...diane

I'm willing to believe that many people don't know what these things mean; that
there are ignorant people in the world is not news to me. However, I think that
the "ek" complaint is a nit. The differentiation between these two unvoiced
stops is so small that it is easily blurred by little things like the humidity
in the air, the speaker's having a little too much phlegm in its throat, the
listener having a cold, or a speech impediment that the speaker can do nothing
about. I thin we should save it for battles that need to be fought (like
"iconize" and "fontfile" vs. "font file"). 

	Jon

    Probably periods are a lot more attractive in an era when most
    characters are hand-written, not typed.  Changing two I's for a
    period only saves one character, but it saves rather more ink, effort,
    and thought.  (Still not a great deal, I admit.)
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Re: previous 2 notes
    
    Ibid.

When Latin expressions are misspelled [sic] , one can get the wrong impression



			From the land of boneless chickens  mk 

    One I'm seeing an awful lot of lately is "add" as the colloquial
    abbreviation for advertisement.
    
    And yes, I've seen "bonified" far too often as well.
                                   
    len.
    

    As far as etc. and ect. go...
    
    Can you imagine Yul Brenner (sp?) in "The King and I" yelling:
    
    	"Ek tetera, ek tetera, ek tetera"????  :-)
    
    But when it comes to messed up abbreviations, one of the ones that
    I like was in the "Home work" file.  Instead of typing in DIY (do
    it yourself) it often came out DYI (do yourself in? :-).  So I assumed
    the it meant that those that tried to DIY (do it yourself/themselves)
    typically ended up just DYI (doing yourself/themselves in)
    
    Rob

	I'm new to this file so perhaps I haven't found a more proper place for 
this yet.

	I have always wondered about the abbreviation Mrs. Everyone knows how to
spell the word of which Mr. is the abbreviation, Mister, but how do you spell 
out Mrs.? Misses? Should it really be Mistress?

	Another thought that just struck me. If one ends a sentance with an 
abbreviation, should there be one period or two? If not two, which seems proper,
but, I've never seen it, why not? You add the question mark if it's a question.

Pete

    Yes, Mrs.  is an abbreviation of Mistress.
    
    --bonnie

    
    Ah!  But what is Ms. an abbreviation for?
    
    Mat.
    *:o)
    

    "Ms." is an abbreviation for "mysterious".

    ms == manuscript == written by hand == not secondary (original).
    
    Quite appropriate, I'd have thought.
    
    Richard.

    
    Ms. is the abbr. for 'meine sache' , which translates from German
    into 'my business' .
    
    Mr. and Mrs. are today known as Mister and Misses , but not so many
    eons ago the abbr. derived from Master and Mistress .
    
              
    John J

    Re .4
    
    > e-t spells "et", not "ek". Always has, always will.
    
    Don't know how he spelled, but didn't people call him
    
    "ek-stra terrestial" or something like that?

    re .19;
    
    I don't know, but I'll aks her ;^)

    
    "bonified" sounds like a synonym for "ravished".
    .

    Re .15, ect.
    
    I thought `bonification' was what builders charge you for when you see
    `and making good' on their invoices.  It usually seems to mean `rendering
    grotesque but unlikely to deteriorate any further until the builder's
    van has gone'.
    
    
    Re [iksetera]
    
    I agree that people are going to mouth this abomination anyway, but
    that ignorance of latin derivations isn't, _per_se_ sinful. I don't
    agree that the two versions (etc./ect) _sound_ similar.  Jeff's right
    (.5) that `etcetera' is often pronounced with a glottal stop, but there
    is also - even in those cases - closure between the tip/blade of the
    tongue and the roof of the mouth.  Whatever this does to the stop,
    it turns the following sibilant into an affricate, and [ts]
    doesn't sound like [ks].
    
    Thankfully, I haven't been exposed to many `iksetera' pronunciations,
    but whenever I have, the first vowel has been a distinct [i].
    
    So, however similar sounding the stops may be, they are usually
    accompanied by (and to some extent, it might be argued, cause)
    a very clear differentiation in the neighbouring sounds. 
    
    b

    
    Bob -- shouldn't that 'etcetera' Latin derivation be 'et cetera'?
    
    But on a serious note, what if 'iksetera' is merely once more removed
    from the dusty old Latin? If so, I like it! 
    
    Richard.

    G'day,
            
    
   <<< Note 10.26 by MARVIN::KNOWLES "intentionally Rive Gauche" >>>
                         -< Since we're resurrecting this one >-
            
        Re .15, ect.
                 ^
                 |______ there's one
        ;-) 
    derek

Have just read through this whole topic and can't believe that, in the flurry 
to dump on people who spell Latin abbreviations incorrectly, nobody seems to 
have noticed that the topic title itself  has been spelt incorrectly.

Gotta be careful when you start pointing the finger!
(don't I know it - I'm experiencing severe paranoia entering this note! Spell 
check, you name it!)


Sheridan
:^)

(so far read-only but having HEAPS of fun! Hi to all the other multi-noters 
I've seen in here!)

I once worked in a jewellery shop. There was a girl there who had the job of 
sending letters to people who were overdue to pick up their watch repairs. If 
she didn't know if it was a male or female person she would address the 
envelope "Messrs. XXX" - meaning "Mr. OR Mrs." . Explanations of how to use 
this form correctly were like water of the proverbial duck's back.


Grrr!
Sheridan
:^)

In a former life I had dealings with a company in the UK who used to send 
faxes addressed "F.O.A. Mr X-----".      F.O.A.??? It bugged me for ages, 
until I finally worked out that it was a dyslexic (read ignorant) version 
of "For the Attention Of ".

Why the tried and true "Attn: " wasn't good enough ...

Sheridan
:^)

    Re: .30
    
    Curam geras cutis, Sceridana, cum de erroribus aliorum querieris!  Et
    grata hic es in colloquia JOYOFLEXA.
    
    (Guard your own skin, Sheridan, when you lament others' errors!  And
    welcome to the JOYOFLEX conference.)
    
    :-)
    
    Actually, by the rules of its French origin, "Messrs." is wrong. 
    "Messrs" is an abbreviation whose last letter is actually the last
    letter of the whole word, and proper form is not to use a period after
    abbreviations of this type:
    
    M. - Monsieur
    Mme - Madame
    Mlle - Mademoiselle
    Messrs - Messieurs
    
    So there.
    
    -dick

    The wonderful things I learn in this conference.	:-)

    What does "re." stand for?  "Regarding"?

    In Latin, "re" means "thing".  "In re Gault" means "In the matter of
    Gault".
    
    							Ann B.

re .34,.35

So 're' shouldn't have a period, a colon, or any other punctuation after
it when used like I did above.

It WOULD have a colon when used in the heading of a memo, much like
'to', 'from', 'for', 'date', and 'subject', thus:

        MEMORANDUM
        For:    anyone concerned
        From:   someone concerned
        Re:     cancelled outings

(Incidentally, I learned that memoranda were prepared FOR their
recipients, not TO them.  Can anyone corroborate?)

Dave C.

    >(Incidentally, I learned that memoranda were prepared FOR their
    >recipients, not TO them.  Can anyone corroborate?)
    
    Sure.  I write letters FOR their recipients before mailing them TO them.
    And I don't even speak Latin.
    
    -- Norman Diamond

If `memoranda' are `things to be remembered' I suppose one does, in some
sense, prepare them _for_ people. I can't imagine any sane person imposing
that kind of latinate exactitude on people using English.

b

    Wow! And I always thought that re. was an abbreviation for reference...
    
    What an ignoramus.
    
    Tally-ho,
    
    Ray

    It is often assumed to be an abbreviation for "Regarding" - but the
    Latin origin is the accurate one, from legal correspondence where "in
    re so-and-so" means "in the matter of so-and-so."  ("Res" is Latin for
    "thing" but can also mean "matter" or "affair" and so on.)
    
    And for the real trivia buffs, it is correctly pronounced "ray" not
    "ree."
    
    -dick

    >("Res" is Latin for "thing" but can also mean "matter" or "affair"
       ---
    
    A few re[plie]s ago, that was said about just "re."  Are "re" and "res"
    the same?  In other words, can one say
    
        Re: Fergie
    
    and accurately report the news of the day?

    Resorting to the dictionary....
    
    re  preposition - 'with reference to': used especially in the headings
    of business letters.  USAGE: 're' is acceptable in everyday business
    correspondence: 're your note of June 10'; 'she spoke to me re your
    complaint'.  In formal business correspondence, 're' is generally only
    used in a letter heading.  In general English, 'with reference to' or
    'about' should be used rather than 're'.
    
    Nick

    In re .41
    
    The Latin word is "res."  Latin is a highly inflected language; this
    means that there are many forms in the declension of a given noun;
    whereas in English there are three cases (subject, object, and
    possessive), there are in Latin as many as seven.  For "res," the
    full declension would be as follows:
    
    				Singular	Plural
    Nominative	(subject)	res		res
    Genitive (possessive)	rei		rerum
    Dative (indirect object)	rei		rebus
    Accusative (direct object)	rem		res
    Ablative (prep. object)	re		rebus
    
    The two additional cases would not ordinarily be used for a word like
    "res," but here they are:
    
    Vocative (direct address)	res		res
    Locative (place)		rei		rebus
    
    So you see, the ablative singular "in re" translates "in the matter"
    or, more colloquially, "in reference to."  To produce "in the matter
    of" you actually need the thing being discussed.  For example, "in the
    matter of the death of the woman" is "in re mortis mulieris."
    
    For further discussion of Latin, you are invited to visit the
    SMURF::SPQR conference.  Press Select or KP7 to add it to your
    notebook.
    
    -dick

    G'day,
    
    >A few re[plie]s ago, that was said about just "re."  Are "re" and "res"
    >the same?  In other words, can one say
    
    >    Re: Fergie
    
    >and accurately report the news of the day?
    
    Two replies come to mind.....
    
    1)  NO - nothing about Fergie is news, however reported
    
    
    2) Yes - as long as it does not contain information about Fergie, as it
    would then cease to be news (see 1. above)
    
    
    djw