Bad spelling doesn't irritate me, it just stands out visually. I'm terrible at math but good with spelling. I get numbers wrong in ways that are embarrassing. Things like writing the wrong year on a check which I do all the time or leaving out zeros when talking about square feet or amounts of money when I get the numbers not just wrong but drastically wrong. I don't usually remember numbers like phone numbers etc. because I can't seem to keep numbers in my head but a word that is spelled wrong almost always jumps off the page. I don't consider using botanical names as necessarily pretentious but I don't feel the need to memorize them and I do find the common names more interesting personally speaking. Actually, when talking to most people about plants, the common name is more often than not better for conversational purposes unless the other person is a plant geek or asks for a name because they want to get the plant, then its appropriate to be specific and if necessary, look it up. I mean, if someone came to casually look at my garden and was asking what this plant is or that plant is I do think it would sound grossly pretentious to start spouting off a lot of long winded botanical names which would leave most people not knowing anymore than they did before they asked and probably they'd wish they'd never asked in the first place. This post was edited by TexasRanger10 on Tue, Nov 11, 14 at 4:32

I haven't got the 'pre-annuals' term but have had 're-turrnial's (which really like a lot- kind of implies an understanding of the situation). Nina - I know what you mean by the 'insulting' reply!!lol. For years I had people (at farmers' market) tell me about how difficult is was to grow basil. I had the dangest time figuring it out, until one year, a wonderful employee realized that people were defoliating plants, not snipping them back to a node. "I just can't figure what's wrong, it was so healthy until I picked off every leaf" That poor plant! - if I've learned anything it's that I can't assume common knowledge among people. Finding a way to negotiate this space is what makes all the difference in the world. Go figure.

Sorry, Les, but I, too, had native French speakers (one Swiss, two from France) as teachers throughout my high school years, majored in French in college both here and in France, and lived in both France and Switzerland and never heard it said the way your link pronounces it (very strange-with a long 'e' sound at the end), nor the way you write it. I was not referring to the English pronunciation, but rather to the masculine form of the word which is 'long'. I do think there is somewhat of a slight, comment dirai-je, elongation of some ending sounds in French which can cause difficulties for non-native speakers (think Louvre, langue)and I do know what you mean, but should someone head over there and say it that way, he/she would most likely not be understood. The 'g' is pronounced more than we would do on both 'long' and 'longue.' One does not hear the 'u' at all. Anyway, I was just enjoying the discussion and thought I would throw in my two cents. I suspect that differences in dialects and area of origin can account for many differences in pronunciation (French-speaking Canadians speak quite differently than those from France just as someone from Louisiana or Alabama may speak completely differently than someone from New York or Maine or London, England). I applaud anyone who is at all interested in language and who makes attempts to speak and pronounce words well.

This is more about pronounciation than spelling, but it seems appropriate here. It's from a website I have enjoyed for many years: We are told that this little poem came about as an exercise for multi-national translation personnel at the NATO headquarters in Paris. English wasn't so hard to learn, they found, but English pronunciation is a killer. We haven't had time to check the provenance of this poem, but that really doesn't matter, as the poem is interesting, amusing and insightful despite its origin. We were also told that, after trying the poem, a native French interpreter said he'd prefer to spend six months at hard labor than reading six of the lines loud. English is Tough Stuff Dearest creature in creation Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it's written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar. Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation's OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamor And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and droll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangor. Soul but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, knob, bosom, transom, oath. Through the differences seem little, We say actual, but also victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, Conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache,...