Hangars v hangers

….. and by a tangential route we’ve arrived at a topic ‘key’ – pun intended – to this forum, namely restoration!

Sabrejet: “restaurateur” fits both professions!

Does indeed, so we are back on topic!

Sabrejet: “restaurateur” fits both professions!

It’s the same derivation, I think, that gives us a ‘restorative’ as a drink, or occasionally a food, that – well, ‘restores’ one’s vigour. Succour for the weary traveller and all that. The ‘-ant’ ending denotes a place where something happens, whereas ‘-ateur’ is the person who does. If you’re a bit more precise with where you draw the line between the root word and the ending it becomes clearer.
Beyond that, I’ll leave it to proper linguistic historians…

Whilst I fear that now we are straying into rather arcane territory, the words are French – but isn’t everything regarding good food? – and a restaurateur is a person who owns and/or manages a restaurant. But please, for heavens sake, don’t ask me why one word includes the letter n and the other does not!

I think the derivation is different: a restaurateur is one who restores, rather than an owner of a restaurant (from the verb restaurer, to restore). If any of that is correct then my O-Level French was not a complete waste of time.

Left out here by the looks of it……

Correctly left out.

Whilst I fear that now we are straying into rather arcane territory, the words are French – but isn’t everything regarding good food? – and a restaurateur is a person who owns and/or manages a restaurant. But please, for heavens sake, don’t ask me why one word includes the letter n and the other does not!

Another is the common practice of putting a letter ‘n’ in the word, restaurateur.

Left out here by the looks of it……

A case in point being the word, deterioration, which many news reporters like to pronounce, ‘deteriation’.

Another is the common practice of putting a letter ‘n’ in the word, restaurateur.

And I also note the detrimental effect of using affect (or effect) in the wrong place!

Language is always evolving

The trick is understanding the difference between evolution and deterioration;)

It appears to be the deterioration that most people have an issue with. Languages evolve by becoming clearer, richer and more expressive. What we see too often (and what are highlighted in this thread) are examples which give the English language less clarity, less expression and make it much less easy to understand.

Malcolm

Did you attend my school ?

So you are suggesting a grammatical way of making do-able undo-able? Perhaps we could use the expression that’s a do-able negative. To my mind it combines the best of fake techno babble with our current trend to see things in a militaristic turn of phrase. 🙂

Then we could really have a silly old fart discussion about how things were much better when we were young and had to memorize the whole 28 volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary before breakfast and school which we had to crawl to through rain and mud uphill while carrying rocks in our school bags.

I suspect it starts when some ignoramus “creates” one of these new ugly words because they do not actually know the one which already exists.

Yeah – that sounds “do-able”.

(For those blessed at not yet hearing this ‘word’, do-able seems to mean ‘possible’, though what’s wrong with the latter I have no idea. I’m all for using a synonym when required, but there are plenty of words that one could use before resorting to the creation of “do-able”!)

One of the things that irritates me with modern usage of the English language is the seeming desire to create new words when perfectly good words exist and which already serve the purpose perfectly well. ……. Why not say ‘recipient’?!

I suspect it starts when some ignoramus “creates” one of these new ugly words because they do not actually know the one which already exists.

One of the things that irritates me with modern usage of the English language is the seeming desire to create new words when perfectly good words exist and which already serve the purpose perfectly well. I found an example of this today. I will not name the website but it refers to a RAF pilot being the ‘awardee of the Battle of Britain clasp’. Why not say ‘recipient’? Or do words, like so much in life today, have a ‘use by’ date after which it is necessary to invent another word, with the same meaning, to use instead? I wonder, who was the awardor who awarded the awardment to the awardee at the awardisation awards? Plain English? Huh, who needs that!

Language is always evolving – I doubt anybody can stop that – I remember reading some years ago that language has an approximate 200 years life where it will be fairly well understood by a reader 200 years in the future !

And double the cost of your workforce as opposed to get it correct first time…….
Surely we should aspire to get it right backed up by good education to ensure that.

In a perfect world yes – but that perfect world just does not exist and we all have to make the best of the teams we end up working with – any change ( and it aint gonna happen) will be 30 years down the road minimum !

Fair comment SJ but all they need to do is get the job card checked by another member of the team before it is co – ordinated etc,sometimes ones immediate supervisor would do that !

And double the cost of your workforce as opposed to get it correct first time…….

Having worked in Aerospace for over 30 years now, with a degree in Aeronautical Engineering, working in Engineering and IT departments, it has been imperative throughout my education and career to get it right! Errors can cost money (I write a lot of contracts) or worse (having written job cards and modification schemes amongst others).

Surely we should aspire to get it right backed up by good education to ensure that.

One of the things that irritates me with modern usage of the English language is the seeming desire to create new words when perfectly good words exist and which already serve the purpose perfectly well. I found an example of this today. I will not name the website but it refers to a RAF pilot being the ‘awardee of the Battle of Britain clasp’. Why not say ‘recipient’? Or do words, like so much in life today, have a ‘use by’ date after which it is necessary to invent another word, with the same meaning, to use instead? I wonder, who was the awardor who awarded the awardment to the awardee at the awardisation awards? Plain English? Huh, who needs that!

That’s largely because these days and for some time the quality of teaching the basics is abysmal and far too little time is spent on them. The old belief that the minimum a child – any child – should be capable of when they leave school is to have a basic ability in the “three Rs” has become an alien aspiration in the last decade or three of education upheaval.

A few years ago the small team working for me were required to submit regular written reports. They comprised two Brits, two Danes, a French man and a German woman. I was regularly embarrassed that the quality of the English was far better in the foreigners’ reports than in the Brits’ submissions.

Surely regardless of any other consideration we should all be educated to a common basic standard in literacy and numeracy. And it’s literacy, or the lack of it, which we are discussing here.

In a perfect world yes, BUT if this was a question about mathematics instead of literacy most people would fail as soon as they left school.People have different skills .You cannot get 30 people in a class and expect them all to achieve the same high standards in all the same subjects.You can give people the same education but not everyone will succeed .
Once again you hone your skills for what you need in the real world.