churchill

[Michael Dorosh]

Determinant, you are of course correct, and you raise the further water-muddying question of written versus spoken English. I would indeed (and in fact, always have) refer to two men holding the appointment of sergeant major, verbally, as "sergeant majors."

I have no idea who comes up with this stuff. Verbal english has always been prone to shorthand, reference the word "ain't" - for decades used in spoken English only, it is only recenlty and reluctantly, I suspect, that it has been formalized in the dictionary as written English as well.

Such is the same for our Sergeants Major.

[edward_n_kelly]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Determinant, you are of course correct, and you raise the further water-muddying question of written versus spoken English. I would indeed (and in fact, always have) refer to two men holding the appointment of sergeant major, verbally, as "sergeant majors."

I have no idea who comes up with this stuff. Verbal english has always been prone to shorthand, reference the word "ain't" - for decades used in spoken English only, it is only recenlty and reluctantly, I suspect, that it has been formalized in the dictionary as written English as well.

Such is the same for our Sergeants Major.

Which brings to mind such ranks as "Corporal of Horse" who has the badges of (and the rank of) SGT and "Corporal Major" (rank and appointments of a Warrant Officer). Why not throw in a "King's Corporal" while we are at it ? Who can tell me who or what this was ?

(and what of the possive plural noun like Sergeants' Major Pace Sticks ?)

Edward

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

At Omaha, as we all know, the DDs were launched too far out and most were swamped and drowned.

I always wanted to know what happened to that supposedly "cowardly" captain reportedly responsible for the premature launch.

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by Brian:

Another is numeracy. Somewhere along the line, it appears we have adopted the American billion instead of a proper billion as a measurement of monies. No one appears to have announced it and its hard to figure out whether a Journo is talking about real billions or not. Its such a creeping disease that we have even politicians up to and including the Treasurer muddying the waters using the two values interchangeably at times.

are you saying you would usually count million, milliard?, billion, billiard? ?

IOW, what do you really call a fake billion?

[Andrew H.]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

I have no idea who comes up with this stuff. Verbal english has always been prone to shorthand, reference the word "ain't" - for decades used in spoken English only, it is only recenlty and reluctantly, I suspect, that it has been formalized in the dictionary as written English as well.

Such is the same for our Sergeants Major.

Blame the French. Words like "court(s) martial" and "attorney(s) general" came into english via what's called law french. The follow the french rule of putting the adjective after the noun, which is why you have to put the plural after the first word. It would seem like Sgt. Major would come from the same place.

Of course, when english speakers see these words, they tend to think of them all as a noun - that is, we essentially consider "attorney general" to be one noun, not a noun followed by an adjective, which is why the tendency is to put the plural on the end, as incorrect as that might be.

[Simon Fox]

Of course the intended D-day task of the assault engineers and their AVREs was the clearance and destruction of beach and other obstacles not to provide fire support for the infantry. Probably the most significant benefit of the AVREs was in enabling the engineering tasks to be carried out with armoured protection for the engineers.

There were problems with the DD tanks on a number of other beaches as well, although possibly not to the same extent as Omaha, with late arrival due to launching closer in, losses to swamping, going astray or just merely being landed 'dry' but late. In these instances the AVREs and other vehicles present took up the slack and provided additional fire support. In this respect the contribution of Sherman Crabs, which were specifically trained prior to D-day for taking out pillboxes, and RM Centaurs would have been important. The redundancy of all the armour arriving on the Commonwealth beaches was surely of benefit in swamping the defenses despite the inevitable stuff-ups with DDs etc.

[Brian]

Originally posted by M Hofbauer:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Brian:

Another is numeracy. Somewhere along the line, it appears we have adopted the American billion instead of a proper billion as a measurement of monies. No one appears to have announced it and its hard to figure out whether a Journo is talking about real billions or not. Its such a creeping disease that we have even politicians up to and including the Treasurer muddying the waters using the two values interchangeably at times.

are you saying you would usually count million, milliard?, billion, billiard? ?

IOW, what do you really call a fake billion?</font>

[Brian]

Double post. Oops.

[ April 17, 2002, 01:54 AM: Message edited by: Brian ]

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by Brian:

I'd normally say, "US Billion" or "thousand million".

so you'ld count million, thousand million, billion, thousand billion, trillion, thousand trillion?

man, I don't ebven know what's weirder, the american or your style of counting

[abuhabib]

n all becoz i wanted to know what AVRE stands for! boy, i love this forum for it's thoroghness...