Comments on: To “B” or Not to “B”

By: Maeve

Maeve — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 14:09:06 +0000

A reader named Will has reminded me of another, less common -mb word: succumb. The sense of "to give in, to sink under pressure" is first recorded in 1604. One succumbs to an illness or to a wound. The past form is succumbed.

By: Maeve

Maeve — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:56:04 +0000

Richard,
You have an interesting view of English. Are you a native speaker?

Even if English speakers recognized some authority with the power to alter spellings by mandate, I don’t see why such a thing would be done to “cause less confusion to non -english speakers.”

Do German or French authorities worry about altering their languages for the benefit of non-native speakers?

A language, like Everest, is there–to be cherished by its native speakers and to be learned with varying degrees of difficulty by those not born to it.

Please continue your list. I’d like to add any other -mb words you can think of to mine.

By: richard

richard — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:19:28 +0000

Please forgive my mistakes…….ist should be list…..were should be was

By: richard

richard — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:16:39 +0000

Dear Sir.

Have there been any attempts to simplify these words so they cause less confusion to non -english speakers. Why not drop the m at the end of these words so lamb becomes lam….now, I can see a problem ; there is a word lam, jam from jamb…

I know the ist of such words were not meant to be exhaustive so I’ll go out on a limb and say how dumb not to include ……..

By: Maeve

Maeve — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:28:11 +0000

Denis,
The notation [klīm] used above represents the same sound as [klaim]. I have used the long vowel mark over the letter i. The Oxford Dictionary uses “ai” to represent the long i sound.