Which words can you just not get into your head.

otherwise my spelling is GRATE! (har har)

I still find myself puzzled by "discreet" and "discrete".

*basks in drunken glory*

*looked at message again and realises all the spelling errors and backs down in shame and realised his grammar is fucking dreadful too also.

(Pedant to thread to tell me it's commae/commata [IIRC the former, delete as applicable, I have turned my main light out so am not about to consult Liddell and Scott] and not tell me how to use them. Yeah, I have a copy of Fowler's, but that doesn't actually cover really basic stuff like that, I don't think. I really did know this stuff ten years ago, too, or at least I never worried about it.)

[tries to look at recent dictionary.com lookups to see what she's confused herself about how to spell recently, fails to persuade IE to autocomplete, is reduced to swearing at overheating computer]

oops, wrong thread.

* from memory, so I may have added the comma myself. The plural is commas, in English.

Yes, but that's no FUN. Do English-speakers hate fun?

I don't think I can justify buying any more books about language; I already have more than I can fit in my bookshelves and I remain incapable of stringing a sentence together.

I can't find my Partridge...

today doing english homework i looked up ellipsis, apostrophe, feminine rhyme, and dangling participles. there's something about grammatical terms that just thrills me. they're so detailed and exquisite and generally pointless.

there's another one i cannot spell to save my life, but spellchecker always gets it in word, so i can't think... probably mischevious. yes, that's it.

And it's almost Christmas! Have you at least found your Pear Tree? We should do a version for grammarians - you know, "...two Fowler Guides, Eric Partridge in a pear tree".

These days I have to look up diarrhoea every time and think about accommodation, millennium and recommend.

Italian's great - if you know how to say it, you know how to spell it (assuming you know a couple of rules, like what an h does).

"Manoeuvre" is one of mine. I get it right about 50% of the time but I invariably have to write it down regardless to make sure.

The other problem I have is the alphabet between I and N. I have to say the rhyme out loud.

No matter how many times someone explains it to me, I don't really understand the distinction between "sympathy" and "empathy" and I'm beginning to think it's a false distinction.

me too!

my mother used to use "hoi polloi" to mean the opposite of what it really means, and now i always double-fake myself when i want to use it. she told me a couple of years ago that SHE picked it up from someone else who used it wrong.. it's the circle of life

my workmate went to Norway and brought back a chocolate bar, a bit like a KitKat called 'Kvikk Lunsj', and I had that phrase stuck in my head for days.

hoi polloi -/ hoity toity I guess?

sympathy = feeling another's pain
empathy = imagining how another's pain might feel

I heard an explanation that "empathy" is something you feel when you've been there and "sympathy" is when you haven't. But isn't all "sympathy" by this definition just abstracted "empathy", and isn't all "empathy" to some extent as abstracted as "sympathy" since you can never literally have been there?

the distinction is as i said. think about a term like "sympathetic magic" - belief that acting on one thing has an effect on another with some kind of non-physical connection. whereas empathy is cooler, more rational, about understanding without sharing the experience.

empathy as "cooler" and "more rational" and not "sharing the experience" seems like the opposite of how I have had empathy explained to me.

it's one of those situations where their usage has become more and more interchangeable. i just google a couple of contradictory definitions. but as i say, i think about the usage of sympathy in its magickal connection which is closer to the original distinction

it's language, i can't claim to be "right", but if you want to maintain a useful distinction between the two then mine is the historic one afaik

hmm, the wiki article on empathy explains it your way, and it does make more sense to me as a distinction when it's put that way

Empathy is the capacity to recognize emotions that are being experienced by another sentient or fictional being. One may need to have a certain amount of empathy before being able to experience accurate sympathy or compassion.

I like this explanation -- empathy as a precursor to or building block of sympathy

Empathy is the capacity to have the feeling of sympathy. Or at least that's my understanding. One has "empathy" all the time, one has sympathy only in response to something in particular.

Xps! Yeah agree with that

empathy = "I recognize that others feel"
sympathy = "I feel something in response to a recognition of someone else's feeling"

lol I sound like a robot trying to figure out how to appear more human

ha, no, they are definitely melting together in modern usage

i.e. yr confusion is understandable

counselor troi is sympathetic because that's her job, but empathic because she's half alien with special mind powers.

Peace
Love
And Sympathy

Doesn't sound right

i feel similarly confused about communism/socialism and sociopath/psychopath