English lesson

[looker]

And you wonder why ....

Oh no I don't, the rules of English are characterised more by inconsitency than by consitency.

continent and incontinent have no relevance to each other ...

Not when continent is a noun and incontinent is is an adjective, but check out the case when both continent and incontinent are adjectives.
The url you'll need is
Dictionary.com | Meanings and Definitions of Words at Dictionary.com

[Papercaptain]

Originally Posted by gotham

Looker - ?
We can't deal with it ourselves.

Oh yes, that's true - and it baffles me as a non native speaker (make this: bloody foreigner) when I see
"there" mixed up with "their" (and vice versa) or "then" and "than" &c. &c.
(By the way, shouldn't it be spelt inconsistency?)
Kind regards -
papercaptain

[rickstef]

actually it is 3 of them, There, Their, and They're
they all sound alike, yet all have different meanings and uses

[rjm]

When I grew up in Wyoming there were a lot of oil trucks marked inflammable, then they were remarked flammable. If they were not inflammable the were marked for a time
noninflammable. I was told flammable meant" it burns", inflammable meant "yes it burns"
and noninflammable therefore meant "no yes it burns".
Bob

[Darwin]

As one of my foreign student friends said, how can one possibly hope to learn a language where 'fat chance' and 'slim chance' mean the same damnable thing?

[Knife]

Or the word " big" is half the size of "little". But then again, why is abbreviated such a large word?

[Karl]

My understanding of the flammable/inflammable debate was that flammable materials generally require setting on fire, such as paper, wood etc. Inflammable is for products that could ignite just by being close to a heat source such as liquid fuel.

[Raja Ahsani]

Originally Posted by Karl

My understanding of the flammable/inflammable debate was that flammable materials generally require setting on fire, such as paper, wood etc. Inflammable is for products that could ignite just by being close to a heat source such as liquid fuel.

Inflammable and flammable is a same thing actually, what you're referring to is flammable (things which have flash point below 100 F) and combustible (things that have flash point above 100 F), it's thing I learned on HSE class

[CharlieC]

And then there is the old "is" and "are" problem in English - most Australians have no idea there is a difference.

I was once married to a woman who should have written a book for grammar nazis. She even took to taking a marker into the local supermarket to correct their apostrophes.

Charlie

(For the non-English speakers - "there is" refers to singular things e.g. there is a dog on the sofa. "there are" refers to plural things e.g. there are bats in my belfry.)

[herky]

Originally Posted by CharlieC

And then there is the old "is" and "are" problem in English - most Australians have no idea there is a difference.

I was once married to a woman who should have written a book for grammar nazis. She even took to taking a marker into the local supermarket to correct their apostrophes.

Charlie

(For the non-English speakers - "there is" refers to singular things e.g. there is a dog on the sofa. "there are" refers to plural things e.g. there are bats in my belfry.)

you said ''Once married''I think she is now my partner