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Susan Oleksiw's avatar

I would never correct anyone in general conversation unless they asked me about a word or its usage. That has happened occasionally, but sometimes a person has corrected me. Usually I ignore it if I know I'm correct, but recently I explained that I wasn't wrong and gave some history of the expression she was challenging. Her response was, "You'll take that opinion over a friend with personal experience?" It was the most peculiar conversation around language I've had in decades. The answer, BTW, is yes. I'm fine with being corrected because I'm always ready to learn. I understand language changes, and English is changing a lot, it seems, but writers like me work at being correct in our word usage.

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M.E. Proctor's avatar

I have trouble with the "accent tonique". I'm a native French speaker and I tend to put it on the wrong syllable which cause gales of laughter in my house—when they understand what I'm talking about! Often, moving that emphasis point completely baffles people... I have to take a deep breath before saying "azalea" - I want to say azaLEa instead of aZAlea... very confusing to me!

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