Pence

No it isn',t. This annoys me too. If the checkout assistant say that to me, I repeat the price back to her saying "twenty five pounds and a penny was that?" Whether they take any notice I don't know.

It's much better than "pee" though, isn't it?

A shop assistant said to me yesterday..... "they aren't not on offer no more."

There is an argument though that says as long as what the person is saying is understood etc. Perhaps sometimes there is an element of snobbery in our approach I am as guilty as anyone , perhaps we ought to be more sympathetic to cultural practice, education etc?

Yes for celebrating different cultural practice but who decides when comprehensibility is affected? Since teachers stopped telling pupils to talk proper and trying to set an example, increasingly I come across young people in service industries who are only able to use a very restricted register and engage in mutually incomprehensible exchanges with customers. Lots of overseas students round here who speak perfectly acceptable versions of standard English encountering local young people who don't. I sometimes have to interpret!

Teachers stopped correcting children's speech when they were told they were no longer allowed to do it.

My dd sent the school reports for us online. I had to bite my tongue/red pen so it didn't strike through the split infinitive on line one. Ah to boldly go.......

I never understood the split infinitive. I probably unintentionally split it all the time.

I do it intentionally a lot of the time, if it sounds better!

To revert to Pence for a moment, what do people spend or pay when the go the WC? To spend a p sounds daft, and to spend a pence sounds painful, not sure why!

Ah, but that's a saying dating back to olden, pre-decimal days grumppa.

It costs 20p now round here!

I was about to write that I didnt know that teachers were not allowed to correct speech, and that that was daft. But then I thought that they cant do it for pupils for whom?[people I am afraid will have to excuse my bad english and spelling], english is not their first language, so I presume that is why it was stopped?
But then, they might appricate it. So I end up not knowing which side of the fence I am on as regards this issue.

Yes, but what do people say? Mrs. Grumppa still spends a penny; I go for a pee.

I think I have got a bit used to pence in that respect but I can't get used to PIN number. I have even seen in written on bank literature!

I wonder why people got used to saying 50 pee when they never said dee before that.can anyone lend me a sov?

PIN has always been used, since the facility became general use. I can't see it as something you'd need "to get used too" when that's the way it's always been. It's a bit long winded otherwise.

Not really, it could just be PI number. Only one syllable more!

Unless we pronounced it 'pie'...

Nina nothing wrong with PIN it is PIN number I have the issue with. Personal Identification Number Number!

Many years ago the office I worked in sold International Student Identity Cards. They were known as ISIC Cards, while they should, of course, have been ISI Cards.

Yes, that's the point I was making in my posts, Nonnie!

Ana I was beginning to think I was the only one who could see it. So glad I am not alone.

Aah, sorry Nonnie I missed your point. I Did comment to DH that you'd typed Number number stoopid me.

@Vampirequeen - The 'split infinitive' occurs in English because it can... that is, it's two words ('to go', 'to eat', 'to run') with a space between them, while all the major languages that surround us have a single word form (English 'to eat', French 'manger', Spanish 'comer', Italian 'mangiare' German 'essen'). Victorian grammarians, realizing that Latin infinitives weren't splittable either, decided it was therefore wrong to slip anything between the 'to' and the verb in English, which was rather silly of them.

Often a split infinitive is poor style, although sometimes it can't be improved - 'To boldly go....' is more elegant than 'Boldly to go...' or 'To go boldly...', isn't it?