Grammar and Spelling Help

I've always had trouble with farther and further, so I looked it up:

further

[fur-th er]

• Examples
• Word Origin

adverb, compar. of far with furthest as superl.
1. at or to a greater distance; farther : I'm too tired to go further.
2. at or to a more advanced point; to a greater extent: Let's not discuss it further.
3. in addition; moreover: Further, he should be here any minute. adjective, compar. of far with furthest as superl.
4. more distant or remote; farther: The map shows it to be further than I thought.
5. more extended: Does this mean a further delay?
6. additional; more: Further meetings seem pointless. verb (used with object)
7. to help forward (a work, undertaking, cause, etc.); promote; advance; forward: You can always count on him to further his own interests.

farther
[fahr-th er]

• Examples
• Word Origin

adverb, compar. of far with farthest as superl.
1. at or to a greater distance: He went farther down the road.
2. at or to a more advanced point: They are going no farther in their studies.
3. at or to a greater degree or extent: The application of the law was extended farther.
adjective, compar. of far with farthest as superl.
4. more distant or remote than something or someplace nearer: the farther side of the mountain.
5. extending or tending to a greater distance: He made a still farther trip.
6. Nonstandard. further (defs 5, 6).

I'm still not a whole lot enlightened, but I do understand just a bit better. Not a whole lot, though.

Inhabitants of both Australia and the United States derive from the same country, but our languages are far distant from each other.

I don't have a problem understanding "all three versions" of English. :) I don't even have a problem understanding those whose language is far removed from "our" English.

When I see something like your example above, I try to look at the country of origin (if it's there) to be sure they're not native English speakers. It does make a difference.

The United States English language is one of the most complex in the world; it's no wonder folks need help. :) I had a good English teacher but I'm so far removed from those days that I cannot remember the rules; I only know (for the most part) what's right. Even then, I sometimes mess up.

When I'm writing fiction, Word wants me to use "proper" grammar, but sometimes the muse says it ain't gonna follow Word's lead. There are too many colloquialisms for it to ever be 100% accurate.

It seems like we are all turning into grammar Nazis in here.

Atomic77 said:

It seems like we are all turning into grammar Nazis in here.

I don't like the word Nazi. Nazis murdered Jews; here we're not murdering anyone or anything.

Please understand that this is a place to help each other out with our grammar and spelling. It's not a place to berate anyone!

I'm a bit in a strange spot there. I was born and grew up in former Yugoslavia, I'm Serbian, we learned both Cyrillic and Latin in school and write and read in both. I started learning English since I was 5, took it further during school and read a lot in English.
That "School English" was of British variety but watched a lot of movies and those are mostly American English. In middle school we learned Latin language so understanding Italian, French and Spanish was easier.
1974 I moved to Canada, specifically Toronto and that introduced me to all new English, eh !!!
There is a paradox that I think may be relevant to native English speakers too. In school I had better grades in English than Serbian !! Why, well I think it's because native language is taken for granted and people do not take grammar to be too important, everybody understands everybody except maybe Jamaican and Newfoundland English which are story by itself. So in school I had to pay more attention to learning English grammar than Serbian (or Serbo-Croatian as it was call than).

stephen said:

Very impressive Mike,

Throw into the mix, the computer jargon used frequently here, being a non IT person myself, it might as well be a foreign language : )

Yes, computer jargon is even more confusing, there are so many words that were modified from other spheres of life. As most of those words and names are initially in English they are very difficult to translate to other language. I can attest to that for Serbian, some attempts of translations are so atrocious that nobody, in either language can understand them and bear no relation to it's intended target. I can't even use Windows in Serbian, almost nowhere I can know exactly what they may mean.

Topics like this will only make some people (with foreign tongue) shy away from this forum. This is not an online university. We should just all let it go. :)