Jungle gyms and monkey bars

[Wilson Gray]

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 6:55 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
> On May 3, 2012, at 3:28 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>>
>> Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_gym) claims they are the same thing, but my recollection is they are different. Compare the photos on that page (which are jungle gyms to me) to the single row of bars at http://lookatmyhappyrainbow.com/monkey-bars/, which to me are monkey bars.
>
> my recollection (and usage) exactly.

Mine, too.

> so usage varies.

Language-change in progress. <sigh!>

But it's nice that Colbert is  one of  the few who still distinguish
between "loved" and "beloved", instead of using the latter as though
it has the same meaning and pronunciation as the former, but, for some
who-cares reason, the latter has a "be" in front of it.

Speaking of discrepancies, I have the strong feeling that I may well
be the only native-speaker of English who "knows" that the "proper"
forms are

a) "… _ONE_ [of the few who still] _distinguishES_ …"

as opposed to, e.g.

b) "… _SOME_ [of the few who still] _distinguish_ …"

I've become consciously aware of this so recently - I notice it in
literature, but not in speech - that I don't know whether it's dialect
- a black thing; you would't understand - or idiolect - even *I* don't
understand how I came to have these structures, but *not*

c) "… [one of the] FEW [who still] _distinguish_ …"

which I used above only as a sop to my readers.
--

-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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