I'm struggling a bit here...normalcy isn't a word I use but it has been in common usage, esp in north America, for almost 200 years...why is anyone "wrong" for using it?
I’m good with “leanings”. Lessons are what someone teaches, whereas learnings are what is actually learned. It parallels an inquiry and its findings, rope and its bindings, a transformer and its wiring, etc.
I don't agree. Things that you learn are called lessons (especially if a bit of a 'hard lesson') or specific classes of things learned- knowledge, skills etc
Sorry, that sounded patronising. I didn’t meant that way.,
As it happens, I just checked usage and in general “normalcy” seems to be more common in US English and far less common or even considered unusual in Australian English.
I sometimes wonder whether the resistance to US English in (some?) Commonwealth countries is really just a yearning for Empire. That it’s now *their* hegemonic language rather than *our* hegemonic language.
I think it's when you have something ground into you, over and over and over as a child - that's wrong, say it this way, 'You got a shocking mark for your English test' - you react against people who are fast and loose with the "real" thing.
In my case, it was having a mother who spoke like the Queen and was a language (and a nutrition) nazi.
When, as a teenager in high school, I started to mimic my school mates' pronunciation, I was always getting, "There's no "i" in five, Miriam" in that authoritarian teacher's voice at home ...
And, p.s., I wonder too if anyone with a sophisticated enough understanding of the cultural politics of empire, wouldn't also realise that swapping British English for US English is just swapping 19th c. cultural imperialism for 21st c. cultural imperialism.
Comments
The earliest known use of the noun normalcy is in the 1850s.
OED's earliest evidence for normalcy is from 1857, in a dictionary by Charles Davies and William Guy Peck.
As it happens, I just checked usage and in general “normalcy” seems to be more common in US English and far less common or even considered unusual in Australian English.
I mostly edit in Australian English so “normality” has the normalcy for me. But I sometimes have to work in US English.
#culturalcolonialism
When, as a teenager in high school, I started to mimic my school mates' pronunciation, I was always getting, "There's no "i" in five, Miriam" in that authoritarian teacher's voice at home ...