Gah, I didn't know that people have to register as friends before they could leave comments...
I can't get onto myspace from my home computer (takes roughly 7x as long to load a single image from my home server), so the soonest I can fix the problem is on Monday...
Does anyone know enough about myspace that they can tell me how to disable the 'friends-only' protection?
I didn't really want to do it... but "Existential questions about identity. Deep." Is just http://www.fenslerfilm.com/moviesF/PSAsmall/FenslerFilm_PSA15_small.mpg
...Why?!
I know that they're homophones. That's why English speakers screw them up so much. However, they mean completely separate things, so if you're being taught either of the words, chances are that you won't be learning the other: one is a possessive pronoun, and one is a subject + verb contraction.
I find it ironic that people often try to diffuse the problem by teaching a lesson on homophones, thus permanently sealing the "oh yeah, these are easily mistaken" idea in memory and ensuring eternal confusion over which form to use.
I hate that so much.
Also, whale biologist English major.
There's some cultural acceptance of this kind of behavior actually. Sure, in English, people misuse your/you're all the time, but it's not considered 'correct', it's always considered a mistake.
In Japan, there are many kanji that sound exactly the same and have ridiculously similar meanings. For an example where the meanings are different enough to express in basic English, let's look at "Kiku", which can mean 'to listen' or 'to ask'. The kanji for 'to listen' is quite simple to draw, whereas the kanji that specifically means 'to ask' is much more complicated. In printed text, the differentiation is always made. However, when people are writing things by hand, it's considered perfectly acceptable to use the easier kanji. Even teachers of Japanese language use this when they aren't specifically teaching the kanji for 'to ask'.
Japanese has tons of such homophones, often with even LESS difference in meaning than 'to ask'/'to listen'. It makes them very homophone-conscious language-learners. I wouldn't have to teach a lesson on you're/your for them to see the similarity in sound. In fact, I haven't. They make mistakes in spelling all the time, mostly because there's so many spellings to remember - and they don't see/use English enough to have the spellings constantly beat into their minds. I correct them and they're getting better, but they're not there yet. And in some ways, they may never be there, especially if they never travel outside of Japan. I'm just happy when they don't spell "Lunch" as "Ranti".
-Djinn
