Tuesday, March 04, 2014

Business is business

Dear pupils, as I am busy grading your papers, in particular the mock exam, ‘le bac blanc’, I find the most annoying spelling mistake. (Je veux que vous écriviez correctement le mot suivant BUSINESS que l’on utilise aussi en français non ?)
So you get it. I began this post with the verb 'to be busy doing something'. You see? Just take busy and add -ness Since the end of the radical is a Y, you change it into an I when it is followed by a suffix, for example here -ness. You know, like the plural of words ending with a Y. But that's not the mistake you made anyway. Well of course, sometimes, you stumble upon exceptions like this one: 'Busybody': a person who is too interested in the private lives of other people. An officious or inquisitive person. EX1: The neighborhood busybody is telling everyone that the couple up the street is getting divorced. EX2: That busybody across the street is always telling me how to tend to my own garden> Don’t you love words? Well I sure hope you are forever curious about words... Leave me a comment dear pupils, for a change!