From a deployment tour perspective!
Per the military news site Strategy Page, Korea is no longer considered a “hardship tour” and is more similar to Japan and Germany in terms of the amenities offered to officers, enlisted men and their families. Due to the classification change, U.S. military personnel will finally be able to bring their families along with them, but will have to agree to a longer deployment. However, they do get an extra $300 a month.
{ 42 comments… read them below or add one }
It seems ridiculous to have kept Korea classified as a ‘hardship post’ for so long, especially for those stationed anywhere near the largest urban centers. Propaganda, maybe? Trying to put the young privates in a paranoid state of mind?
I’ve seen far too many young privates bitch and moan to know that the label has had a negative impact on morale despite the fact that one can lead a very comfortable life in Korea.
Let’s hope this will have a beneficial impact on morale and will help curve the recent increase in the number of crime committed by USFK personnel.
PS. The Hardship Post was a great band.
Yes, yes and yes. But I think it also has to do with justifying various policies. The status of Korea as “forward deployed” was used to fight its soldiers being sent to Iraq. While they lost that battle, they had limited success and never had to rotate out regularly like in Germany. Now that Iraq has pacified significantly (only 10 coallition casualties in March) they feel more comfortable loosing this designation.
Curfew also becomes harder to justify if Korea is not a hardship tour. Last I heard things were not going well with the reduced curfew hours, and if they eliminate them completely I predict soldiers will go out and get into a lot of trouble. It won’t be until families are brought to Korea that things will settle down.
#3,
Good point.
*cracks knuckles*
That should be “curb.”
That should be “losing.” If I had the power to completely eradicate any one error in the English language, it would be this one. “Lose” rhymes with “snooze” and is the opposite of “win,” or a synonym for “misplace.” “Loose” rhymes with “goose” and is usually an adjective meaning the opposite of “tight.” “To loose” is also a verb meaning “to release.”
then/than
its/it’s (and other similar cases)
let’s/lets
-ei- vs -ie- (*peice vs piece, etc)
etc etc etc
Obvious, but…
your you’re
their there they’re
If people would just read more (and I mean books!) then a lot of these would disappear.
But then again colontos, we’re the bad guys, pointing this out. Those who make repeatedly these mistakes are just the victims of grammar Na**…
Expect the spelling and usage of Americans to get worse. Spelling is not taught as a separate subject in most US schools anymore because it’s not assessed on state achievement tests and because anything that requires explicit memorization through practice is out.
Not that it’s any better in France, from the little interaction I have with the French Internet…
those who make these mistakes repeatedly
it’s not wrong what you say, but i would like to point out your mistake for a smoother flow and to make it sound less like a continental European speaking English.
all at the risk of a.going off at a complete tangent from the subject at hand b.annoying the hell out of everyone else who doesn’t give a shit about such stuff.
Your efforts are appreciated, but it’s just annoying when a.it’s obvious to everyone what it means b.it’s clearly a mistake that the writer can correct once they proofread the comments themselves & some people just choose not to, to avoid posting 2,3,4 posts in a row. c. sometimes, i notice the correction you give is plain wrong. like there was once a title wangkon used, and you said you didn’t understand what it meant, but it made sense to everyone else. it was something with the word “given” at the end.
I could see people itching to correct that “shutters” and I was right. it’s a cute mistake.
proofread the comment himself/herself
just to prove my own point
I look at it this way. English when it started out was not dissimilar from German (or what German was at the time), then there was old English, middle English all the way up to the present incarnation. The only way for language to have changed over all this time was for its speakers to slowly introduce changes. In the absence of some supreme governing “Grammar/Spelling” council, the only thing that makes a rule legitimate is the fact that it is commonly used, having gained acceptance since the time it was introduced. In essence the English language is a Democracy. Now, that being said, I’m not incorrect, I’m just voting for a third party… And you fascists are trying to repress me.
dda,
referer/referrer? oops… that one made it into the official HTTP specifications… what was I saying about gradual change?
#11,
Excellent points. It’s a cardinal sin of the grammer nazi to be in the wrong when he corrects someone. I remember the comment by dda where he attempted to “correct” WK on a title. I believe it arose out of dda’s unfamiliarity with the usage of “given” as a noun.
#13,
That reminds me of an old saying in linguistics:
Meaning follows usage, not vice versa.
If you were transported to 16th century England, you’d be hard pressed to understand every 5th word. Likewise, the everyday English of the 22nd century would be near unrecognizable to us. With the internet and globalization, languages are changing faster than ever.
#5,6,7
Whatever. That was the first thing I typed while trying out my new laptop. If you only knew how many times I accidentally hit combinations of keys that opened a new tab or highlighted my text and froze the cursor. Pleasing you idiots was the least of my concerns.
Back in HS, in my English AP literature class, the teacher use to be a nun in the Catholic church and a teacher at a Catholic HS. She had perfect cursive penmanship and she was African American btw. Not an important detail other then it always amused my fellow classmates to mentally see a black lady dressed as a nun, but any ways. She made us read Canterbury Tales out loud in class in the original MIDDLE ENGLISH. Gosh, I felt like I was strangling. My throat hurt after just two pages. To me it sounded like Dutch. Not a big surprise since a lot of the invaders to the British Isles came from the low countries or were from Germanic tribes that would eventually settle there.
So, feeling like a bit of a dinosaur,
I read #16′s response to #s 5, 6 and 7,
And realized that, getting back to the topic,
If I took that paragraph back to 1979, went I first tasted the joys of the Hermit Kingdom (when it was a ‘hardship’ tour, though as a single guy the only hardships I had were too much carousing), it wouldn’t be unlike English from several hundred years ago, in a manner of speaking/writing.
#17,
I’ve always wanted to visit the Low Countries and try out their versions of Olde English 800.
As is said:
Horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae
# 19,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Frisian
Closest non-extinct language left that’s directly related to Old English. Only a few thousand speakers left and they are all in Holland.
And here I was betting my last umlaut that they would be on the Frisian Islands (which I think are Denmark’s?). Thanks for the link.
Another thread derailed by grammar faggots.
When will your reign of terror end?
When Rob gives everyone the ability to edit their own comments. I saw a nice system on angelenic.com that gives users up to five minutes to edit their comment, just enough to clean up grammar/spelling/diction and usually not enough to replace a lot of content.
#22,
When they finally realize that there are far more interesting things to do in life…like having sex with another human being.
Hey Someguy, please don’t make it sound like that’s an easy thing to accomplish. It’s actually hard for some of us. OK? THANK YOU.
#25 – and it should be hard for some of you.
JW,
Advice: Never admit that you are laid challenged. It’s a Man Law.
When it comes to presenting yourself on the Internet, you get it all the time. You get it more than you can possibily handle. As a matter of fact, there is a hot chick polishing your rod right now as you type…
oUCH Mr McHarris, I’ll take it. I gotz a good deal of respect for your opinions.
Curious, how many people here use firefox? It has a built in spellchecker.
Of course, it doesn’t work for grammar or if you spell the wrong word correctly.
Some of you may find this interesting: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=8803
Though quite frankly, I don’t give no damn.
Yes, Wangkon, I will bear that in mind. However, I don’t believe I’m that desperate yet. Not just yet, no.
#29,
I use it and I get the spellcheck, so it helps with my misspellings but not my misuses of the English language.
I’m curious – does it spellcheck in Korean, too?
Korea the new Germany?
Will the Korean women stop shaving their armpits?
#32,
I realize it’s sexist to ask ladies to shave theirs when I don’t shave mine, but the idea of female pit muffs is a turn-off.
@31 If you follow the link, it mentions a firefox addon that allows you to use hunspell in firefox. How good it works and if it will affect performence on your computer (it seems it’s memory heavy) is unknown to me.
Also, real men like as jungle. Pedos. :V
#34,
Thanks for that – I guess that I’ll continue to potentially misspell in uri mal.
In your last, are you saying you’re fond of hair? I dinna ken ya, lad.
Well, I don’t have a hair FETISH or anything, but hair doesn’t bother me a bit. Unless she has a mustache, then I’m paying for laser removal.
Designs on pubic hair are kinda weird. I’m an all or nothing kind of guy.
“low countries or were from Germanic tribes that would eventually settle there.”
indeed its not called “angles land” because of the sharp corners.
“Your efforts are appreciated, but it’s just annoying when a.it’s obvious to everyone what it means b.it’s clearly a mistake”
Inclined to agree, but in the case of “loosing, I’ve seen it so many times here that I was beginning to wonder if it was a mistake, and not another US change to spelling and pronunciation, like Centre to Center and Colour to colour.
color
Color, colour
Armor, armour
Both are correct.
Much like
Theatre, theater
Oh god, what have I become
#41,
Now in Canada, I’m confronted with a nation of missspellings (at least compared with what I was taught in the ‘Merkin schools) but now that I’m learning to spell again (e.g. with the ‘u’ in flavour and always hyphenate co-ordinator), I’ve become like Smilin’ Bob of the natural male enhancement Smilin’ Bobs.
Oh, an then there’s the ever classic grey/gray. (my preference is grey, seems more manly with the “e”)
It is truly the eternal struggle.
Also this was far too interesting to me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences#Miscellaneous_spelling_differences
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