User talk:67.164.117.33

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I really am rather tired of the whole longeing/lungeing thing, (there are more important matters out there, like horse slaughter and animal abuse) but it gets late and I get snarky, so I don't mean to have a harsh tone, I am just getting tired of making the same point over and over and over. I fight this battle here in the states too, people say "loungeing," "longing" "lungeing" and who knows what else.

In an attempt to be fair, I made a couple attempts to be more neutral on the "correct/incorrect" issue, using the cited source's term, "most correct." I probably spent half of this evening going through reference sources both in my home library (which has more horse books than my public library, I think) and online. Pretty much every training book I have in my library published prior to 1980, by US or UK writers, uses "longe," (I have at least 15 or so that old or older that discuss horse training) including those initially published in the UK, and those translated into English from German (Seuing, Muesler, Podhajsky, etc.). On the other hand, those published since roughly 1980 seem to be split, based on titles and excerpts I can find in online searches (I have fewer modern works, but all my newer books, save perhaps one or two, still say "longe" for the most part. Most are various dressage works, some on other disciplines). Magazines are the worst offenders, even in the US, "lunge" is certainly out there. "Lungeing" is somewhat more common in modern British English then in American English, but even UK sources use both forms. I notice that even the two British Riding Instructor certification organizations are split on the matter.

One can certainly count books, web sites, etc...but playing one site or title against another is an endless battle that no one can win. No fun to play "dueling web sites." And the wiki gods will probably not be happy with either of us if each side lists 15 footnotes in an edit war (all the citations in the article are to the language section, there are NO refs on anything else. That's a problem!)

So, there may be language drift happening, but on this one, it seems appropriate to emphasize the classic spelling, at least until it vanishes from the dictionary. Maybe in 50 years the word will be gone, but for now, it IS the most correct version. Just like purebred and Thoroughbred are NOT the same thing (fought that debate too), a less correct form is a less correct form, no matter how popular it has become. (As I also say, "a stud is a 2x4 in the wall, a stallion is a horse.") Hope this explains where I am coming from. I believe your edits do assume good faith, and I sincerely hope you accept that this goes both ways. Montanabw(talk) 05:56, 13 February 2008 (UTC)