Walter Montego: I have to disagree about the spelling of multiple contractions. In general, there should be an apostrophe wherever one or more letters have been omitted. (In older books one can often find "shall not" contracted as "sha'n't".) I don't know how many times I've seen "wouldn't've" in print (probably not many), but I'm almost certain I've never seen "wouldn'tve".

King Reza: "Have" can be contracted even when used as the main verb; I think this is more common in the UK than in the USA. Here on the Web, Google finds no small number of instances of "I've a", "I've the", and "I've two cats".

Now the propriety of such usage is a separate question. Arguments over grammar often boil down to a question of "Says who?", and contractions are one of the murkier areas if you're looking for absolutely binding rules. It's true that they're best avoided in formal speech and writing, but otherwise if you want to contract, contract. I don't know of anyone with the authority to tell you you mayn't.

gogul: Well, I for one am fond of coining such multiple contractions (we'll've, it'sn't, they'ven't, etc.) in casual writing, but I think you'lln't've much chance of finding them in a dictionary.

King Reza: On this side of the pond it is often called a stroller.

Pedro Martínez: Both sentences are correct. If there's any difference in meaning, it's very subtle. I'd be inclined to use the less wordy one unless I could think of a good reason for the perfect tense.

Rose: How do you feel about the word "lackadaisical"?

King Reza: Yes, young children often make such mistakes. And it's not always a regular form that is used in place of the correct irregular form. When I was in grade school, some of the other children used to use "brang" rather than "brought" as the past tense of "bring", following the pattern of ring, rang, rung; sing, sang, sung; sink, sank, sunk; etc.

Czuch Czuckers: And your spell-checker is of course the ultimate arbiter of what you are permitted to say?

King Reza: Inexpensive means "not expensive". Cheap also means "not expensive", but can also mean "of poor quality". When we describe a person as cheap, we mean "stingy, reluctant to spend money".

The prefix in- means "not" in words like inexpensive, inappropriate, inconceivable, etc. Sometimes this prefix undergoes assimilation, so we get words like immaterial, impossible, illogical, irresponsible.

Valuable and invaluable have similar meanings, not because the prefix in- somehow intensifies the word, but because they are based on two different uses of the verb to value. To value can mean "to regard as having value", as in a sentence like "I value this opportunity." If we say something is valuable, we mean that it is worth a lot. But to value can also mean "to assign a value to", as in a sentence like "The stolen merchandise was valued at $3000." If we say something is invaluable, we mean that it is so precious that it is impossible to assign a value to it.

There is also another prefix in-, which comes from the Latin preposition in, meaning "in" or "into". This occurs in words like inhale, inject, intense, implicit, and inflammable. Inflammable means "capable of being inflamed".

The Oxford English Dictionary has an entry for untorn. It's not a word you're likely to use every day, but don't let that prejudice you against it.

This dictionary could be useful, but I think it's important to make sure we get the entries correct. For example, "Good night" is two words.

King Reza: Both are correct, and both sound fine to this native speaker.

Also, if you should ever need to discuss Louis VI's throne and you want to avoid that string of consonants, you could of course say, "It's the throne of Louis the Sixth."

رضا:
Merriam-Webster lists breaststroke with no hyphen. But you're correct about the syllabification. I certainly can't think of a word with more than three consonants at the beginning of a syllable or more than four at the end.

Regarding assimilation: if you're saying that Americans often pronounce d+y (e.g. in "incredulous" or "did you") as /j/, then I agree with you. But it sounds as though you're saying that Americans always pronounce d+y as /j/. As an American who pays attention to such things, I can tell you that this is simply not true. The degree of assimilation depends on many factors, including but not limited to the speaker's nationality.

Certainly there are great differences in pronunciation between the U.S. and England, but there is also considerable regional variation within each country. The next time you run into a n Englishman and a Bostonian and a Texan, have them all say, "Park the car in Harvard Yard," and let us know which two sound most alike.

Correction: queueing is of course the present participle, not the past participle, of queue.

رضا:
Assimilation can and does occur, but I don't think ten birds is a very good example. I can hear the /n/ when I pronounce it. I agree that the other examples you mentioned sound more American than British. But I'm not entirely comfortable with generalizations such as "Americans say /inkrejeles/ and Brits say /inkredyeles/". Such patterns may hold in many cases, but certainly not in all. And some of these differences are subtle enough that they can easily vary from region to region, from person to person, and from occasion to occasion.

Blue-eyed should be hyphenated. A blue-eyed person is a person with blue eyes; a blue eyed person is a blue person with eyes. (I don't think I have ever seen blueeyed as one word without a hyphen, and it looks quite uncouth.) It's up to you to decide whether you want to count vowels across the hyphen, but the y should be counted as a vowel. But perhaps this is moot. You mentioned the word queue; its past participle can be spelled queuing or queueing.

It's not uncommon to have four consecutive consonantal sounds. Think of words like explain, exclaim, and extract. Or perhaps backstroke. Now that we're thinking about swimming we mustn't forget the breaststroke, which has a string of five consonants. I can get six if you let me use a two-word phrase such as next spring.

رضا:
1. There is no grammatical problem with using the word loosely in that sentence, but it is a somewhat odd thing to want to say. I agree with ScarletRose that forms (1) and (3) sound most natural. I also agree that a scholar probably wouldn't use that sentence -- not because it's grammatically wrong, but simply because a scholar who wishes to insult someone can probably do so with more sophistication than the average twelve-year-old.

2. The reason why you wouldn't say something like "He may probably have gone out" is not that may and probably mean the same thing, but that they mean different things. If I say "He probably has gone out," I mean that I believe he has gone out (although it is possible that he has not), or at least that I think it is more likely that he has gone out than that he has not gone out. If I say "He may have gone out" I simply mean that it is possible that he has gone out; I'm not necessarily saying anything about how likely it is. If you used both words together, I wouldn't know what you were trying to say.

3. Regarding the word already, (1), (3) and (4) are all fine. I wouldn't say that (2) is strictly wrong, but it sounds strange. I think this is because in (2) it feels like the adverb already is attaching itself to may rather than to have gone.

4. Usually at the end of a movie you'll see the names of the director, producers, actors, camera operators, costume designers, set decorators, etc. This portion of the movie is called the "credits", because all these people are given credit for their roles in making the movie. Credits at the end of a movie are called "end credits"; credits at the beginning are "opening credits".