BS: Spelling

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Apr 15 - 07:46 AM

"Prince, when you call on a Brookalyn goil,
Say Poil for Pearl, and erl for oil."

Approximations only.

Only fakers say "goil," etc. The actual vowel imperfectly resembles that of German "schoen," usually followed by the "r."

Archie Bunker did it expoertly.

These sounds are heard far less commonly than they were sixty or more years ago. My grandfather, born in Manhattan in the 1880s, was also an expoert.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 07:24 PM

Always been a big conTROVersy over CONTRoversy too!

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Joe_F
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 06:09 PM

In both Britain and America, there are people who think that "gray" and "grey" are distinct colors, and that they can tell the difference. This astonishing fact is recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary as well as elsewhere. Needless to say, when it comes to cases, there is a good deal of disagreement.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Airymouse
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 05:51 PM

You remind me that sometimes words have straightforward spellings, and still people mispronounce them: wont (add a t to wan and you get want; add a t to won and you get wont. Add ary to gran and you get granary, not grainary. Add ial to best and you get bestial, not beastial. For some reason, if people drink enough, they want to pronounce syne as if it were spelled zyne. People think there is vague in vagaries, but there isn't. Then there is the temptation to put in a sound that isn't there as in rigamarole for rigmarole (paragogue) or take out a syllable that is there as in commraderie for camaraderie (hyphaeresis.)
Syllablification is also troublesome: it's too bad impious isn't im-pious' instead of imp'-ious and despicable isn't de-spic'able instead of des'-picable.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 04:07 PM

Just thoughts on that impressive poem:

Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Wind & mind do rhyme, if wind is a verb.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet
Unless billet is from the French (now in English dictionaries) billet doux
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant Wont & want sound very similar to me unless he means won't.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass
Depends whether you want the lines to rhyme or the words. Is 'bass' a low male voice, or a fish?

And how many actually read that aloud, but still read 'pronunciation' as pronouncitation?

Cheers

Nigel

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 01:41 PM

Nice one today: was in Devon at Castle Drogo. The notice on the door of one room said the audio-visual presentation would last twelve minuets.
Well I sat and watched and waited: lots of visual images accompanied by very weird music, but not a single minuet!

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 11:22 AM

Sorry -- I see the author's name appeared at the top. Googling produces a poem from the 1920s called The Chaos. Good title indeed!

"The author of The Chaos was a Dutchman, the writer and traveller Dr Gerard Nolst Trenité. Born in 1870, he studied classics, then law, then political science at the University of Utrecht, but without graduating (his Doctorate came later, in 1901). From 1894 he was for a while a private teacher in California, where he taught the sons of the Netherlands Consul-General. From 1901 to 1918 he worked as a schoolteacher in Haarlem, and published several schoolbooks in English and French, as well as a study of the Dutch constitution. From 1909 until his death in 1946 he wrote frequently for an Amsterdam weekly paper, with a linguistic column under the pseudonym Charivarius.

The first known version of The Chaos appeared as an appendix (Aanhangsel) to the 4th edition of Nolst Trenité's schoolbook Drop Your Foreign Accent: engelsche uitspraakoefeningen (Haarlem: H D Tjeenk Willink & Zoon, 1920)."

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 11:14 AM

Sorry -- I see the author's name appeared at the top. Googling produces a poem from the 1920s called The Chaos. Good title indeed!

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 11:06 AM

Is an author or source known for that impressive effusion?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 10:02 AM

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Airymouse
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 09:43 AM

About badly deteriorated pronunciation and spelling:
Sometimes spelling tricks us in to mispronunciations
"dour" looks as if it would rhyme with "sour"
"forbade" has a silent e but a short "a"
similar problem with "respite"
Who would guess that "ye" in "Gather ye rosebuds while you may" is pronounced two different ways?
The reason "bury" is pronounced "berry" is that unlike jury, injury and fury it is not from Latin.
You are not going to miss that"ch" is silent in "yacht" and "chthonic" and you had better not miss that it is silent in "fuchsia", but "schism" trips people up.
Why isn't "interest" a three- syllable word? Why isn't "conduit" (like circuit and biscuit and triscuit) a two-syllable word? (Well it is, but NO ONE says it that way)
And then there are ridiculous problems like victual.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 08:58 AM

Won Hun Dread

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: GUEST,#
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 08:28 AM

"I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book came with its arbitrary forms, men unconsciously revealed shades of their characters and also added enlightening shades of expression to what they wrote by their spelling, and so it is possible that the spelling-book has been a doubtful benevolence to us."

Mark Twain's Autobiography

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 07:07 AM

Not foolish or uncouth, necessarily -- but oh so inenarrably bloody BORING! Do you never tire of incessantly retailing oh-so-humorous refs to nurses & such that were never really all that witty in the first place? Pathetic.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Musket
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 07:00 AM

Not one to confuse deterioration with evolution but there you go.

Viz comic has cartoon strips called Victorian Dad and Raffles the gentleman thug. Both speak in the Victorian turn of phrase. It occurs to me that the awkward constructed words that have since fallen into disuse or trimmed to look pretty may have been seen as deterioration at the time.

Put in the context of a modern satirical cartoon, it makes you think.

Or at least helps pass a few minutes with a cuppa.

Meanwhile, I occasionally make a point of using badly constructed sentences when I know nurse has woken Michael up, just to let him make me look foolish and uncouth.

Whatever gets you through the day I suppose. The other two Muskets have A level English language as they remind me, whereas I left school with fook all in the arts and CSE in important subjects, maths and sciences.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 06:21 AM

Heheh!

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 06:20 AM

"Badly" an acceptable intensive there IMO.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 06:16 AM

Is deteriorating badly a double negative?
I can't imagine something deteriorating well.
Surely 'deteriorating' is sufficient.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 05:55 AM

I think that both spelling and pronounciation are deteriating badly.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 02:53 AM

DEFINATELY - as they not only mis-pronounce it up here, they also mis-spell it. ( big emphasis on the A).

Has a terrible AFFECT on me!

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Musket
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 02:33 AM

At least credit GBS. Him being a contemporary like.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 01:18 AM

FUNEX?

SVFX

FUNEM?

SVFM

MNX!

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 12:32 AM

What does ghoti spell?

GH as in rough
O as in women
TI as in station

Answer -- fish

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 12:13 AM

AB, CDFEG? L, MNOFEG!

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Apr 15 - 12:03 AM

Teehee Popgun, worrer wag UR 2B sure.

≈M≈
(aet 82 years 11 months 8 days)

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 19 Apr 15 - 10:53 PM

That used to be, Nigel, but I don't think I've heard of lifts in shoes for 20 or 30 years. Now we just think short guys are sexy.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 19 Apr 15 - 02:41 PM

"they call a lift 'an elevator' and a car 'an automobile'"

A lift is what the guy in the car gives ya.

I thought that in US 'lifts' were what short people put in their shoes.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: GUEST,#
Date: 19 Apr 15 - 01:54 PM

"Eschew obfuscation"

Gesundheit!

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Musket
Date: 19 Apr 15 - 01:40 PM

But MG the Lion Heart..

Frank Williams can only be a mere 83.

I still reckon it was Charlie Chaplin. Or Buster Keaton at a push.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: GUEST,#
Date: 19 Apr 15 - 01:13 PM

PHJim, that might be a reference to bags for vegetables.

(I must admit that the term veggies makes me crazy.)

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: PHJim
Date: 19 Apr 15 - 11:01 AM

Then there's the roadside sign that says, "Fresh Vaggies For Sale."

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Mrrzy
Date: 23 Mar 15 - 11:42 AM

The flip side of the spelling coin is pronunciation. I recall reading somewhere a comment about Gilbert & Sullivan's tenor from Pinafore--spelled RALPH and pronounced RAFE-- wondering whether they didn't know how to spell RAFE or didn't know how to pronounce RALPH.

In that vein, I proffer the following Hints on Pronunciation for Foreigners, which may be harder to read out loud than Fox in Socks.

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through?
Well done! And now you wish perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird;
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead —
For goodness sake don't call it 'deed'.
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,
nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose —
Just look them up — and goose and choose.

And cord and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart —
Come come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive,
I'd mastered it when I was five!

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Mar 15 - 04:46 AM

Damn!

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: BobL
Date: 23 Mar 15 - 03:05 AM

Apostrophe: the difference between a business that knows its s*** and a business that knows it's s***.

And Steve, you left out "Eschew obfuscation"

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: PHJim
Date: 22 Mar 15 - 12:12 PM

As Lighter said above, 90%* of English speakers don't seem to care if any standards are used, as long as people can understand what you're saying. I wonder if it is still important on resumes, job applications... I'm sure that in the case of two otherwise equal job applicants, the application with standard spelling and grammar would have the edge.


*I think, or hope at least, that 90% is a little high, but they say that 75.2% of all statistics are made up right there on the spot and 67.4% of people believe 'em whether they're accurate statistics or not.
As Todd Snider would say,
"I don't know what you believe,
But I do know there's no doubt,
I need another double shot of something 90 proof,
I've got too much to think about."

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Mar 15 - 10:32 AM

THE RULES

Avoid alliteration. Always.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Employ the vernacular.
Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
Remember to never split an infinitive.
Contractions aren't necessary.
Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
One should never generalise.
Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
Be more or less specific.
Understatement is always best.
One-word sentences? Eliminate.
Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
The passive voice is to be avoided.
Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
Who needs rhetorical questions?
Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
Don't never use a double negative.
capitalize every sentence and remember always end it with a full stop
Do not put statements in the negative form.
Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
A writer must not shift your point of view.
And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)
Don't overuse exclamation marks!!
Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
Always pick on the correct idiom.
The adverb always follows the verb.
Avoid run-on sentences they look terrible.
Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.
About those sentence fragments.
Just between you and i, case is important.
Don't use, commas, which aren't necessary.
Its important to use your apostrophe's correctly.
Correct spelling is absoluteley essential.
Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Airymouse
Date: 22 Mar 15 - 08:34 AM

Some people are against abbreviations, but we use them all the time. Take e.g., for example.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Mar 15 - 05:21 AM

spelling will change, the most notable phenomenon is txt spk

Hmm. Going from this, it looks as though grammar and punctuation are on their way out too.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 22 Mar 15 - 05:18 AM

Tonight, tonite, won't be just any neight.......

And I will cede the rhetorical ground to you DMcG - ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: DMcG
Date: 22 Mar 15 - 03:38 AM

Agreed. In the UK, I am pretty convinced that "tonight" is being replaced by "tonite", judging by how frequently you see it on posters and other advertising. I don't think the takeover will be complete in my lifetime, and equally a fashion could arise that brings 'tonight' back to pride of place, but at the moment I'd say the change is on its way.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Mar 15 - 03:28 AM

spelling will change, the most notable phenomenon is txt spk

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: DMcG
Date: 22 Mar 15 - 03:22 AM

"Cede - dictionary definition - To cede is to give up or surrender land, position, or authority."

Ah, but which dictionary, that's the question!

According to the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary, that's (more or less) meaning number 3. Number 1 is "to give way, yield, retreat" and I think that would work admirably with 'supercede'.

But of course it also matters what you think a dictionary is supposed to do. Some countries, like France, try to have an authoritative and final arbiter of what words mean and some think that's what a dictionary is. Others, like me, think a dictionary is much more a record of how words are used, currently and historically, but not a source of whether something is correct or not: common usage determines that.

But we've spent enough time on this topic. Shall I cede the metaphorical ground to you? *smile*

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Mar 15 - 01:14 AM

There have of course been many spelling reform campaigns. Bernard Shaw was a great reformist, and insisted on his plays being printed with certain of his own eccentricities -- without apostrophes, in particular.

I myself hav all-ways thawt that wun shood spell fonetikly, according to wunz own feel for the sownd of the werd. I see no reezon wy evrywun shood spell evry werd the same, or even the same evry time wun yoozes it. Seems to me that, wunce evryboddy accustomed to such a sistem, diffykooltiz wood disappear.

I have always also been in favour of abolishing the apostrophe, which causes no end of difficulties even among the educated [look at the number on this forum who always erroneously use it before a final -s marking a plural or a 3rd-person-singular verb, for example!], and appears to me to serve no useful purpose -- context would always make clear when its possessive use was implied (& note that "its"; should logically be "it's", but isn't, that meaning "it is" or "it has").

But fat chance of so sensible a system ever coming about, alas!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Airymouse
Date: 21 Mar 15 - 08:12 PM

Lucky I, I have never had trouble with "I" vs. "me", except perhaps in "Woe is I." Jonathan Swift railed against using "t" for "ed." He thought it barbaric. I agree but conseed (just kidding) he lost.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 21 Mar 15 - 07:57 PM

I spelled it this way.
It is spelt this way.

Cede - dictionary definition - To cede is to give up or surrender land, position, or authority.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Mar 15 - 02:03 PM

Rather than "are," "is," and "means," you should say "ought to be" and "ought to mean," according to rules that the "folk" (i.e., 90% of the English-speaking population) could care less about.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: PHJim
Date: 21 Mar 15 - 01:58 PM

"Advise" and "advice" are two different words.

"I could care less," means you do care.
"I couldn't care less," means you do not care.

"Fewer" and "less" are not interchangeable.

"I" and "me" are not interchangeable.
"She came with John and I," is wrong.
"She came with John and me," is correct.

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: DMcG
Date: 21 Mar 15 - 11:48 AM

I'm not sure about the militancy of 'cede''. It is commonly used when a speaker allows someone to ask a question, which isn't really militant. And it is present in the form 'concede'.

But that's words for you: they go their own way!

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 21 Mar 15 - 11:27 AM

Not here, it isn't -- tho it is permissible as an alternative.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Spelling
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Mar 15 - 09:34 AM

> Lose and loose Passed and past Lead and led

The confusion was the rule rather than the exception among American college (or "university") freshmen forty years ago.

They seemed never to get them right.

"Spelt" is the normal pronunciation in many places, but "spelled" is the standard spelling.