I think, and I am
probably the only one does, that the worst thing America did to itself,
like some leviathan masochist, was to release Webster's Dictionary
on the populace.
I mean what was the
matter with the original spelling? Why couldn't they get used to
spelling diarrhoea as diarrhoea instead of diarrhea;
why couldn't they get used to that extra 'o'? No wonder nobody in
America writes about diarrhoea as there is
no challenge when writing it down. It's easier to let Donald Trump
talk diarrhoea than to let someone write
about it.
Webster
didn't bother changing the name of Albuquerque
because he knew how to spell it. That doesn't mean that he was a
brilliant man because he could spell it, as William Shakespeare
wouldn't have been able to spell it if he'd been alive today and why
would he bother when the world would be at the feet of a 400 year old
living writer?
But to the point:
what has become a big pain in the arse for
me since returning from America, where I lived for 17 years, is that
I got used to the American spellings and now since my return I can't
remember which is which.
I
remember a Canadian writer (not you Jim), whom I knew in Los Angeles
in 1995, would only submit his scripts with American spelling as he
believed they wouldn't employ non-Americans – or wouldn't hire
non-Americans, to use the American vernacular.
One guy said to me
once that the English put the 'u' into words like colour to be fancy;
to be fancy??
No the Americans took it out – Webster took
it out and in so doing cut off the access to the history of some
words.
You can see where
some words come from by their spelling. The way to pronounce Ye olde
Shoppe, by the way, is the old shop.
Plain and simple.
In the olden
days (daze) F and S were the same and I've told you about the 27th
letter of the alphabet! Yes I did it was the ampersand = &.
Recently
the French have done a Webster;
they have cancelled the circumflex – this
is a circumflex ^ - it goes over lots of words such as those with
certain vowels but accent (known as a fada in Ireland and the tilde in Spanish) will remain on the 'e' and the 'a' (????) and they
are going to remove the hyphen in compound nouns such as
porte-monnaie
and week-end.
Why?
Incidentally the
circumflex is a good thing to use for a password; for example your password could be ^forexample12F – everything in it.
Right – back to
France before I get interrupted with any more thoughts – actually I
get interrupted by thoughts all the time, when I write, and
sometimes, even though I have not written any masterpieces yet – Yet I
say – some brilliant thoughts have come to me whilst writing a
fiction!
You have your
password so onward: 26 years ago France decided on these changes and
they were suggested by Académie
Française (you see I put
them in including that funny little thing on the bottom of the C ç)
and in 2008 the education ministry suggested the new spelling rules
were 'the reference' to be used but few people noticed.
Then
in November the changes were mentioned in another government document
– but nobody noticed again.
Then
when it was reported on TV there was an uproar – all over the
Internet, social media, Twitter, the lot – you must have noticed?
No?
Oh
well.
The
only thing is that people in Britain will not take any notice; ever
since England was invaded by William the Conquerer in 1066 – William of
Normandy – the English refuse to pronounce French words with the
accents.
The 'T' is sounded in fillet here, the 'H' in herb and all
the other naughty to the English things the Americans do.
I
think Starbucks tried to confuse the Americans with the size of the
drinks – English (tall) for small, Spanish (grandé) for large and
Italian (venti) twenty ounces.
Of
course 20 ounces here is a pint as opposed to the 16 ounce pint in
America; that's why you never get a true pint of ale there.
Well, we Americans misspell what you Brits mispronounce. How about that Mr. Sullivan? 🤓 😆
ReplyDeleteI wrote that a few years ago but we are both right - the history of words is interesting and changing the spelling usually kills the history but my bit about the English - I am Irish but I live in the UK - refusing to pronounce foreign words in their language is unforgivable.
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