Alphabet Soup
18 09 2007I owe my Occasionally Holy Friend €50. All because of bad spelling and my ridiculous snobbishness of American English. Ironic really as I am notoriously bad at spelling. I only found out at the ripe old age of twenty for example that Yesterday was not spelled Yesturday (It sounds like Saturday why not spell it that way?). I am always a little horrified at the American spelling of certain English words dropping random letters as if it would be too much trouble to use them all. Neighbor and color, for example, just look wrong wrong wrong to me. I work with a real mix of nationalities and often seem to find myself running about reattaching letters to words in other people’s letters and memos. I like to think of myself as a lexical Father Christmas dropping off a U here and there and replacing Z’s with more pleasing S’s.
The last time I was preaching about this nonsense to my OHF he had to stop me when I got to my disgust at spelling organise with a Z. Well the Oxford dictionary itself uses a Z he announced hoping to burst my bubble of righteousness no doubt. No way! I yelped. There is no way any English person in their right mind would spell it with a Z let alone the Oxford Dictionary. When he insisted he was right I decided to bet him €5 that he was wrong. And then I got carried away. At this point I should inform you that this fascinating conversation was all taking place in the pub at about 1am. Before I knew it I had raised the stakes from 5 to 20 to 40 to 50 as he sat back with a smug grin, happy to see the figure rise by the minute. It’s any wonder I stopped at all I was so convinced I was right.
When I woke the next day the very first thing I did was locate my Oxford dictionary. The second thing I did was let out a chilling scream in honoUr of my hurt pride and my bruised wallet. What I learned from this though is never make a bet under the influence of alcohol and never make a bet with anyone who is remotely holy, no matter how occasionally.
You have no idea how this is for people born outside an English-speaking country - I have no preference for English, British, American, Australian, whatever… and I’m supposed to pick my battles?
So do you scream when you read my blog?
of course not! I purr like a kitten
And I thought you were sitting there moaning with your bag of U’s!
Hang on, does this mean your name should be spelt Conour? This language business is all a bit pussling. Thank heaven I never had to learn English as a foreign language, the pronunciation and spelling is so totally anarchic. Just think of through, cough, dough, lough, ought, bough (need I go on). It looks like a language invented by a committee of very drunk penguins. Oh, and don’t worry about the bet - a crisp new Bank of Conorland note should suffice.
lenfercest - more like a bag of wasabi nuts (I’m slightly addicted)
Nick - ‘ It looks like a language invented by a committee of very drunk penguins’ I love it
I also love your bank of Conorland idea. I’m beginning to think that you are in fact a genius!
why aren’t ya’ll living around here? i could use some easy money from bar bets, sugar!
“never make a bet under the influence of alcohol”
what’s the point of alcohol then?
“what’s the point of alcohol then?”
lowering standards. I would give anything to still be entertained by the simple things that amused me 20 years ago.
A genius? Oh, come now. *blushes* More likely I’m still under the long-term influence of all those mysterious substances I took back in my mispent youth.
I support you wholeheartedly. Why do they call it American English when it is simply the bastard illiterate son of English? Why don’t they call it Yankee Dialect or something? Although I have had to cave to the ways of my Yank friends and now it is second nature for me to spell things color, honor and even, gasp, mom!
People have started to tell me that I write “the Queen’s English”. That cracks me up since almost every other country in the world objects to American spellings whether or not they have a queen!
I don’t care what Oxford Smicktionary says; I’ll continue to spell organise as organise.
Also; pretend you never made the bet. That’s what I do.
Ghoti - my favourite dish…
Stick to the auld Gaeilge, Conorín. None of those Z’s, V’s, K’s, J’s, Q’s and so on. Much, much easier.
savannah - ah but are you occasionally holy too?
73 - I think alcohol exists so that there is a point to mixers
Lenfercest - cheap thrills, nothing like them
Nick - a misspent youth? Who’d have thought?
EmmaK - don’t let them bring your down!
Beth - well you only have to mention the Queen to me to put me off something
Alan - yeahh good man yourself. It’s hard to pretend that when I’ve blogged about it. Nonetheless I’m willing to give it a go.
Hidh - don’t care for fish myself
Primal - tá an ceart agat
Ouch! I only bet when I know I’m right. That way I always win.
Here’s a little something to offend you: My neighbors display their colors (Boston Red Sox—baseball colors, of course!) with honor. Everything is neatly organized. It’s almost holy. Hee hee. Apologies.
I acn identify with this. I almost went ballistic seven years ago when a professional editor zedded al my s words in a report. Now I work as an editor myself - textually healing other peoples bad grammar puncatuation and long winded sentences that have no conclusion.
As an editor the problem is that either s or z is accepable in British English but not a mixture of the two and most authors do mix them up.
Shame you lost 50 Euro over it though.
I do exactly the same at work. I hate z’s in that situation, they look so wrong. S’s are more asthetically pleasing. Although check where the dictionary was printed. If it was printed in Oxford, England I doubt it would have used a Z! I still don’t believe it. Or maybe it’s like “fuck me boots” made it into the dictionary through over use due to bad spelling.