Funny American spellings

[Shimapan]

Continued from here:
http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthr...l=1#post310199

The story so far:

BTW, I have British English localisation so 'canceled' ought to be 'cancelled'.

So it's really "Canceled" in American English? Good heavens. Those ghastly Yankee spellings really give me the creeps
And it's so inconsequent, too. Why don't they write "hor" instead of "hour"? After all, they also write "color" instead of "colour"

I know! Barbarians.

Guess they just can't help it, as their school system is a true Epic Fail. Just take a look at the result of their school system
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE

We can't drop the "u" from "hour" because it would change the pronunciation! J. Random American would probably go pretty crazy if the answer to "What time is it?" sounded like "23 hundred whores." Oh, wait, J. Random American wouldn't understand 24-hor time anyway.

True, unless he's in the army, which uses military time, or in some other areas which uses it.

There are still many other examples, e.g. why don't you use "norish" instead of "nourish"? Or "torist" instead of "tourist"? No possible chance for mishearing stuff that could upset people.

[woodsmoke]

lol
very humorous!

I, personally, try to actually speak in a manner which reflects "classic" King's English.

And, I know how I came to do so.

When I first set foot at my college people, students, and faculty and staff, treated me differently.

Not because I am THAT odd, I am odd, but not THAT odd! lol

But, because they thought that I hailed from merrie old England! :0

And that was because I, as a teen, had immersed myself in what was called "shock theatre" on the telly. And that was after I had immersed myself. as a child and very young teen, in all of the classic British literature, and Sherlock Holmes, of course!, all of this as a teen.

"Shock theater" was one of those very "schlocky" 1950s sendups of "monster stuff" on the local telly wherein they had a "shock jock", as if the codes would allow anything even near to what we have today, and showed all of the classic Frankenstein, Mummy, Wolfman, etc. and Sherlock Holmes, etc. in addition to the oddments of different films about detectives, Maltese Falcon, etc. and the monster/sci-fi/you name it "B" movies of the fifties.

I had, without knowing it, become imprinted, with a more "continental" manner of speaking.

So, one day, a student asked me where I came from and he just laughed and let me know, for the first time that everybody thought I was from England, or maybe "Boston" etc.

The reasoning was that I tended to not end my sentences with a preposition, like:

I say: "For what are you looking?" Instead of "What are you looking for."

And I tend to also use the "pronouniation" of words like "colour" as opposed to "color".

There is a "nuance" to how they are pronounced that one can hear.

And, this is not because I had decided to be "affected" but just that into which i had immersed myself.

I also tend to speak rapidly, not "rapid fire" but "rapidly" and therefore am conscious of the necessity of speaking distinctly.

All of this, again, was quite an unconscious activity on my part.

And, also that is why I "usually" use "continental" spellings such as colour, etc.

One would think that, given simple things like my sentence structures and spellings, that people might actually believe me when I say that I am not a "right wing conservative from some lick-spittle backwater in the midwest that clings to my Bible and weapons."

I am from the midwest USA, but that does not make me a bohunk, into which like the people who fly over..... umm .... flyover country dearly to love to catgorize people.

The "hillbilly" jargon that the smarter than thous dearly love to put on 'midwesterners" in film and television is actually, derived from "middle english".

The original "hillbilly stock" came to the U.S., looked at the east coast, and this is the time of "Dan'l Boone", and decided that it was TOO CROWDED!

And, so, moved further west.

The problem with "way further west" was the great plains; miles and miles of....welll.....miles and miles!

So, since the midwest provided, first, water, and a moderate growing season and abundant game, along with plenty of wood to build houses, it seemed like a logical stopping place.

So.... not all us hillbillies are kissin' cousins, we'uns can be tolerable eddikated, just like those sticks in the mud back east and those people who ought to form their own intergalactic empire and move there on the westcoast! lol

lotsa fun!

woodsmoke

[Spadge]

Guess they just can't help it, as their school system is a true Epic Fail. Just take a look at the result of their school system
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE

heh

[bsniadajewski]

As SR alluded to, it depends on pronunciation and position in the word. Using Shimapan's examples, hour is pronounced like our, not like or, hence the need (in Noah Webster's eyes) for the u. Colo(u)r, on the other hand, is pronouced (kuh-ler) not (ko-loor) as the French say it (it is a French borrowing, IIRC). Therefore, there is no need for the u to reflect the (non-RP) English pronunciation instead of the French one. Other speling differences are also because of pronouciation, as well as etymology (cf. -ize vs. -ise, centre vs. center, etc.) . Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta go check something under the hood of my little truck.

Language can be interesting to analyze, ain't it :grin:?

[Spadge]

Yeah, it's a French borrowing. From 'couleur' - so in the back half of the word, the u is the only decent vowel left so why drop it?

[woodsmoke]

"decent vowel"

GOOD ONE!! lol

woodlikesdecentvowelssmoke

[HalationEffect]

The American pronunciation of the word "buoy" makes me wince every time I hear it. It ought to be pronounced the same as the first syllable of "buoyant", for consistency's sake if nothing else!

After having divested their 'fork' of the language of so many occurrences of the letter U, it puzzles me why they didn't drop the silent U in buoy.

[bsniadajewski]

Yeah, it's a French borrowing. From 'couleur' - so in the back half of the word, the u is the only decent vowel left so why drop it?

Actually, coler would work allot better phonetically, and for buoy we Americans say it boo-ee instead of boy so dropping the u would not work well.

[claydoh]

Hehe, let's not even get into the Empire driving on the wrong side of the road , and don't leave out Aussies having the habit of having nicknames and abbreviations for just about every word in the language
http://www.popculturist.net/australian-citizenship/
#7 is an example,
Crook as a Chook?

[woodsmoke]

Talk about Fosters for "BEEErrrrrr" lol

But there is also the two variants of "meiosis".

"meeeosiss"
"myosiss"

woodhardtomspronouncemymonikersmoke

[bsniadajewski]

Talk about Fosters for "BEEErrrrrr" lol

But there is also the two variants of "meiosis".

"meeeosiss"
"myosiss"

woodhardtomspronouncemymonikersmoke

And then there's tomato.

[whatthefunk]

What this comes down to is a crappy alphabet which was forced on Americans by their colonial overlords. The alphabet used by English is not made for English and does a piss poor job of representing all the different sounds found in the language. Americans changing the spellings of words is our attempt to make a system which makes no sense make sense. It is of course failing, but its not our fault. You cant make a TV boil water. The English made Americans use this alphabet (and also the English measurement system which is ridiculously stupid) and so ultimately it is England's fault.

[Spadge]

You cant make a TV boil water.

Yeah you can. Drop it in the bath.

[Shimapan]

Yeah, it's a French borrowing. From 'couleur' - so in the back half of the word, the u is the only decent vowel left so why drop it?

True. American spelling often seems more random than anything else to me

Another issue - words in -re like "centre".
Origin: Greek kentrein > Latin centrum
German: Zentrum
French: centre
Spanish: centro
Italian: centro

As you see, all languages have the "r" before the vowel. Funnily enough, Americans insist on placing the "r" after the vowel.
It seems that when all the illiterate lout was kicked out of Europe during the 1800s, they all settled in America. They made plenty of mistakes, and the most frequent misspellings eventually stuck, so they ended up with "color" and "center"

The American pronunciation of the word "buoy" makes me wince every time I hear it. It ought to be pronounced the same as the first syllable of "buoyant", for consistency's sake if nothing else!

After having divested their 'fork' of the language of so many occurrences of the letter U, it puzzles me why they didn't drop the silent U in buoy.

Yes, apparently Americans have serious problems handling the "u" properly
It's not just omitting the "u" from words like "colour", or mispronouncing words like "buoy". They often have problems with the "u" (you) sound in general, so they pronounce words like "new" as "nuh", or "dew" becomes "do". More uncanny examples even see the transformation of the "u" into a "w", e.g. jaguar (jag-you-ar) -> jag-war, or "route" (ruht) becomes "raot".
With other words still, they seem to dimly remember, "Wait, wasn't there this 'you'-sound? Now where did it go again?" and place it where it doesn't belong, e.g. coupon (kuh-pon) -> kyuh-pon. It doesn't stop with city names either, so the "Houston" in Texas becomes You-ston.
Finally, another overcompensation of improper "u"-sounds turns words like "Betelgeuse" into "Betelguhs", or "compost" into "compoust".

[bsniadajewski]

That's because unlike Italian, Ther is nothing after the r, hence, r goes at the end.

In America, route is either (root) or (raut). It's wierd (from my perspective) that you use (uh) to represent the oo as in root whereas I see it as the u in gut.

Plus, I've never seen "compost" being spelt compoust anywhere in the USA.