Fuddland

Thanks to Daisy, I’ve been thoroughly distracted from my first day back at work by perusing The 100 Most Often Mispelled Misspelled Words in English, which I would like to pedantically rename The 100 Most Often Mispelled Misspelled Words in American English due to their inclusion of ‘jewelry’ and ‘neighborhood’ [although to be fair they do mention the British spellings].

There’s a few entries in the list that I almost always have to double-check, like ‘embarrassment’ and ‘guage’, but I’d nominate the addition of two more: ‘necessary’ and seeing as they comment on ‘a lot’ being two words, ‘all right’ deserves a mention as it’s a particular pet peeve of mine; ‘alright’ seems to have become generally accepted, but ‘all ready’ and ‘already’ mean two different things so I don’t see why we should contract ‘all right’.

Slightly more controversial is The 100 Most Often Mispronounced Words and Phrases in English, some of which I think could be put down to accent [getting a New Zealander to say ‘six’ is one of my favourite pastimes]. I was surprised to discover that ‘lambaste’ is pronounced as if it rhymes with ‘haste’; I’d always pronounced it to rhyme with ‘fast’ [with the ‘a’ as in ‘apple’ not as in ‘far’]. A few classics are in the list: hearing people say ‘expresso’ and ‘Klu Klux Klan’ always makes me cringe; however, I do prefer ‘orientated’ to ‘oriented’ for some reason. Oh, any North Americans out there, please pay attention to what they have to say about the word ‘herb’, it’s very important.

#1

Daisy | 2004 / 01 / 14 – 17:45

I have a half written post somewhere about words I avoid saying in England (ear and hear at the top) so I shall go study this. But what’s “a Scottish nonce word” (pernickety)?

#2

David | 2004 / 01 / 14 – 18:10

Re #1: What about tooth? Do you pronounce it ‘tuth’?

Your second sentence: is that a rhetorical question?

#3

Clait | 2004 / 01 / 15 – 11:13

I love the Eddie Izzard sketch about the differences between English and American pronounciation…
“You say ‘erbs and we say herbs, because there’s a f*****g ‘h’ in it!”

#4

David | 2004 / 01 / 15 – 17:01

Re #3: Eddie also used to do a great bit about silent letters and the trouble they give him as a dyslexic:

“The teacher would say, ‘Spell “gnat”’. ‘N-a-t?’. ‘No you fool, there’s a “g” at the beginning’. I have an idea that devil may care is off the wall, but how about we don’t write these letters that we don’t pronounce? Or if we do need to have silent letters, also have invisible letters — letters that you don’t write but you have to pronounce.”

#5

richard | 2004 / 01 / 15 – 20:59

I would quibble with some of their points. For example, I’m pretty sure that ‘realtor’ should be pronounced ‘estate agent’.

#6

Phil | 2004 / 01 / 15 – 23:29

RE: #5, I think it’s actually pronounced “vermin”.

#7

Daisy | 2004 / 01 / 15 – 23:50

Oh dear, I’m a bit behind.
#2 oh yes! you mean tooth as in hood? Definitely. But I’m learning. And it wasn’t rherorical, just lazy. Sigh. I’ll go google it myself then.
#3, 4, 5, 6 Heh, heh, heh.

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