Nov. 16th, 2005
(no subject)
Nov. 16th, 2005 06:58 pmYears ago, I started collecting spelling variations. You know, where it's acceptable & correct to spell a word more than one way. Then put them one my website http://www.monissa.com/writing/spelling.html
This was triggered by two things -- trying to use indexes in the uni libraries & having to look at things twice because I was tying to find archaeology or archeology; and constantly getting crits back from the little online crit group I was part of that would say things like "you can't spell see there's licence! realise! jewellery!" OK....
I started it innocently enough, just two simple lists, broken up into categories to prevent repitition (there is no need to have *every* occurence of words that use er instead of re after all, two or three make the point).
It soon become a fascinating journey into the history of the English language and how words have changed over the centuries, with some interesting discoveries.
The first, and this seems to give people the biggest problem, is that not all the variation is due to the "great divide" (that is US vs British, or Commonwealth). Some are due to changes over time (serjeant/sergeant) or the language of origin (ambience/ambiance) or just are (barbecue/barbeque).
Then, there's the bit of accepted wisdom that the US spellings are simplified version of British spellings, wherein the US spelling is usually the older version. US spelling was 'fixed' earlier but usage in Britain & other colonies continued to change. It's quite common to find so-called US spelling in 19th C Australian & English documents.
Then there were those words that I assumed had slightly different meanings like inclose & enclose are just variants and do have the same meanings. And others I assume where just variants like confectionary & confectionery that do have different meanings.
Which is why I keep the list going, even though there are many other websites that try to do that same thing. I say try, because most of them fall down in a basic way -- that's because they list every variant they know in two neat lists, one for American & one for British, usually with no explanation. Which are either going to be incomplete to the point of being useless, too long to be useful or just plain wrong. For reasons mostly mentioned above.
And then there are those lists like I found the other day which are just scary, like http://www.xpdnc.com/moreinfo/orlabour.html (not sure what I mean, have a look at the alternatives offered for jail, jewellery, pavilion for starters).
So next time sometimes tries to correct your spelling, remember it's just a regional variation, albeit a small region :)
This was triggered by two things -- trying to use indexes in the uni libraries & having to look at things twice because I was tying to find archaeology or archeology; and constantly getting crits back from the little online crit group I was part of that would say things like "you can't spell see there's licence! realise! jewellery!" OK....
I started it innocently enough, just two simple lists, broken up into categories to prevent repitition (there is no need to have *every* occurence of words that use er instead of re after all, two or three make the point).
It soon become a fascinating journey into the history of the English language and how words have changed over the centuries, with some interesting discoveries.
The first, and this seems to give people the biggest problem, is that not all the variation is due to the "great divide" (that is US vs British, or Commonwealth). Some are due to changes over time (serjeant/sergeant) or the language of origin (ambience/ambiance) or just are (barbecue/barbeque).
Then, there's the bit of accepted wisdom that the US spellings are simplified version of British spellings, wherein the US spelling is usually the older version. US spelling was 'fixed' earlier but usage in Britain & other colonies continued to change. It's quite common to find so-called US spelling in 19th C Australian & English documents.
Then there were those words that I assumed had slightly different meanings like inclose & enclose are just variants and do have the same meanings. And others I assume where just variants like confectionary & confectionery that do have different meanings.
Which is why I keep the list going, even though there are many other websites that try to do that same thing. I say try, because most of them fall down in a basic way -- that's because they list every variant they know in two neat lists, one for American & one for British, usually with no explanation. Which are either going to be incomplete to the point of being useless, too long to be useful or just plain wrong. For reasons mostly mentioned above.
And then there are those lists like I found the other day which are just scary, like http://www.xpdnc.com/moreinfo/orlabour.html (not sure what I mean, have a look at the alternatives offered for jail, jewellery, pavilion for starters).
So next time sometimes tries to correct your spelling, remember it's just a regional variation, albeit a small region :)