Speak a ommon spelling error list (hints on demand)

On 29/08/17 15:52, Joe Scotch wrote:

More memorable than a rote expression might be a spoken "observation", such
as for "antartica/antarctica" where I constantly forget the "c" [...]

It's interesting that you forget it in this case, because the word
originally didn't have a "c" in English. "Arctic" was originally
"artik", derived from Old French and Mediaeval Latin, neither of which
had a "c" in that position.

Then some pedantic idiots noticed that the word DID have a "c" in
earlier Latin, and a "k" in Classical Greek, so the unnecessary "c" was
inserted into the English word.

There have been a few English words "corrected" in this way, but of
course I won't be able to remember any until just after pressing "Send".

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

On 28/08/17 18:14, GordonD wrote:

How about ommon vs common?

That sounds ommonous.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

On 30/08/17 07:03, Ken Blake wrote:
On Tue, 29 Aug 2017 21:38:33 +0100, "NY" wrote:

I'm also reminded of the obsolete spelling of the past-participle of the
verb "show", as typified by the notice "All tickets must be shewn" on old
buses. My dad remembers thinking that this was an absurd spelling of
"shown", even when he was growing up in the 1940s.

I think that's just a British spelling. It's never used in the US.

Except by Ed Sullivan, who used to have a really really good shew. Or
possibly shoe.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

On Wed, 30 Aug 2017 12:51:39 +1000, Peter Moylan
wrote:

On 29/08/17 15:52, Joe Scotch wrote:

More memorable than a rote expression might be a spoken "observation", such
as for "antartica/antarctica" where I constantly forget the "c" [...]

It's interesting that you forget it in this case, because the word
originally didn't have a "c" in English. "Arctic" was originally
"artik", derived from Old French and Mediaeval Latin, neither of which
had a "c" in that position.

Then some pedantic idiots noticed that the word DID have a "c" in
earlier Latin, and a "k" in Classical Greek, so the unnecessary "c" was
inserted into the English word.

That was something that took me some time to notice.

When I first went to the UK to study I arrived 8 months before the
academic year began, so I was looking for a job to keep me going in
the mean time, and scanned job adverts for lorry drivers in the
newspapers. Quite a lot of them mentioned artic as a requirement and I
pictured driving through snowy wastes until I worked out what it
meant. Since then I've thought the c in arctic serves a purpose, and
an increasing number of people take care to pronounce it.




--
Steve Hayes
http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
http://khanya.wordpress.com

On Tue, 29 Aug 2017 10:38:44 -0400, Wolf K
wrote:

Sidebar about homonyms: There are two kinds, homophones (same sound,
different spellings, eg, which/witch, bear/bare) and homographs (same
spelling, different sounds, eg, wind, invalid).

And same sound, same spelling, different meanings -- eg cleave (split
apart, stick together), oversight (close supervision, neglect).


--
Steve Hayes
http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
http://khanya.wordpress.com

On Tue, 29 Aug 2017 16:28:55 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:

Steve Hayes on Tue, 29 Aug 2017 06:08:05 +0200
typed in alt.windows7.general the following:
On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 06:38:10 -0000 (UTC), Joe Scotch
wrote:

I keep a registry shortcut to a text file for all the words that get red
squiggled when I type, where I'd like Windows to SPEAK the list to me on
command so that I can start embedding into my brain the distinctions.
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ App Paths\spell.exe
Default = c:\notes\spelling_errors.txt

Is it Windows that does this squiggling?

When did it start doing that?

I've been trying to find what it is that does the squiggling because
it so often marks correct spellings as incorrect.

I first noticed it on Facebook, and thought that was responsible, but
now I think it is Firefox that is doing it, but I can't find a setting
for it, or how to find its dictionary.

I found that if I click on the word, under the list of "proper
spellings" is "add to dictionary".

I suspect that it is a Firefox thing.

I think you're right.

It's probably one of the things that have made it so bloated and
clunky over the years. It's quite useful in Facebook, where the fonts
are so small that it is difficult to spot typos, but counterproductive
because there are so many false positives that one tends to get
impatient with its recommendations and just post the thing anyway.


--
Steve Hayes
http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
http://khanya.wordpress.com

On 30/08/17 02:50, Joe Scotch wrote:
/nIn , Wolf K
wrote:

Oh, but we do pronounce words the way they're spelled. Trouble is,
English uses a mish-mash of spelling rules.

You bring up a point which is that all words are pronounced correctly,
where the pronunciation rules are what changes.

In many cases what has happened is that the pronunciation of a word has
changed over time, but we've kept the spelling that was logical for the
old pronunciation.

The way I like to think of it is that English has perfectly phonetic
spelling; we just don't have phonetic pronunciation.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

On 30/08/17 05:26, Wolf K wrote:

An additional method of training eye-ear-hand to ype correct spelling is
to type and/or write out the correct spelling while you say the word.
Used to be done in primary school way back when, but got shoved aside
because it wasn't creative and exciting enough. I was on a couple
curriculum committees, so I know.

Good advice; but it must be the person writing the word who says it.
Writing while listening to someone else saying it doesn't have the same
mnemonic force.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

On 29/08/17 18:46, Eric Stevens wrote:
On Tue, 29 Aug 2017 15:38:52 +1000, Peter Moylan
wrote:
On 29/08/17 14:08, Steve Hayes wrote:

If it was Windows doing it, then surely it would be checking this
message as I type, but no, my typos are unmarked.

I imagine that your Forte Agent doesn't including a spilling chukka. No
great loss if you're a good speller anyway.

Agent has had a spell checker for donkey's years.

Yet Steve says it doesn't work for him. Perhaps it's an option that he
hasn't turned on. Or perhaps there's a difference between the free and
the not-free version.

Another possibility: it doesn't have a dictionary for South African English.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Steve Hayes wrote:
On Tue, 29 Aug 2017 16:28:55 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:

Steve Hayes on Tue, 29 Aug 2017 06:08:05 +0200
typed in alt.windows7.general the following:
On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 06:38:10 -0000 (UTC), Joe Scotch
wrote:

I keep a registry shortcut to a text file for all the words that get red
squiggled when I type, where I'd like Windows to SPEAK the list to me on
command so that I can start embedding into my brain the distinctions.
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\spell.exe
Default = c:\notes\spelling_errors.txt
Is it Windows that does this squiggling?

When did it start doing that?

I've been trying to find what it is that does the squiggling because
it so often marks correct spellings as incorrect.

I first noticed it on Facebook, and thought that was responsible, but
now I think it is Firefox that is doing it, but I can't find a setting
for it, or how to find its dictionary.
I found that if I click on the word, under the list of "proper
spellings" is "add to dictionary".

I suspect that it is a Firefox thing.

I think you're right.

It's probably one of the things that have made it so bloated and
clunky over the years. It's quite useful in Facebook, where the fonts
are so small that it is difficult to spot typos, but counterproductive
because there are so many false positives that one tends to get
impatient with its recommendations and just post the thing anyway.

The dictionary is for "web forms". So if a web page declares
itself as a web form, perhaps that is when the squiggles show up.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...anguage-tools/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...sh-dictionary/

Thunderbird shares a lot of code with Firefox, so it's not
a surprise to find it mentioned on the second page too.

Paul

Den 29-08-2017 kl. 21:26 skrev Wolf K:
On 2017-08-29 12:50, Joe Scotch wrote:
/nIn , Wolf K
wrote:

Oh, but we do pronounce words the way they're spelled. Trouble is,
English uses a mish-mash of spelling rules.

You bring up a point which is that all words are pronounced correctly,
where the pronunciation rules are what changes.

But I find that statement hard to comprehend given the pronunciation of
born/borne, read/read, lead/led, mischivous/mischevious, etc.

The result: English maps all speech sounds except one onto two or
more spellings, and the vast majority of spellings map onto two or
more speech sounds.

Wow. In good faith, this sounds like you know what you're talking
about, so
I believe you, but I really did not comprehend that sentence, even after
reading it a few times.
Perhaps an anecdotal example is required for me to understand.
Do others understand that seemingly all-inclusive single-sentence
summary?

OK, you asked for it. :-) Here examples of what I described.
[Snip lots of good examples]

There is one word in which one of the sounds is not spelled at all.

OK, I'll bite: Which one?

[more snippage]

/Anders, Denmark

In article ,
Mark Lloyd wrote:

- tomato ("tomayto" / "tomarto") is an obvious US/UK difference

I never heard "tomarto". It was always "tomahto".

Those are the same to many, perhaps most, British speakers.

Google "non-rhotic".

-- Richard

"Robert Bannister" wrote in message
...
Sadly, it seems that in this country at least, "waistcoat" has been
replaced by "vest". It helps that we never called an undershirt a vest as
they do in England.

Exactly. When I went out to Boston to see my sister and her family who were
living there for a few years because he husband had been seconded to
Gillette's head office, I took the time to build up a list of the most
obvious British/American differences (eg tap/faucet, flat/apartment,
waistcoat/vest, vest/undershirt etc). And the different meanings of
"momentarily" (*). And I knew not to look too horrified when an American
referred to a woman's fanny (**) :-)

The one word I missed from my "be careful how you use this word to avoid
confusion" list was "fortnight". Someone asked me how long I was staying in
Boston and I said "about a fortnight" which was met with blank
incomprehension because I gather that this word (which refers to a period of
fourteen days ie two weeks) is not used in the US as commonly.

I'm always scrupulous about always quoting dates with the month as a word.
1/2/17 can be interpreted as 1st of February or January 2nd depending on
whether you apply British or American convention, but "1st of February" is
unambiguous, even if an American might have said it "February 2nd".

Likewise for times in Germany: I'm wise to the fact that Germans use "half
[an hour] *to* three" where we would say "half *past* two". The problem
comes when a German doesn't know that you've adjusted: I once had an amusing
conversation with a German when I arranged to meet him at "halb drei" [half
three] meaning half past two, and he didn't realise that I was aware of the
different convention and thought I'd blindly translated "half" and "three",
and so mentally adjusted this to what he would think of as "half [to] four".
After that I said "half nach [past] drei", even though this isn't
idiomatically correct, to avoid any misunderstanding.


(*) In Britain, it means "*for* a moment" (ie transiently, briefly) rather
than "*in* a moment" (ie soon), hence the hoary old joke about the American
pilot who announced to his planeload of British passengers that they would
be landing momentarily, to which the Brits thought "I hope he stays on the
ground long enough for us to get off". Rather than use the word "wrongly"
(by my standards) I tend to avoid it and rephrase it if I'm talking to
Americans.

(**) In case anyone doesn't know, "fanny" refers to the female genitals in
British English and the buttocks in American English. Important that
Americans coming to Britain don't use the wrong word :-)

"Anders D. Nygaard" wrote in message
news
There is one word in which one of the sounds is not spelled at all.

OK, I'll bite: Which one?

Could it be "rhythm", which is pronounced as if it were spelled "rhythum"?

"NY" wrote

| (**) In case anyone doesn't know, "fanny" refers to the female genitals in
| British English and the buttocks in American English.

And in these times the same is true of ass and
bum, at least among Brits that I know. I haven't
heard "fanny" in the US since childhood. If I had
to guess I'd say it's popular usage was probably
pre-WW2.

Another one to remember when visiting the
US is not to say, "Here, pussy, pussy, pussy."
(See ass and fanny.)