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#31
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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 |
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#32
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Speak a ommon spelling error list (hints on demand)
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 |
#33
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Speak a common spelling error list (hints on demand)
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 |
#34
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Speak a ommon spelling error list (hints on demand)
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 |
#35
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Speak a ommon spelling error list (hints on demand)
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 |
#36
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Speak a ommon spelling error list (hints on demand)
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 |
#37
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Speak a ommon spelling error list (hints on demand)
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 |
#38
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Speak a ommon spelling error list (hints on demand)
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 |
#39
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Speak a ommon spelling error list (hints on demand)
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 |
#40
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Speak a ommon spelling error list (hints on demand)
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 |
#41
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Speak a ommon spelling error list (hints on demand)
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 |
#42
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Speak a ommon spelling error list (hints on demand)
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 |
#43
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Speak a ommon spelling error list (hints on demand)
"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 :-) |
#44
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Speak a ommon spelling error list (hints on demand)
"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"? |
#45
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Speak a ommon spelling error list (hints on demand)
"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.) |
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