Brits and Yanks struck with embarasment embarrassment
New millenium spelling woes
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It's official: English is going directly to hell in a handcart because more than half of native speakers of the lingo can't spell "embarrassed" - and even more have entered the new millennium without the foggiest idea of how 1,000 years pan out in our beloved mother tongue.
To be precise, 54 per cent of us are embarrassed by "embarrassed", while 60 per cent can't handle "millennium", according to a pole poll by the Spelling Society - a pack of linguistic do-gooders who reckon the time has come to introduce "a more simplified, phonetic system", as the Times puts it.
The Spelling Society probed the prowess of 1,000 British adults and an equal number of stateside guinea pigs. The results revealed that the Yanks were less adept in the spelling department, and could outdo their Blighty-bound cousins only in the matter of “definitely”.
Women, meanwhile, generally trumped the less gentle sex on all fronts, except when it came to organising a quick “liaison”.
The Spelling Society's chairman, Jack Bovill, insisted: “What is holding the UK and the USA back is the irregular spelling system."
This assertion will come as quite a surprise to those who are labouring under the illusion that English is the world's numero uno lingua franca spoken by trillions of people and coveted by those who can't. But Bovill is backed by Edward Baranowski of California State University, who declared: “We have different spellings for the same sound, silent letters, missing letters, and basically a system which reflects how English was spoken in the 13th to 15th centuries, not how it is spoken today. So many sound changes have occurred that are not reflected in modern spelling, that we are left with a fossilised system.”
If you fancy putting yourself to the test, the Times has a "Spelling Bee" here. ®
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COMMENTS
Some mistakes aren't mistakes at all!
I took the test four times and had two "errors" according to them! I wrote "tale" (as they gave in answer) as "tail". It seems they can't even write a programme to allow for alternate spellings of the same sounding words! I also had a typo in the word "conducive" - hitting the "i" to the right of "u" by mistake. I thus conclude that the Koreans I taught in Seoul last year were in good hands!
Incidentally, the students I taught there had, on average, far better handwriting (in English!) than most English speaking people! Students there also have a proper work ethic which is probably why they are on the upswing while we are on the slippery slope to oblivion!
As for spell checkers the one in this version of Safari on a Mac computer always tells me that I misspell words like programme and harbour or neighbour!
Why does the world speak English?
Because it's the easiest language in the world to speak poorly - and STILL be understood!
This is partly because it's still a "living" language which can change nouns to verbs at the whim of the speaker/writer. As long as the listener/reader understands what is intended by the communicator, all is well.
eg. "Google" - originally the proper noun name of a company which in very short order has become a verb. Some of you may of heard of it!
It's Minnellium!
At least thats how Jennifer Saunders pronounces it..
Also the yanks don't know how to pronounce Edinborough. Actually I am not sure I do either. Is it Edinburrah or Edinbruh? Any Scots out there?
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