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I just discovered that 'marvelous' has an accepted alternate spelling. John LeCarre uses 'marvellous' A LOT (nothing like an unexpected spelling to make a word stand out). Is this yet another British anomaly?
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> I just discovered that 'marvelous' has an accepted alternate spelling. John LeCarre uses 'marvellous' A LOT (nothing like
an unexpected spelling to make a word stand out). Is this yet another British anomaly?
To tell you the truth, I had never heard of the first spelling!!! Marvellous has always been the way that I have spelled it. Conversely, I can ask - is 'marvelous' an American anomaly?!
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all I can tell you is that my UNIX spell-checker only accepts 'marvelous' -- and as 'checkers go, it's the most reliable I've found. <g>
also, MWC gives 'marvellous' the "variant" treatment.
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Pooh-Bah
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Same here - my spell checker only accepts marvellous and autocorrects marvelous befor I've even spotted it's wrong. Isn't Bill clever?
AWAD spellchecker is only set to US spelling plus what I can only assume is another language I can never quite make out - is it Martian?? (I'm remembering that "make out" might have another meaning across the pond - I mean "understand", perhaps I'll take up Martian, it must be simpler .... jkfjdhgjnj njkrhgj nkgjrrtyh!
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Pooh-Bah
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Well "Take me to your leader"
as The Supreme Universal Web Martian surely you know her??!!
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#3181
06/01/2000 11:28 PM
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You guys are joking, right?
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> as The Supreme Universal Web Martian surely you know her??!! Oh, ha, ha. I get it. An acronym of tsuwm. Very clever, Jo. What of jmh? Jovial Martian-Hunter??? 
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#3183
06/02/2000 11:29 AM
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Pooh-Bah
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>Jovial Martian-Hunter
Fine by me.
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#3184
06/02/2000 12:26 PM
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TSUWMartian,
We USers pare down the spelling. All the other natives love those extra letters. But you knew that. You were just kidding, right?
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#3185
06/02/2000 12:48 PM
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>>What of jmh? Jovial Martian-Hunter???<< Now,'Brick, if she were a Jovian Martian Hunter, she'd be a native of Jupiter (!) who hunts Martians. And, the word rubrick somehow makes me think of brick-red. about the color you might expect a Martian to be...hmm-mm.
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> Now,'Brick, if she were a Jovian Martian Hunter, she'd be a
native of Jupiter (!) who hunts Martians. And, the word
rubrick somehow makes me think of brick-red. about the
color you might expect a Martian to be...hmm-mm.
methinks this thread hath gone astray somewhat. And it's getting a little curious, too.
But you are right about the red-brick. The Rubrics building in my college here is a magnificent red-brick building - hence my pseudonym.
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>We USers pare down the spelling. All the other natives love those extra letters. But you knew that. You were just kidding, right?
What do you mean, AnnaS?! I thought it had been made manifest that I have no sense of humo(u)r.
but seriously, here comes the serious part, when I was a lad (lo these many years ago), we learned a "rule" to help us spell inflected forms. The rule went something like this: "double a consonant after a vowel". so 'big' became 'bigger' and 'kid' became 'kidding' and so on. but who decided that marvel could become marvelous and travel could become traveling? Was this just editors saving typeface? (There was period when I noticed <cringing> "employe" used consistently in employee newsletters.)
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Pooh-Bah
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We only double the consonant in a word which ends with a single consonant (drop the "e") if it is following a syllable with a short vowel. If its a long vowel we keep a single consonant. (There is the odd exception I may have to look up) - how else would you know when to say "hopping" and when to say "hoping"?
hop - short "o", so double the p and add "ing"
hope - long "o", drop the e, keep the p singular and add "ing"
duck - already has two consonants, so just add "ing"
similarly,
work - already has two consonants, so just add "ing"
keep - long "ee", so just and "ing"
travel - short "e", so double the consonant and add "ing"
I suppose the US rule is to keep a single consonant unless there is a pre-exisiting word which has a single one. So as there isn't a word traveling it can be dropped (a bit tricky, I think).
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jmh (jotting many harangues)
all of your examples work, I think, with the slightly modified ("something like") rule "double the consonant after a single vowel". (hope doesn't end in a consonant, so the 'p' isn't doubled.) what I'm wondering is if there is any rhyme/reason to the exceptions.
then again, maybe it's not a "rule" at all and just a learning device.
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I guess what makes English what it is, is there are no hard-and-fast rules. William the Conqueror swiftly took care of that.
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#3191
06/03/2000 11:32 PM
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Pooh-Bah
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#3192
06/03/2000 11:40 PM
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Pooh-Bah
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>hope doesn't end in a consonant, so the 'p' isn't doubled
hope ends with an "e", sometimes called magic "e". An "e" on the end of a word has the effect of turning a short vowel into a long vowel - hop into hope, rip into ripe. When adding a suffix, take away the "e" first, then double the consonant before adding the suffix.
This is not an exception - I'm still trying to remember those!!! Maybe something to do with soft c's and soft g's.
Afterthought: I've just re-read your posting tsuwm - I'm not sure if your alternative rule works for everything, I'll look up some examples.
I wonder of the reason the US is so keen to drop double l's in the middle of words is because people who's first language is Spanish will read ll as "ly" or "dj" - so it might be easier to avoid them. We have very few Spanish speakers, so it is less of an issue here.
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#3193
06/04/2000 12:02 AM
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>>But he was French!
Zackly.
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#3194
06/04/2000 12:10 PM
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There's a new trend in the teaching of primary school English language here. Until recently spelling was taught by looking at lists of words, based on the frequency of their occurrence in normal English. In Edinburgh one of the teachers devised a way of teaching spelling based much more on understanding the rules of spelling.
She divided words into list with similar endings to show word families. Words which sounded the same as the other words in the family but were spelt differently were highlighted in red. Similarly, words which were spelt the same but pronounced differently were also highlighted as "red" words. This, relatively traditional method was put together for "special needs" children who were not coping with the usual teaching. It is more like teaching English as a foreign language.
After a relatively short time her "special needs" children were spelling better than the children in the "normal" groups. The local authority decided to try out the system in all the schools and so far, it seems to be paying off with more confident spellers.
So I disagree about English not having rules for spelling - a lot of words do conform to expected spellings, its just that we have a large number of exceptions. The problem with the old method used here was that children didn't know what the expected spelling might be, so couldn't spot the exceptions.
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>>I wonder of the reason the US is so keen to drop double l's in the middle of words is because people who's first language is Spanish will read ll as "ly" or "dj" - so it might be easier to avoid them. We have very few Spanish speakers, so it is less of an issue here
Jo, we in the colonies were dropping double letters long before the relatively recent huge wave of Hispanic immigration. This is probably a romantic notion on my part, but here goes (drawing again on Portuguese, the only other language I know well):
Brazilian Portuguese also drops double letters. For example, "list" in Portugal is "tabella" but in Brazil it's "tabela." I'm wondering if there's not some kind of free-spirited New World sort of collective unconscious that led these two groups of colonizers to simplify spelling. Unfortunately, the fact that Canadians spelled exactly as y'all do in the UK dilutes my argument a bit, but... maybe there's still something to it.
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here is a more complete statement of the "rule", to which there are probably still exceptions:
The general rule is that when one of the suffixes "-ed", "-ing", "-er", and "-est" is applied to a word ending in one consonant preceded by exactly one vowel, the consonant is doubled if and only if the word's final syllable is stressed: "omitted" but "edited"; "preferred" but "offered". Americans obey the stress rule when the final consonant is "l": "repelled" but "traveled". Britons double "l" regardless of stress: "repelled", "travelled".
this is from alt.usage.english FAQ
...isn't that marvelous?
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Pooh-Bah
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I was thinking more in terms of Spanish speaking neighbours, who have always been there (but I think you are right - it probably wasn't an issue).
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Pooh-Bah
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That works for one of the words I had been thinking about - "marketing", it would be marketting according to the simple rule.
So we are both right - there is a rule!
Marvellous!
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>So we are both right - there is a rule!
...and the best part is, it *is a British anomaly!
*<8-)
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Pooh-Bah
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I can't quite decide what to say but it ends with - off!
Do you have any friends??!!!
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the discussion of 'bugger' used as profanity would seem to belong in another thread.
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Oh, ho! A word post!  This is really a lot of fun resurecting old threads, huh, Roseby?
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