Questions that plague me as I begin to write my take-home finals

[laceblade]

It is always my inclination to add the letters "ue" to words like dialog, catalog, etc. so that they are "dialogue," "catalogue," and so forth.

And while we're at it, I always add an "e" to the word "blond."

Are these British spellings that I picked up in my youth? How come the spell check systems (which I tend to LOATHE) in both Microsoft Word and Mozilla Firefox always underline them as being incorrect?

Comments

[were-duck.livejournal.com]

My understanding of "blond" is that it's masculine/feminine: a man is blond, a woman is blonde. That's how it was in French, and I think both spellings are considered proper English.

I always add "ue", as well. Those words look naked without it, but I don't have any grammar rule offhand to back that up.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Oh wow! The thought of it being a masculine/feminine issue never occurred to me, but it makes a lot of sense.

Good to know that there are other "ue" people out there!

[tigrin.livejournal.com]

I do the same thing.. there are a few other words that are apparently British spellings or something that I am constantly being corrected on... but that's how I learned them...? @.@ I don't do the "re" spellings though... centre, theatre, etc.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

I know that sometimes I use "theatre," but like you, I don't think I do any of the other ones, either.

Maybe this comes from reading too much British fiction?

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

Samuel Webster, in his infinite wisdom, decided that English spellings needed to be simplified. So then you got dialogue>dialog, traveller>traveler, centre>center, colour>color. Which means Americans get all the boring spellings, and pronounce "lieutenant" as "loo-tenant".

And while I'm fixing my spellings, I might mention that "theatre" is one of the few -re spellings left in American English. The building is a theater, but the Fine Art is theatre. Because it looked snobbish and hey! theatre people are snobbish! So there it stayed.

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

What's the other pronunciation of lieutenant? "Lef-tenant"?

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

Lef-tenant or Lev-tenant, yes. Since u and v used to be interchangeable, so you got lievtenant, and again with the Americans saying, "That's silly! Let's fix it."

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Bwaha! I think I knew that from watching Horatio Hornblower.

[hellocthulhu.livejournal.com]

I've ended up using the "theater"/"theatre" distinction for very practical purposes. For movies, I use the blah American "theater". For plays, I use the snobby "theatre".

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Nice! I remember, though, that Marcus's (people who own lots of movie theaters in the midwest) use "theatre" to refer to themselves. Maybe they're trying to make themselves look more pretentious!

[bipagan.livejournal.com]

But "loo-tenant" is the correct pronunciation because it's French. It means, roughly, place holder. "Left" is just silly. :P

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

Yes, and so are half of the pronunciations in English. This doesn't mean a British or Canadian 'lievtenant' would be terribly happy to be called by the American version.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Oh! So when I silently judge people for spelling things like "traveller" and "cancelled," they were actually using British spellings? Now I just feel like a jerk.

[yuejiao.livejournal.com]

I always thought blonde was blonde. And dialogue etc looks right! Spell check systems suck.

[bipagan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my problem is I started learning French in 3rd grade so I add "e" to EVERYTHING. It annoys the fuck out of me. Of course there's an "e" at the end of blonde that just makes sense. FFS! Dialogue is the correct spelling, damnit!

[lavendersleeves.livejournal.com]

you probably have the US versions of Word/ Mozilla installed. I'm not familiar with Mozilla and I don't know how many dialects of English it has, but Word has more than one dialect of English, for example, along with different dialects of Spanish, Chinese, etc. (By dialect I don't mean things like "Catalan" or "Gallego" which are most certainly *not* dialects of Spanish, since they didn't evolve from it).

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, perhaps I will have to consult with my boyfriend and see if I can add a different version.

[tdor.livejournal.com]

Well that's certainly how I'd spell them and I'm British so maybe you are channelling us LOL

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Haha, maybe I am! Too many British novels!