17 March 2009

Screw "U" and Your Messed Up Spelling Rules


So I got suckered into playing Times of London's Spelling Bee game, first run through the list had no words with different spelling for American and British English, so I scored a 15 out of 15, though I didn't get too high of a score cause some of the speakers they use are decidedly British, so that slowed me down (couldn't tell if "paddy" was "paddy" or "party" with a very long aaahhhhr and soft t, so used the word help and saw that its language of origin was Malay).

Took it again determined to up my speed, and the results are above, 3 words out of 15 this time that Brits choose to spell incorrectly (favorite, meter, harmonize), I caught on to spell 'metre' and 'harmonise' in that messed up manner Brits prefer, but somehow it slipped my mind on 'favourite'.

Dudes, you've had over 200 years since Webster tried to bring some sense to our shared language and figure out that favorite, color, neighbor, etc don't need an extra "u" in them, get with the program people.

(or should that be 'programme'?)


(and don't even get me started on the whole reversing the 'er' ending on words thing, I'm talking to you too Canadians, it's center, not centre, dammit, if you changed the spelling the Raptors and the Maple Leafs might stop sucking so hard..., seriously both those teams are going to miss the playoffs, and practically every damn team in the NBA and NHL make the playoffs, so that takes some doing)

(and I probably shouldn't make too much fun of 'The AirCanada Centre', given that Staples Center would be full of losers, too, if it weren't for the Lakers, those damn Kings and Clippers suck even harder than your Leafs and Raptors, I guess the 5 time champion Toronto Rock of the NLL are their Lakers equivalent, though they seem to be having a rough start this year)

UPDATE:

I played again, this time 15 out of 15, slowed down again though cause two of the words have homophones, and they don't give the word in a sentence (bail/bale, and foul/fowl in this case), but what made this attempt special was the word "snatch", I laughed out loud with the way the woman who got to say that word said her word. It was a truly glorious, and most likely intentionally smutty, reading of the word. For that I can almost forgive the damnable extraneous "u"s.

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