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Missspellings abound - in English
Thread poster: Cilian O'Tuama
Balasubramaniam L.
Balasubramaniam L.  Identity Verified
India
Local time: 03:51
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English to Hindi
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Ghadial/gharial/gavial Jun 11, 2015

Mangling of words from other languages happens all the time, and has been happening for a long time as this example shows.

A species of crocodile found in Indian rivers is called ghadial in Hindi, because of a round pot (ghada) like structure that develops on the tip of its nose during breeding time.

The English, when they came to India, found most things in India foreign to them and went on a crash enterprise of naming everything in English.

Now the "d" so
... See more
Mangling of words from other languages happens all the time, and has been happening for a long time as this example shows.

A species of crocodile found in Indian rivers is called ghadial in Hindi, because of a round pot (ghada) like structure that develops on the tip of its nose during breeding time.

The English, when they came to India, found most things in India foreign to them and went on a crash enterprise of naming everything in English.

Now the "d" sound in Hindi often changes to the "r" sound, and both forms are more or less standard, for example "ghabrana" and "ghabadana".

So, when the English naturalists asked the natives what they called this particular species of crocodile, probably the natives told them gharial, pronouncing the "d" as "r".

The English dutifully recorded it their journals as gharial. Those were the days preceding typewriters and computers, and everything was recorded by hand. For printing, handwritten manuscripts were sent to England.

Probably the Englishman had a very poor handwriting, and even otherwise, in English the small letter "r" can be written by hand in two ways, one of which if sloppily written can look like the small letter "v". This is what happened, and the proof-reader at the printer read the "r" in gharial as "v" and printed the word as "gavial".

This word "gavial" still exists in scientific literature as the name for this particular reptile.

Lesson is, there is no need to get worked up about one language messing up with another. The reality is all languages do this to all other languages, and settle scores with each other rather evenly on their own!
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Roni_S
Roni_S  Identity Verified
Slovakia
Local time: 23:21
Slovak to English
Is a yard sell Jun 11, 2015

Whitney Maslak wrote:


Another odd trend I've noticed lately is on a local Facebook group where people are often advertising that they are having a "yard sell." I can't really expect too much from Facebook, though.


not the same as a yard sale then? Maybe they should change it to yard cell, just to make the transformation complete


 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:21
Member (2008)
Italian to English
It isn't the latte Jun 11, 2015

Andreas Morgenstern wrote:

Tom in London wrote:

pronounced as "latay" which I believe is supposed to be "caffè latte".



This is actually a big problem for English native speakers and it is observable in pretty much every foreign language (Germanic ones, Romance languages, Japanese, Thai, you name it).

'e' becomes 'ei':
Latte(i), て(い) [te(i)], แต่(ย) [te(i)], tre(i)s in Spanish, tre(i) in Italian

'o' becomes 'ou'
Mario(u), อโศก [Aso(u)k, probably the most misspelled and mispronounced station name in all of Bangkok closely followed by...], มอชิด [mo(u)chit], の(~う) [no(u), a very often used possessive particle]

I am sure that there are others, but 'e' and 'o' are the worst offenders when it comes to vowels. I would try to ignore it.


Yes but isn't so much the mispronunciation of "latte" as the elimination of the word "caffè". If you go into an Italian bar and ask for a "latte" (no matter how incorrectly you pronounce it) you'll be served a glass of milk!

[Edited at 2015-06-11 07:32 GMT]


 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:21
Member (2008)
Italian to English
He he Jun 11, 2015

englishpartner wrote:

But I cant stand the trend of abused apostrophes, it makes me loose my mind, and google searches most definately turn up the misspelled versions, frankly as often as the correct versions


I for one had to think about that momentarily.



[Edited at 2015-06-11 07:33 GMT]


 
Roni_S
Roni_S  Identity Verified
Slovakia
Local time: 23:21
Slovak to English
Happy to oblige Jun 11, 2015

Tom in London wrote:

englishpartner wrote:

But I cant stand the trend of abused apostrophes, it makes me loose my mind, and google searches most definately turn up the misspelled versions, frankly as often as the correct versions


I for one had to think about that momentarily.



[Edited at 2015-06-11 07:33 GMT]


 
Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 23:21
Member (2003)
Danish to English
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Knut? Canute? Jun 11, 2015

Tom in London wrote:
...

But like King Knut, I fear neither you nor I will be able to hold back the tide of linguistic change, or to put it more crudely, sh** happens.

http://www.mikeswan.co.uk/elt-applied-linguistics/what-happening-english.htm

[Edited at 2015-06-10 07:39 GMT]


Perhaps the king couldn't even spell his own name - he is Knud in Denmark (Danmark), but Knut in Norway (Norge).
I am not sure at all about the Runic alphabet.

Elsinore is possibly a candidate in the sense the topic started with. If you want to go there, you have to follow the signs for Helsingør.
If it was that 'diameter Ø' that threw Shakespeare, he could have got away with ö. But apparently he couldn't spell consistently either...

Has anyone ever done a thesis on whether he was trying to reflect dialect, different classes in society, and generally different forms of speech for different characters? Suggesting that Prins Hal might sound 'posher' than Falstaff, for instance?
Now I'm really getting OT. ... ... ...

Hamlet doesn't live in Elsinore any more. He (or Amled) is buried in Jutland/Jylland. They made a nice stone-age burial mound for him, or possibly several!

But Holger Danske (Ogier the Dane) is still asleep at Kronborg castle in Helsingør/Elsinore. It is said he will wake up when Denmark is really in danger, but our current politicians are obviously beneath his contempt.

Anyway, the local spelling for the country is Danmark...

My coffee cup is empty, and go easy on the 'lattay' for me, thanks!
So back to work - thanks for the smiles!



 
TalTranslations
TalTranslations
United Kingdom
English to Hebrew
definately :) Jun 11, 2015

englishpartner wrote:
and google searches most definately turn up the misspelled versions, frankly as often as the correct versions


definately


 
Roni_S
Roni_S  Identity Verified
Slovakia
Local time: 23:21
Slovak to English
Oh, yes Jun 11, 2015

TalTranslations wrote:

englishpartner wrote:
and google searches most definately turn up the misspelled versions, frankly as often as the correct versions


definately


definately


 
Oliver Walter
Oliver Walter  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:21
German to English
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Stationery/ary Jun 11, 2015

Near where I live there is a shop that claims to sell "stationary".
I've told the owner, but it's probably too much trouble to have the sign replaced or altered.
I remember that I learned (learnt? My dico says both are OK) this when I was young from my father, who told me that "a stationer sells stationery".


 
Christine Andersen
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Denmark
Local time: 23:21
Member (2003)
Danish to English
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As in envelopes with an 'e' Jun 11, 2015

Oliver Walter wrote:

Near where I live there is a shop that claims to sell "stationary".
I've told the owner, but it's probably too much trouble to have the sign replaced or altered.
I remember that I learned (learnt? My dico says both are OK) this when I was young from my father, who told me that "a stationer sells stationery".


I learnt (it was learnt way back then) - that you would find stationary trains with 'a' at railway stations. (Not an 'e' in sight!)


 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:21
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Snatch Jun 11, 2015

Christine Andersen wrote:

Oliver Walter wrote:

Near where I live there is a shop that claims to sell "stationary".
I've told the owner, but it's probably too much trouble to have the sign replaced or altered.
I remember that I learned (learnt? My dico says both are OK) this when I was young from my father, who told me that "a stationer sells stationery".


I learnt (it was learnt way back then) - that you would find stationary trains with 'a' at railway stations. (Not an 'e' in sight!)



Near where I used to live in Italy, some enterprising young fellow once opened a snack bar and to prove how cosmopolitan he was, he put up the sign in English: "SNATCH BAR".

Any comment would be superfluous, I think.


 
Roni_S
Roni_S  Identity Verified
Slovakia
Local time: 23:21
Slovak to English
Oy vey Jun 11, 2015

No comment required, as per the request.

 
Oliver Walter
Oliver Walter  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:21
German to English
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Confectionary Nov 13, 2015

Just a few weeks ago, a shop opened in Harrow and on the window was (and still is) big lettering saying that it sells confectionary. Of course, I noticed the error as I was walking past and one of the workers at the about-to-open shop told me they suspected it was an error, which I confirmed. I don't remember what he said about correcting it but they were still selling "confectionary" yesterday. The letters are about 15 cm high and may be fixed on the window in a way that makes it difficult to r... See more
Just a few weeks ago, a shop opened in Harrow and on the window was (and still is) big lettering saying that it sells confectionary. Of course, I noticed the error as I was walking past and one of the workers at the about-to-open shop told me they suspected it was an error, which I confirmed. I don't remember what he said about correcting it but they were still selling "confectionary" yesterday. The letters are about 15 cm high and may be fixed on the window in a way that makes it difficult to replace a letter.
(For the very few of you who may not be sure, the correct word is "confectionery".) Now I've done a quick Internet search and apparently it's a relatively common error.
As far as I'm concerned "confectionary" simply is not an English word (unlike stationery and stationary, which are English words with different meanings: one is paper and one isn't moving).
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Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:21
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Don't worry about it Nov 14, 2015

By now it's clear that low literacy levels are not specific to any particular social class - see for example the recent Proz thread about the severe apostrophe misuse at Oxford University Press.

The question is: should we who consider ourselves literate worry about the illiteracy of others? It is indeed painful to see something like "confectionary" proudly emblazoned (or do I mean "blasoned"?) in a shop window, but short of restructuring the whole educational system, is there anyth
... See more
By now it's clear that low literacy levels are not specific to any particular social class - see for example the recent Proz thread about the severe apostrophe misuse at Oxford University Press.

The question is: should we who consider ourselves literate worry about the illiteracy of others? It is indeed painful to see something like "confectionary" proudly emblazoned (or do I mean "blasoned"?) in a shop window, but short of restructuring the whole educational system, is there anything we can do about it?


[Edited at 2015-11-14 09:12 GMT]
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Gabriele Demuth
Gabriele Demuth  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:21
English to German
Taught in school Nov 14, 2015

Tom in London wrote:

Cilian O'Tuama wrote:

I'd've


Daring - but unexceptionable !


Maybe it's just me but I do find it odd that infant schools in the UK teach:

I'd like
You're ... and similar.


 
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