h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Or there's the episode where the Krusty Komedy Klassic airs live at the Apollo theater in Harlem. He gets jeered off the stage for his accidental offense. Ah, the Simpsons satirize everything.

Yeah, it's spelled satirize over here, because Webster (of the American dictionary) decided we had to have different spellings from the British to demonstrate our new-found liberty. The dumb things people do for patriotism

Yours,
Jake

Just a couple of points for those taking notes:
*cough cough*
Mike Meyers is Canadian. (But yes they portrayed 'middle Americans')
Misspellings are to avoid copyright lawsuits and the quotes are for the same reason - you can't copyright 'sandwich', 'burger', ice-cream' etc. (Never mind that the Earl of Sandwich's family in England is now running bicycle type "Sandwich" carts - they own the name).
That's why Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken is now called just "KFC" - that and because there may be some legal doubt as to whether it really is "chicken" - if you forgive the quotes you'll understand why many food products are now written like "that". So when you see a promotion saying {100% pure "Beef") you know their lawyers are covering up something.
BTW - that list of phrases you never want to hear again (damn I can't get there from here to specify) - I never heard of most of them - if you get real bored and want to supply definitions, I'd appreciate it.

oH, an' btw: Webster was the Secretary of (State or foreign affiars or summat) in the Cabinet of your 13th President. A true Patriot!

Hiya
Nexus 7 said:
"And the abuse of the word 'wicked'. The whole Lenny Henry / Honey Monster cobblers of the mid 80s (when 'crucial' was used synonymously with 'wonderful') which, IIRC, gave rise to this abhorrent slang expression of how good something is (eg 'that's a wicked bike'), presumably originating from the usage of 'wickedly' as an adjective (eg 'a wickedly sharp knife'). It should have died then, but it seems Goodness Gracious Me (which has spawned several horrible phrases) has resurrected it."

Lenny didn't start that - he just brought it to the attention of you white folks
In the '70s the West Indians in Sarf Lunnon used to say things were 'well wicked'. It may have its roots in Patois (or not - I never learned much Patois ). The Asian boys picked it up from the Blacks (along with things like breakdancing and being disrespectful towards the police) because they had a lot of 'street cred'.
Goodness Gracious Me hasn't 'resurrected' it OR 'spawned' the horrible phrases - again they are current among the (what you would call 'P**i') kids trying to be black (because black is more acceptable than Indian, Pakistani or Anglo-Indian).
It IS a horrible word isn't it.

Mr. Cogito's (or rather Malcolm Gladwell's) 'connectors' has reminded me of small world theory (which was mathematically modelled and found to be valid) which advances the notion that everyone is (at most) 5 handshakes from everyone else. The proponents illustrated this by suggesting we were each 5 handshakes from the President of the United States. (Perhaps someone should tell Little B)

BTW: What does IIRC mean please?

If I Remember Correctly

Hello,

It's true Michael Myers is Canadian (a lot of our bigger comedians are. It's a bit strange that), but I think he was supposed to be living in Milwaukee in Wayne's World or some other Midwestern locale.

I guess I should explain that rap stars seem to like misspelling words or assigning new concepts to existing words. So, for instance to "give someone props" is not to hand them a skull and ask them to act out Hamlet, but to give them praise. In addition, the word "player" refers to someone who cheats on multiple women at the same time. Of course, for some strange reason, many seem to like misspelling it as "playa/playaz" in the singular and plural respectively. I'm not sure why, but it gets very tiresome to see on promotional ads (for groups named something like the Illin' Def Playaz) after a while. Of course, many of the teen groups have the same problem (for instance, your new Teen group hear'say).

Yours,
Jake

From the Webster Dictionary site about Noah Webster:
"One facet of Webster's importance was his willingness to innovate when he thought innovation meant improvement. He was the first to document distinctively American vocabulary such as skunk, hickory, and chowder. Reasoning that many spelling conventions were artificial and needlessly confusing, he urged altering many words: musick to music, centre to center, and plough to plow, for example. (Other attempts at reform met with less acceptance, however, such as his support for modifying tongue to tung and women to wimmen -- the latter of which he argued was "the old and true spelling" and the one that most accurately indicated its pronunciation.)"

So I guess I was wrong. I though it was because of Patriotism (what I had heard somewhere), but it's just because we Yanks are too stupid to spell correctly. Oh, the original dictionary published in 1828 had 70,000 entries in it, so it was easy to slip these changes in I'm sure.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get a chowdah (as they pronounce it in Boston).

Yours,
Jake

Canadians laugh a lot because it has the same warming effect as shivering and it's more fun. Besides it's hard to take yourself seriously when there are icicles forming on the end of your nose.
The eskimo word for fornication is the same word they use for laugh.

No you were right! He was a patriot.
Remember colonial English is older and truer to old English than EnglishEnglish is today (or even 175 years ago) so the 'olde' and true spellings are almost always better. I refuse to spell 'rime' any other way - all that 'h' and 'y' crap that is just somebody confusing rime with rhythm.
And he was rite about simplifying spellings - music doesn't need a 'k' - it's already got an A<B<C<D<E<FandG.

Wasn't englishenglish spelling first layed down in Dr Johnson's dictionary? This only predates the Webster dictionary by a fifty years or so I would imagine (I'm not looking anything up here so shoot me down if necessary) so its probably no more correct than US english spelling. Some weird spellings are for a reason however. For expample, the original spellings of 'when' and 'where' were apparently 'hwen' and 'hwere' because that is how they used to be pronounced (similarly with silent k's etc.). My parents are scottish and they still pronounce the words like that so spelling has seems to have not evolved along with the spoken language.
The only thing between US and UK english that does annoy me is the american insistence on saying 'math' instead of 'maths'. Ewww! Yuck. The full word is mathematics - a plural word - so the shortened version should be maths surely.
Anyway, 'nuff ranting

Hello,

Yeah, but the section in the paper about multiple different athletic events is titled "sport", so we're even. Besides, we're just doing a simple truncation, while you're doing a more complicated elision. And I'm not even going to talk about "programme"...

It's a good point about Johnson. I suppose he had a large effect on fixing the correct spellings for words. Spelling has never been a strong point in English writing; it's sobering to consider that the Immortal Bard couldn't even spell his own name consistently.

Yours,
Jake

The answer of course lies in the historical division of Great Britain natural topographical regions - different tribal/racial mixes and outside influences - think of the present day regional dialects.
It was only after the printing press and a rising literacy that the phonetic variants of 'English' words had to be compromised into a standard spelling. Doctor Johnson did a damn fine job. The trouble is some people put too much faith in writ (the written Word is Holy) and forget that language (like all living things) continues to evolve.

*and for your added edification*
All the 'Rules' of grammar come from a little book written even earlier by Ben Johnson as tourist guide helper for Italians and Frenchmen and other European visitors during the Renaissance. Neither he nor his buddy Willy the Shake (whose works were popular in Europe and so Ben's little book became a 'guide' for translators too) would have believed it would become the Law and 'students' would be punished for breaking the Rules. Methinks twood reviseth it, yes?

I agree with everything said so far ... here's one that bugs me though ... not quite a phrase, but annoying punctuation marks.
Why, oh why, oh why do people insist on putting "'s" everywhere?

"Town Centre Video's" or "Paper's For Sale"

aaaaaagggghhhhhhh!!!!!

Oh, *definitely*. Misplaced apostrophes are a cardinal sin in my book. (I still remember Dan Quayle's apostrophe gaffe with amusement )

Another criminal error is "millenium" [sic]. DOUBLE N! Millennium!! That's how it's spelt; Lord knows there's been more than a little exposure of the correct spelling recently!

What about liase instead of liaise and acomodation or accomodation or acommodation instead of accommodation. Come to think about it, is liase the American way to spell liaise? I only ask because the MS spellchecker would have you change liaise to liase - even though it's set to British English.

Hello,

Well, according to Webster, the American spelling is also "liaise", so I don't know where Word gets that idea.

I'd have to echo complaints about the misuse of apostrophe. I wish people could learn properly the correct usage for its/it's and their/they're/there. And the improper use of apostrophe to indicate plurals has got to be stopped.

I also must admit that I hate it when the subjunctive isn't used when it should, such as in "If I was to do that..."

Incidentally, I also agree that the printing press had a large impact on the standardization of spelling in the English language. Johnson may also have done some work to fix spelling and usage. Interestingly enough, the editors of the OED apparently stated they were NOT going to dictate proper usage but would record the observed usage of words in the language. This was apparently a somewhat radical tack. Of course, they also included the then-controversial suggested pronunciation.

Yours,
Jake

The OED knew enough (there were dozens researching the original) to realise that the language was changing faster than they could record it (almost). They came to accept, from the evidence of historical documents, that 'Usage is the Only Authourity'.

(This rule also applies to cars, real estate, wives, etc - maybe not in Law but in reality)

Hello,

Funnily enough, "William Shakespeare" anagrams to "I am a weakish speller."

Yours,
Jake

Funniest (and trueist) namew anagram ever imho...

Virginia Bottomley (tory MP in the UK) - I'm an evil tory bigot