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

You all know that the past tense of read is pronounced red but is spelled read. So if you read the word read, it could be "reed" or "red". This then confuses many people into thinking that the past tense of "lead", pronounced "leed", is "lead" pronounced "led". It isn't. Lead is much simpler - its past tense is spelled "led", the way it sounds. To make it more confusing, there's an independent noun, a type of heavy metal (the element, not the music genre) which is spelled "lead" and pronounced "led".

The upshot of all this is that people occasionally (that is, often) write "lead" when they mean "led". So I'm going through all the Edited Entries looking for misuses of this sort.

There are only about 300 Edited Entries with the word "lead" in them. I'm scanning them and recording the results in a spreadsheet. It takes about 1 minute to scan an entry, when I've nothing else to do. I've scanned about 90 of the 300 entries so far, and I've only only found five that need changing. I'll do all the changes in one go at the end, which should only take about 10 minutes.

Mind you, along the way I came across a "there" which should have been "their". That could be my next mission, although I imaging it would be more difficult, as the word "there" must occur many times in the Guide.

Gnomon, you are a wonder.

We echo the sentiments of the great Handel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TClMbRqCW4

Every night I say a prayer of thanks to the Deity.

Because he hath invented OCD, and blessed the h2g2 Children with it.

It's a much better way to spend your free time than firing imaginary birds at imaginary green pigs, anyway.

That's aimed at both of you.

By coincidence, Gnomon, I was discussing the pronunciation of 'lead' with a non-native English speaker at the weekend. I'm frankly embarrassed that we have so many of these heteronyms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteronym_(linguistics)

I am speechless at this coincidence. Last week we sang "Wade in the Water" after a long break of not singing it. The questioning looks broke out anew as we sang the line "Who's that yonder dressed in red? Must be the children that Moses le(a)d" It's written "lead" - even the German editors of our song book made this very mistake - and everyone asks me how to pronounce it. I have to tell them it's wrong and it's supposed to rhyme with "red" - should be obvious really.

It's a great arrangement, though.

It's a very common error. The reason there are only a few entries with this problem is because I've been watching out for it for years.

The other really common mispelling is "lose" and "loose". That one is even mentioned in the Style Guide my daughter was given for her University dissertation.

I've now scanned 96 entries out of 296. Of these, 11 have a problem, 85 don't.

If this ratio is typical, there'll be about 30 entries to change all together. But I'm scanning them starting with the oldest. I hope that the quality improves as time goes on.

Well done you! You enhance our cred.

Any plans about apostrophes? I expect they have been filtered better by subs.

I get such rubbish in the undergraduate essays I have to mark.

You are amazing Gnomon, but I am afraid it is going to be an increasing problem as younger people are not getting the education that we had. I don't profess to be perfect but such things jump out at me too.

I feel rather sorry for people trying to learn our language as there are so many words with the same sound and different spelling, or with different meanings. If it confuses born and bred (there's one) British, then overseas people have little chance.

Having said that I find that some people who have learnt English overseas have been taught more thoroughly the correct way.

I am sure you would not wish to check in such a way! Should you ever consider it I would happily vet my own entries.

Websailor

Oh... Lose v. Loose... that one does my head in when I see it.

That and the vicious 'alot'.

Actually, I've come to adore the stray alots. I've found they're not vicious at all*.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html


*Except, of course, for the 'alot of viciousness'.

I have a question.

The other day, Lady P reminded us that one way we can detect changes in pronunication is by looking a spelling. In that way, scholars are able to make educated guesses at the way in which people in Shakespeare's day pronounced English, resulting in the Globe Theatre's OP performances. Charming.

I've never quite understood why some people spell 'lose' as 'loose'.

Here's my question: in the UK, do you pronounce the too words the same way? We don't.

Although I grew up pronouncing 'close' and 'clothes' exactly the same way.

*ignores Dmitri's homonymous typo*

It's the same with German, Websailor. I pride myself on my spelling (when I did secretarial training, as were were learning on typewriters, it had to be letter-perfect) in German, but many Germans these days don't know their own language. And don't get me started on French! And once it gets into I know less of, such as Italian or Dutch, it's hard to know what things are supposed to mean if they are written wrongly.

Alot is the son of alright.

This is turning into the British English thread ... so, in that spirit:

Bernard Shaw recommended rationalising English spelling and dropping apostrophes, but Wittgenstein, whose first language was German, loved seeing the archaeological remains of the development of English in its odd spellings and pronunciations.

Lose and loose are not pronounced the same. Lose is pronounced looz. Loose is pronounced looce.

The reason write loose when they mean lose is because choose is pronounced chooz.

If you were to spell English the way it is pronounced, you would have to decide how it is pronounced, or have different spellings in different places.

To me, whales and Wales are pronounced quite differently. But luck and look are the same.

To me, too, Gnomon, as I found out when I was a kid. (The 'wh' business.) But that's sn unusual old Southern artefact here.

The reason I asked about 'loose' was Patrick stewart. He always says 'becauss', and it drives me nuts.

Yep. English spelling is arbitrary at best. Hence the constructed words

Ghoti and Ghoughpteighbteau which are pronounced "fish" and "potato".

gh as in enough
o as in women
ti as in action

gh as in hiccough
ough as in though
pt as in pterodactyl
eigh as in sleigh
bt as in debt and
eau as in bureau

About 85% of words in English are pronounced exactly as spelled.

I never really appreciated how much we accept that 15% until I took Spanish in school and even more when I looked into Esperanto where each letter expresses one distinct sound and every word's accents fall on odd syllables.

(The only phrase I learned in Esperanto was
"Ci ne estas tia virino"
Pronounced "She nay EST-ahs TEE-ah vee-REE-no"
Translation, She is not that type of girl.I thought it an odd introductory phrase for a language book so it stuck. )

You mean you don't pronounce the 'pt' in 'pterodactyl'?

Mind you, I pronounce 'Gnomon' with a 'g'.