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Nov 21st, 2006


It's a game that promotes proper spelling, but at least two words used in it are mispelled...?


Nov 21st, 2006


British spellings.


Nov 21st, 2006


Well, I made it to number 49 on the scoreboard.


Nov 21st, 2006


There's silly American spellings in there too. I had to deal with nonsense like "center" and "color".


Nov 21st, 2006


That's probably what attitudechicka was talking about, Kajun..


Nov 22nd, 2006


I'm sorry that our dictionaries differ from yours, British people. Go blame Webster.

Also, is "tost" a British word? Because I saw it there, too. Along with "somg."


Nov 22nd, 2006


"Mr. Papadopolous, we need to revise and standardise the spelling of the language"


Nov 22nd, 2006


'tost' = a staple used to hold together a magazine

'somg' = a feeling of doubt

they are both super obscure though, i cant see hwo they found their way into this game

*shrugs*


Nov 22nd, 2006


"Nonsense"? The British spellings of color and center are the nonsensical ones. Who says "col-our" or "cen-tray"?

Or let's vote! 60 million vs 300 million, thanks for playing!

American English is the world standard, get used to it.

And this from an Anglophile. Long live Monty Python!


Nov 22nd, 2006


lemon: um so, even though the language existed for thousands of years before the U.S. did, American English is the standard? Doesn't seem right.
Besides, I've talked to enough people from Texas/West Virginia/Minnesota to determine that Americans just can't speak proper english.


Nov 22nd, 2006


Can't they both be right?
I like interchanging the words.
It's not like English isn't stupid enough with words that are spelt the same but mean different things, but I can't think of an example.


Nov 22nd, 2006


Well, what exactly is "American"? I know people who say y'all, caint, aks, yehknow, and have replaced commas with the word "like". Fuhgeddaboudit, beeyatch, wuhder (I say wuhder) are a few others.

Ebonics, Southeners, Westerners, and Nor' Easterners have basically their own things goin, so it's pretty hard to decide what's "American".


Nov 23rd, 2006


UNITED STATES FOR THE UNITED STATESIANS!!


Nov 23rd, 2006


Natural language is like any living thing, it's constantly evolving. The reason we have rules and grammar is so we can have some kind of common ground and make ourselves understood where regional differences occur.

Slang and dialect are great for emphasising regional and cultural unity, but it helps to be able to use formal English as well. And even that's evolving. ZOMG!


Nov 23rd, 2006


Yes, well, who says Aluminum, when it's spelt Aluminium ?

Al-u-min-ium.

:-P


Nov 23rd, 2006


I say aluminum. I also say ain't. Gonna criticize that? (It's a contraction of am not.) Oh snap, I just said gonna. Well I ain't gonna apologize. :P

You know what? To solve all this, let's just start speaking German.

Zieg Heil Deutschland!

Du ist ein scheissekopf...


Nov 23rd, 2006


Du bist ein Scheissekopf.


Nov 23rd, 2006


Entschuldigen Sie mich, haben Sie ich infuenza. Bitte leiten Sie mich zu den Fischhändlern.


Nov 23rd, 2006


Gutentag. Achtung. Er, gezundheit?


Nov 23rd, 2006


What's spelled aluminium? Aluminum isn't!
And spelled isn't spelled spelt!

I know because Firefox 2.0 just underlined them! =)

Thousands of years? Modern English is from around 1550-1600. Uniform spellings didn't take hold until the time of dictionaries, and the first British one predates the first American one by not even 75 years. A far cry from "thousands"!


Nov 23rd, 2006


American spellings were merely a way to be different from the British. It was pretty much just Webster being a tool.


Nov 23rd, 2006


That's one way of looking at it. However, Wikipedia says:

"Webster's dictionary preferred simpler and more modern spelling, whereas [Samuel] Johnson was more conservative, preferring older spellings which reflected the origins of words rather than pronunciation."

It also says not all the simpler spellings caught on, however, e.g. "tung" for "tongue"...


Nov 25th, 2006


my stance on this is, frankly... who gives a shit?

i will spell and speak the way i want to and i will continue to not care how others do it, just as i would expect them not to care how i do it

if you get me


Nov 25th, 2006


... and capitalize, apparently.

I realize it isn't earth-shaking, I just find the topic interesting, and the characterization (yes, with a "z"!) of American spellings as "nonsense" needed a retort.


Nov 26th, 2006


yes, and capitalise

you capitalist pigdog!


Nov 26th, 2006


When I said "Thousands" I was referring to the pre-modern english anglo-saxon roots as well. It's not like they simply "invented" the language overnight. It's been around in some form since 5th century, thus:"thousands" (ok, 1.5 thousand or so).

Nonetheless, it's not fair to say that American english is the "Proper" ay to write/speak it, since the language was developed elsewhere & existed prior to the founding of the US.


Nov 26th, 2006


And yet any given thing's roots aren't necessarily better than what it has become. The desire to respect something's origins is respectable and in some cases it makes sense, whereas in others it does not.

I believe that in the case of the English language spellings and such do not make grounds for a conflict and I am happy to let anybody spell things however they have learned it. But in some cases spellings do become a greater issue. One example is the names of numbers. As wikipedia so helpfully states, "There was also a historical difference between billions, trillions, and so forth. Americans use "billion" to mean one thousand million (1,000,000,000), whereas in the UK, until the latter part of the 20th century, it was used to mean one million million (1,000,000,000,000) (although historically such numbers were not often required outside of mathematical and scientific contexts)."

But all of this is why Professor LL Zamenhoff invented Esperanto. So go learn Esperanto, jerks.


Nov 26th, 2006


^ Thats what I was going to say (the Esperanto part) when Eskimobait suggested that we all begin speaking german, but then I clicked on a link and totally forgot.


Nov 28th, 2006


FurQ:

It is spelled Aluminum here in the States, so it's not a case of people pronouncing aluminium wrong. aluminium is the British alternate spelling.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aluminum

Thanks for playing.


Nov 29th, 2006


Um. Yeah. So anyways, the real title of this game probably should have been "Solid Snake Teaches Typing" or something. By the by, did anyone else have a problem with the computer arbitrarily choosing to let your little guy's bullet "miss" from time to time, making you type the same word twice? What about a non-responsive enter key? I've deduced that it isn't my keyboard.


Nov 29th, 2006


Touché, decolada99.


Nov 29th, 2006


I give up. Who am I to comment on spelling and pronunciation ? I can't even type.


Sep 18th, 2007


I didn't look too hard, but is this the most commented link on in4?


Sep 18th, 2007


Not even close. Probably the Crimson Room, if I remember.


Sep 18th, 2007


I thought it was the in4mador link where brad announced the advent of Avatars?

Or that one where lemoncurry and eltigremask were at each other's eThroats...


Sep 18th, 2007


or the one where psyconius showed up and gave everyone ice cream


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