Tuesday, September 22, 2009

R U there?

I wonder what the dictionary will be like in fifty years--and if we would recognize any of the words? Will there still be spelling 'b's? Or spelling tests? Or will we revert to the colonial days when people spelled however they wanted to?

I have a family name that ends with "baugh". When the original family came to America, it was spelled "bach". They were of German extraction and that was pronounced like the composer. Bach. Well, they settled in an area where most of the governing bodies were groups of Scotch-Irish immigrants. And they (the Scotch-Irish) spelled "bach" as "baugh". Hence, our name now ends with baugh instead of bach.

Back then, name spelling was just one of the variables. I have an ancestor named Alice, Alys, Alis, Alics, Alyc, Alyys, Alies, and a couple more variants. As you can see, a simple name like Alice had many varients. You should see what they did with Bartholomew...

With all the texting and emoticons and other abbreviations, I just wonder how long it will be before spelling is a thing of the past. Will it be necessary? Or will we just shrug our shoulders and move on?

anny

PS: Today begins the Falling Leaves Contest! Just click the link for details and many chances to win!

6 comments:

Terri Beckett said...

Bad spelling pisses me off. Particularly on professional notices. A big supermarket had 'recieve' on a notice. I mean, how wrong is that? And son't even start me on misplaced apostrophes... Don't they bother with spellcheck? Or are their computers not blessed with the error-spotters mine has?

Unknown said...

It would be a shame for spelling to become something of the past, though with teens it already has.

Mia Watts said...

Lower case proper nouns... that's my peeve. Or words with numbers injected into them. That's not spelling, it's laziness.

Cerise DeLand said...

I'm with Terri on bad spelling.
Worse to me is this phrase: "THERE IS..." which should be banned from usage.
The construction is what we call in the PR industry, a filler. A way to buy time to think.
PLUS, it stinks bec. it is a singular noun (not really but those who use it hope so) with a singular verb and people use it with plurals!
There is idiots out there.

Fran Lee said...

I expect the only spelling issues we will have are those darling little cat-toons you supply us with. LOL!

Marianne Stephens said...

I sure hope spelling correctly doesn't disappear. Grammar in dialogues can be "off", but not in any other place in writing!
I say, "Keep the dictionary!"