Sunday 14 April 2013

Unnecessary Manoeuvres Are Definitely Sacrilegious

As the English language is made up of a collection of other countries words, it's no wonder that getting the correct spelling can be difficult at times which is why there are rules made up to make it easier to remember but i can only recall a few spelling tips from my schooldays.
My English teacher, hello Mrs Jordon, drummed into her class after years of receiving homework with the word 'necessary' misspelt that 'it is necessary to wear a shirt to school and a shirt has 1 Collar and 2 Sleeves so to think of a shirt being neCeSSary'.  
The only other one is there is 'a rat' in sepARATe but there are many more which i have obviously forgotten.
One word i do struggle with is 'Manoeuvre', i don't think i have ever spelt it right without looking it up first (as i just did then).
It doesn't make things any easier to understand when the Americans, Gawd bless 'em, decided to mangle the English language and drop vowels (vowels for crying out loud) and stick the letter Z in words where the letter S was perfectly acceptable which is why us English bloggers and American bloggers get ignorant English and Americans trying to point out to each other how something is spelt (or spelled).
An ICM survey of over 2000 adults revealed that 76% thought themselves very or fairly good at spelling but 39% said that they rely on spell checkers all or most of the time.
The poll lists the top ten misspelt words as:

1.Definitely 2. Sacrilegious 3. Indict 4. Manoeuvre 5. Bureaucracy 6. Broccoli 7. Phlegm  8. Prejudice 9. Consensus 10.Unnecessary.

If you ever have cause to write a letter to confirm that the general consensus is that manoeuvring the broccoli is definitely unnecessary then i would suggest firing up the spellchecker first or just say don't move that green vegeratable.

3 comments:

Cheezy said...

Have you seen the documentary 'Spellbound'? Came out about a decade ago... You wouldn't think a movie about a bunch of kids competing in a spelling bee could be so compelling, but it's superb.

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lucy said...

Never seen it Cheezy but it doesn't sound like an action packed thriller.

I know how to spell defense and labor, my spellchecker keeps underlining them when it reverts to US English for some reason. My latest thing is the word route which we pronounce as root but you seem to say rout.