“Given the stress that is laid on spelling by prescriptivists, and the existence of so many dictionaries which provide standard spellings for English words, it is perhaps surprising that there should be any variation in spelling within standard varieties. But there is. Some of this variation is variation between varieties. More often, though, there us variation within a variety. The pattern of variation, however, is not the samee in every variety. The result is that in principle, given enough data, we would be able to distinguish varieties on their spelling habits. In practice, at least on the basis of a very small sample, this is less possible than people might think.”
— Laurie Bauer,
An Introduction to International Varities of English, page 61.
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This was the first patragraph of chapter 5, “Spelling”, but every other chapter, too.. no, forget that, every gorram paragraph is like this:
“Well, it might look like they have this difference, but you can use both in either variety, really.”
How is this even a science?!
(My Gods, I’m screwed; I have an exam in this crap tomorrow…)
13. December 2007 @ 14:25 ( Permalink )