Wednesday, May 17, 2006

I Only Have Crowns on My Teeth

The famous dooce recently had a post titled "For your reference" about word pronunciations. The last time I looked there were 439 comments. At the time I read it there were over 200 comments and I read through them. The whole thing started about the fact that she pronounces the word "crayons" as "crowns." There was also a big deal about the words "talk," walk," and "chalk" being pronounced without the "L." As in "tok," "wok," and "chok." It seems the latter are the correct pronunciations. I do pronounce those last three words with the "L." What cracked me up were all the comments about all sorts of different words. I love the fact that people pronounce things differently. My second husband had a whole list of what he called "southern homonymns." Words like "fill" and "feel."; "pin" and "pen." Some pronunciations do stand out to me. The Canadian pronunciation of the word "sorry" sounds like "sore-E" when Alex Trebek or Jim Carrey say it. The other one I notice is "mirror" pronounced as "meer." That's just weird. But, like I said, different pronunciations are fun.

What drives me insane are all the misspellings. I DO NOT mean typos. I play poker a lot on Yahoo and here are some examples of things I've seen that make my teeth scratchy:

"im new here"

"there all cheaters"

"your right their"

Holy Crackers! What are these people thinking? First of all, the "your"/"you're" thing almost drives to the edge of reason. Then there is the "there," they're," and "their" thing. I wish keyboards would send electric shocks to people that use these words incorrectly. And, by the way, those are actual quotes that I wrote down after seeing (gagging on) them. Yeah, there's also the "to," too," and "two" problem. Why do people have so much trouble with these words? Oh and one last one that really makes my brain spin:

"My hand was better then yours."

I see that A LOT. How on earth do you confuse the word "then" with the word "than?" Eeeeeeee! If I weren't listening to Norah Jones, I'd. . . Well, I don't know, I suppose I'd be listening to something else. Anyway, I just wanted to grouse about this.

Oh, and I pronounce "crayons" as "cray-uns."

3 comments:

Jammie J. said...

I see those errors all the time on some blogs I read. It makes me feel batty. The worst part is, I can't stop going to those blogs. It's like an unnatural obsession just to see what errors they made today. GAH!

geewits said...

Hey j, I know exactly who you are talking about. She does the "your" for "you're" thing all the time. Bless her heart. But she keeps a clean house.

Tai said...

gawrsh...uh. Not so shure i have a place heer.

So ANYWAY! Yes, of course!

I spell poorly; my grammar is worse (not to mention my grampa!) I strive to do better, but I screw up sometimes.
Is it because I'm uneducated as far as a university degree goes?
That's possible.
I'd like to think (without deluding myself) that I just think too quick to worry 'bout the legalities of the written word and just...WRITE!