ask_blather_spell_check Toxic_kisses laugh sounds like laff when said and phone sounds like fone when said, so why cant we interchange the two ughone and lauph? why is it ugh makes the same sound as ph? and why is it we cant just use the letter F any ways? I mean that is after all the sound ugh makes in laugh and ph makes in phone! any who I couldent sleep last night and started thinking about that as I was writeing a letter in my head and thought you would be the best person to ask 031213 ... ghoti ghoti 031213 ... Bespeckled ... rainbow? ... trout? .... maybe salmon. Eh, fish is fish. But sometimes ... it's ghoti ;) 031213 ... blather spell check A mutually intelligible lexicon facilitates communication. But you're right, spelling is completely arbitrary, as any linguist would tell you. In plain English, a common form of spelling helps us communicate. In addition, Blather doesn't link to misspelled words. From a helpful online linguistics tutorial: Remember Bernard Shaw's word ghoti with the gh from laugh, the o from women and the ti from nation and pronounced 'fish'? Would you believe after that, that the distribution of the two pronunciations of gh in English is amazingly regular? See if you can figure out the rule. The gh was originally pronounced like the ch in Scottish loch 'lake' or German lachen 'laugh' (like you're clearing your throat). In phonetic script, the symbolic alphabet for accurately representing sounds rather than letters, the sound is symbolized as [x] (where the brackets indicate that we are using phonetic script, not the regular alphabet). The preceding u represented lip-rounding (watch yourself pronounce the sound [u] in the mirror--what happens to your lips) which was pronounced simultaneously with gh. When the gh disappeared because it is so softly pronounced, lip-rounding changed to lip-biting (check where your teeth are when you pronounce [v] or [f]. So gh ended up pronounced [f] because of the disappearance of a softly pronounced consonant and a shift of lip activity. ps. can't (x2), anyways, anyhow, couldn't, writing 031213 ... ever dumbening loves words and the people who love bsc, you're so erudite; can i have your grammatical babies? 031213 ... words that is 031213 ... Toxic_Kisses thats actuly kinda intresting, I'd feared it would be one of thoes boring and confuseing answers haveing to w/ no r befor d except after m or q but only if it's a noun type thing! *L* thank you for answering my Q Blather Spell Check! ^.^ 031213 ... blather spell check I would just like to say that the above response was given by one of my imperson - I mean helpers, not the real bsc. I was going to say 'hey, I just know and preach the rules. I don't make 'em.' But this other person seems to have actually cared enough to look stuff up. Good work, my friend. 031213 ... ever dumbening well now my amorous grammarous longings are _all_ confused 031213 ... blather spell check what, not enough to go around? we can have a spelling orgy! let those other people 'untie' all they want as their clever slogan goes, but we shall unite in a properly spelled expression of love. 031213 ... ever dumbening i'm all creamy with syntax, semantics, and—mmmmm—spelling. 031213 ... Toxic_Kisses There are 14 punctuation marks in English grammer. with out looking it up how many can you name? 040101 ... shivers 1)! 2), 3). 4)? 5): 6); 7)" 8)' i cheated, i just looked at the keyboard 040102 ... sameolme ketchup, catchup, catsup. Dear bsc, I am falling into the depths of despair. There is no one truth, just lots of little ankle biting truths skiddering around riotously fornicating new truths. How do you maintain sanity in this world devoid of order. Please respond before I loose all coherense. 040304 ... blather spell check In the case of this particular condiment issue, I think the best way to decide is to consider how you pronounce it verbally, and then spell the word accordingly. Personally, I've never pronounced it 'catsup' in my life, nor have I heard anyone else do so in normal conversation, so I think that spelling is stupid. Technically, however, it is correct and therefore acceptable. I don't believe 'catchup' is actually an option, but even if it were, I would reject it mainly because of the tomato joke from Pulp Fiction. My spelling of choice is 'ketchup' because that is how I pronounce it, and to be quite honest, I've always spelled it that way and am simply used to doing so. When any word has more than one correct spelling, the issue is merely one of personal preference. Go crazy...but not too crazy. Don't attempt to create a spelling of your own. That's just plain arrogant. Thank you so much for your inquiry. 040304 ... sameolme Thank you for answering, you are a true pillar of civilization, without whom which, we would disolve into an anarchy of incoherence. I'm a little dubious about "without whom which", but it might be correct grammar. 040304 ... language i'm thick i can't spell or type. fucking give me extra time ! i need it when the english language has silent Bs in it for no apparent reason. i can't effing hear it. why speak french when most of the world speks english?! yeah i'm lazy - i'm english ! ... to be honest... i prefer body language... it says so much more than words anyway. 070507 ... blather spell check Excellent point, but try to answer test questions in school with body language (especially classes involving human anatomy and/or sexuality) and you can get in some serious trouble. 070508 ... sameolme Are there any English words with a silent b? 070822 ... sameolme I should have googled it before asking that dumb question. 070822 ... somebody Hey, that's ok, buddy! At times, we all succumb to skulls that numb. 070822 ... ? anyone know of a good plumber? 070822 ... cheap trick i plumbed your_mom last night 081203 what's it to you? who go blather from