U Kant Spel!

Zynks

In the age of text messaging and spell checking grammar and spelling have gone downhill. Check how this statement applies to you:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4246472.stm

Hagar

Ye never writ a truer word, de days of gud grammur has went.

ITDept

20/20... I is a legend!

Berty

17/20. Im not as stupid as I look.

Kiera

Meh, i only got 16/20

4zn76tysfajdxp

Zynks wrote: »

U Kant Spel!

O rly?

Loomis

That's been on the bbc site a good while or variations of it at least. I think that was more a grammar exercise than spelling. But spelling is definitely atrocious in general nowadays. I use abbreviations when texting but it's still legible. I can barely make out a word in the texts I get from my 20 year old sister.

Edit 19/20 btw

eVeNtInE

This post has been deleted.

Mark200

18/20

I'm quite happy with that

Wagon

Kant finnish. Too retard.

stovelid

I always misspell necessary and accommodation on first try.

NuMarvel

19/20! I da bom!!!!

Naturally the one word I can never spell correctly is the word that broke my perfect record....

h8red

18/20. Couldn't be more happier then I am now. What do I win?

_blank_

19/20

Fúck sake.

I'm disappointed with that

Burning Eclipse

20/20...

I laughed at questionnaire; I work as a market researcher, can't count how many times I've typed that word.

Feelgood

Meh who cares,

In 10 years time we will all be speaking Chinese anyway so that we can communicate with the new world super power...

Loomis

Burning Eclipse wrote: »

20/20...

I laughed at questionnaire; I work as a market researcher, can't count how many times I've typed that word.

Good thing the quiz was on grammar and not arithmetic, eh?

Das Kitty

20/20,
I guess questioning the spell-checker every time it gives me a wiggly line under a word has paid off. I also still don't spell realise with a z as it's trying to make me.
*dons tin-foil hat*

The Mad Hatter

20/20.

It depresses me deeply to know how many people don't know the difference between 'their' and 'there'.

When I was in secondary school I wrote 'Found I cure a dyslexia for.' on a desk in my geography classroom. When I came back the replies were 'You can't speel' and 'plurple'.

Ah, school desks. The AH of the nineties.

The Mad Hatter

Das Kitty wrote: »

20/20,
I guess questioning the spell-checker every time it gives me a wiggly line under a word has paid off. I also still don't spell realise with a z as it's trying to make me.
*dons tin-foil hat*

You can switch from American spelling to British, though - at least I hope the British version spells with an s. That said, a lot of these s->z things have reached the point of interchangeability now anyway.

ScumLord

13/20, I am as stupid as I look.

galah

20/20, and English is not even my first language.
Suckers.

Will definitely fail the maths test, though.

KieranKennedy

I think you are in a pretty desperate situation if you can't score well on that quiz!

Irish Halo

KieranKennedy wrote: »

I think you are in a pretty desperate situation if you can't score well on that quiz!

+1

Questionnaire almost got me though.

Das Kitty

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

You can switch from American spelling to British, though - at least I hope the British version spells with an s. That said, a lot of these s->z things have reached the point of interchangeability now anyway.

Oh I know but the IT dept Nazis do not allow me to alter my regional settings.

Burning Eclipse

Mr. Anderson wrote: »

Good thing the quiz was on grammar and not arithmetic, eh?

Well played sir.

Roll on next week!

ITDept

Das Kitty wrote: »

Oh I know but the IT dept Nazis do not allow me to alter my regional settings.

Glad to see my Nazis are still beavering away

S.I.R

12/20....


i get out now.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

17/20. I'm ashamed!

Mossy Monk

16/20

The spelling and puctuation bits were grand. It was the first 4 questions that got me but I don't care about those.

Mingey

13/20, obviously the test is wrong. I demand it to be re-ecsamund.

Collie D

Only 17, very disappointed as I was always a good speller and I'm a bit of a text speak Nazi. Although I alwasy misspell accommodation. Got the ostentatious one and the long lost brother one too.

yerayeah

Just the 18/20 myself, I'll take it I suppose...

Genghiz Cohen

17
i can life width that

AnonoBoy

17/20

I want sum manner of addjuddekator to look at my answers. I think I've being cheeted.

AOwannabe

21/20

Very happy with that. I'm looking forward to next week's maths test.

phenomenon

19/20

Overall, laughably easy. I fcuked up on the one with "whose" and "who's", though.

The shame! But I've learned from my mistake

Femelade

19/20...
I got long-lost brother wrong.

Twee.

19/20, that's alright. I don't expect the maths to be as good though!

syklops

Femmy wrote: »

19/20...
I got long-lost brother wrong.

So did I, but the sentence ends in a comma, which I think is a bit daft. If this were a real exam then I would be asking for a recount based on the ambiguity of the question.

BaconZombie

42/20

mental07

19/20 for me, avarice tripped me up!

20/20, the long-lost brother almost got me

RHRN

19/20....long-lost brother.

girlbiker

Boll!x to long lost being hypened, it's a matter of opinion...where as I found my long lost brother! Deserves an exclamation mark, it doesn't happen everyday!:p

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

Not saying, too embarrassed. :P

purplegeko

14/20

Me fail english thats unpossile.

Texting and e-mail has ruined me

LolaLuv

20/20. Yee-haw!

KathleenF

Des wrote: »

19/20

Fúck sake.

I'm disappointed with that

Right back atcha.

Twinkle-star15

20/20

Nice boost the night before the English mocks! See, teh internets DOES count as study :P...

Talliesin

20/20, as tempted as I was to select coarse and have a sentence that was less likely, but more in keeping with my views on golf courses.

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

at least I hope the British version spells with an s. That said, a lot of these s->z things have reached the point of interchangeability now anyway.

Actually, the Z spelling is older and makes more linguistic sense (as the Greek root is normally Romanised as -izo rather than -iso) and still the one found as the main spelling in the Oxford English Dictionary. Both -ise and -ize were interchangeable for a long time, but -ize was more popular, partly for the lingual reasons stated above, and partly because the -ise form was so French looking and what with that Napoleon bloke prancing around bringing his fondness for green uniforms everywhere, the French weren't thought particularly well of.

Later on, after Webster standardised upon -ize in those colonies that were having a go at being their own country (Webster was a militiaman during the American Revolutionary War), -ise became more popular in Britain, perhaps because -ize became associated with his standardising -our to -or (color, neighbor*), and bastardising œ and ӕ words to e (fetus, encyclopedia, personally I think the British foetus and encyclopaedia are bad enough and stay with the more sensible fœtus and encyclopӕdia†). Perhaps rather it was just because the -ise was so French looking and after Napoleon it was time for the English upper and upper-middle classes to go through another episode of feeling that more French something is or at least seemed (nom de plume, incidentally while having all French words is an English phrase, "fixing" the French metaphor nom de guerre) then the more sophisticated it must be.

The Irish tending to follow the British in spelling (if not always vocabulary or syntax) we now use -ise more often, but -ize is not wrong (except in those cases where everyone uses -ise, like compromise or televise).

So, in all, while -ise is much more common as a British spelling, this is actually a matter of it becoming less, not more, interchangeable, and the most respected British lexicon has always used -ize.

* In truth though, the first edition of Webster's has the spelling colour, etc. but later editions dropped the U.

† Early versions of Webster's even went so far as the dreadfully ugly phenix and listed phœnix as an alternative spelling, while current versions thankfully have phoenix but don't mention phœnix (**** you, Scroobius Pip, pheonix would be ugly too and make no bloody sense). Some of Webster's more extreme changes like from tongue to tung didn't take, even in America, while some like simplifying musick to music are now universal.