Saturday, January 8, 2011

Word-Rage!

This post is dedicated to Miss Keable. And her crazy demented problems with repetition.

Today I am hating words.
Not all words, for some of them are lovely.
Like ricochet, which is one of the best words. I love ricochet.

I also like palindromes. There is nothing quite as beautiful as a palindrome. Words like ‘reviver’, ‘minim’ and ‘evitative’ make me want to dance around and pick daisies.

I recently found out that there are people with the name ‘Zerimar Ramirez’. I want to find one of these people so we can be married, and then we can run around in a palindrome world, and pick beautiful daisies together!

And then we would go and live in Neuquen in Argentina and have children called ‘Anna’, and ‘Hannah’ and ‘Eve’, and I would have to kill all the boys because I can’t think of any male palindromes!

And people would be like ‘wow, your life is so beautiful and symmetrical! Can I come and live with you?’ And I’d be all like ‘No!’

But some of the other words! Gah! They make me go crazy and want to stab them. In the eyes.

Today this word is ‘ridiculous’.
This is because it is in fact ridiculous.

No matter how hard I try, I can never spell it right first time. I want to put ‘e’ instead of the first ‘i’, then I want to spell the ending in a way that wouldn’t even make sense if I tried to pronounce it. Because this does not happen with many other words, I have deduced that it can not be my brain that is wrong, it is the word that is stupid.

I am also not loving the way that my spell check automatically changes my s’s to z’s in words where there should be no z.

If I say that I want to organise something - then I want to organise it! I don‘t want to organize it - putting a z in it makes it dirty and wrong. It should be ashamed of itself.

Then I noticed that all my -our’s were being changed to -or. Color?! Labor?! What are these monstrosities that have been vomited upon my page by the hideous and unscrupulous American spell check that inhabits my laptop?!

And why has my laptop suddenly decided it wants to be American anyway?! It was doing fine before, with it’s lovely English spellings. But now! Now all it wants to do is eat fried chicken and will only answer to the name ‘Billy Bob’.

However, today, one of biggest problems I am facing is with words that have ceased to be words due to overuse.
This happened the other week when I was writing the post about the ulcer. I had to write the word ‘ulcer’ down, a lot. After a while ‘ulcer’ stopped looking like a word. It started looking like a mess. I was doubting my spelling of it. I started to try to spell it different ways, to see if any of them looked any better.

I went and looked at an online dictionary to make sure it was correct.

Then I checked a physical dictionary in my house because I couldn’t trust the internet with a task of that level of importance.

I’m just dreading the day when my spellchecker will automatically change my sentences to text speak...

and my brain shall explode.

 
Disclaimer: I would not kill a child, nor would I condone that action.


Just making sure we’re all clear here.


EDIT: I have just been reliably informed that Zerimar Ramirez is, in fact, a girls name. I have decided I don't care.

8 comments:

  1. Just a hint, from an American who had to re-learn to spell for a semester (what's wrong with the letter Z, I must ask? ) you can change the language setting on your word processor. English (US) or English (UK) or if you're feeling really adventurous English (Canada) or (Zimbabwe). Might lead to fewer violent reactions towards the poor little paper clip. Ridiculous will continue to be ridiculous in any version of English, however.

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  2. Cat here :)

    I share your pain at American spelling. Why does changing the main language to English (UK) never work? :\

    On the topic of sudden spelling inability, the other day, I was trying to write 'ultimately' in a sentence. This is a word that I usually have NO issue with, but for some reason, it took me a good five minutes of attempted spelling before I got it right. Quite terrifying :( I'm sure my brain is dying, one word at a time.

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  3. Love the paperclip enforcing text speak!

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  4. This made me laugh, it frustrates me so much when people use a 'z' when it should be an 's'. I have also experienced the feeling when you use a word too often and it looks less and less like a real word every time you write it. I particularly liked the fact that you used a dictionary because you 'couldn't trust the internet with a task of that level of importance' - brilliant!

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  5. You and Zerimar should get married on the 11th of February of this year... It doesn't give you much time!

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  6. I would like to add that the security word I just had to type was "wausisce"... That's not a word, right?

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  7. Sometimes I can't even spell my own name. I'm like 'Laura' Mmm that doesn't look right?! Hee Hee!


    Where are you??? I have to re-read old posts because I am missing your beautiful, funny, mad and absolutely random blog posts :)

    COME BACK!!!

    Love

    Laura

    xxx

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