Spell Cheque

I am neither a pedant nor a language Nazi.  For no language is "pure" and spellings change. As an example, early English language texts are often incomprehensible.  So change is inevitable.  And I like language to be inventive. Plus pot, kettle, black - I make plenty of mistakes too. Nevertheless the amount of linguistic confusion in newspapers and blogs and personal communications gives me pause for thought.  Many in fact appear in papers of repute.  Plus it is not a simple case of misspelling but the use of words which mean something else altogether.  Which means a new language is afoot. So I put together a list over a week. Par exemple.:

a. wiles instead of whiles;

b. die instead of dye (more common than one would think, in a century die will indicate dye and the useless e will die to give us the dying of clothes);

c. looser where loser is intended (very popular with the young. Even if it leaves you scratching your head as to what part of the person is now looser and once was tight);

d. The rain was apparently poring. Maybe the u just got washed away;

e. Unfarely, fare is now a multipurpose word. Occasionally though bus fairs go up;

f. Rearing fouls puts one in a fowl mood; and

g. Films have trailors these days.

Sometimes it is a honest mistake.  But people cavalierly persist with it. For e.g. I have been living in Sidney for a long time.  Even though each email of mine offers the polite correction that the city is better known as Sydney. I sometimes fear that I may forget the alphabet "y" too. 

While most of the above examples are not from India (surprise!), my few weeks in India made me realise that proper spelling and grammar have long departed it's shores.  I can excuse the Indian spelling of glamour (it's glammer) on the grounds that its more akin to the way we pronounce the word.  I would rejoice in Indian English too - if it made sense. Alas a phrase like "I was dancing in full abundance in the rain" (attributed to Ms. Rai) only tells me that such rejoicing is premature.  Neither can I excuse the country's shoddy school books,  I would be honest to goodness surprised if anyone emerged fluent in the English language solely on the basis of a school education.   Government-speak and business-speak both exemplify the Indian ability to string obscure words together (a bonus if they are correctly spelled) to emerge with a sentence that means nothing at all.  An immersion in this is so disorienting that you begin to doubt your own grip on the language.

Thankfully some red wine and a curl up with Strunk & White (made more beloved by Maira Kalman's illustrations) offers a small cure for the disorientation.  Never mind that wiki notes that the book  is antiquated and peevish.  Some things just call for these sentiments.