Tenny Runners (tennis shoes) (1965)

Arnold M. Zwicky zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Sun Sep 24 17:10:20 UTC 2006


On Sep 24, 2006, at 9:49 AM, i wrote:

> now, jon, are you telling me that the *spelling* | Ozzie | is
> becoming more popular?
> if so, is it becoming more popular in the u.s., in australia, or both?

i googled on "Ozzies" ("Ozzie" is hopeless) and got a fair number of
such spellings: one from the Economist, one from a South African
visiting Australia, one for the Jewish Ozzies' Inter.Net (allowing
for the acronym J.O.I.N.), one from News-Medical.Net ("Ozzies skip
lunch!"), one on the Greatest Jeneration blog (which seems to be
american), one from a uk cricket site (with "ozzies" in the header
but "aussies" in the posting), etc.

"Aussies" gets over 5 million hits, virtually all relevant, "Ozzies"
about 139,000, only about 20-30% of those relevant (so, maybe 46
thousand).  it might also be that the "Ozzie" spelling is spreading
especially in the U.K.

arnold

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list