All right. Now, I understand.

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Mon Dec 31 21:34:05 UTC 2012


Over the dekkids, I've been bothered by the fact that there has been
no reform of Empire/Commonwealth spelling, so as to align it with the
United States model. One of the immediate benefits of such a change is
that American linguists would undoubtedly become more accepting of the
term, "North-American English," and end the maintenance of the
unnecessary distinction between so-called "American English" and
so-called "Canadian English."

However, the recent, IME, change of the spelling of _cauldron_ to
_caldron_, even upon the pages of that hallow-ed broadsheet, The New
York Times, has come to my attention sufficiently often that I've come
to believe that what we have here is a spelling-change and not a typo.
The spelling-change entails merely the deletion of the _u_, exactly
the same - or should that be, "the exact same"? - "trivial" change
that is "needed" to "correct" non-United States orthography.

And I find the spelling "caldron" annoying. What blocks the assumption
that the pronunciation is "c[&]ldron"? Since I haven't haven't heard
the word pronounced since God knows when, AFAIK, the current
pronunciation may well be "c[&]ldron."

Youneverknow.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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



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