Greetings,

Last week's comments about the differences in spelling obviously struck a chord with many - here's a selection of comments:

"Thanks for explaining tyre to me - I had no idea! Oh, and we have defense and defence (mean different things) only I can never remember which one means what - there are some other words like that, advice and advise, etc. just to confuse us. I think we spell honour with a u, but honorable without - good thing I didn't have to learn Chinese or Japanese!"

"A colleague of mine just returned from the USofA to say that they spoke a foreign language over there.

He was looking for a flat to stay in. Wanted some tissues.

The American for flat = apartment; tissues, he tells me, are Kleenex."

Susan's problems with "advice/ advise" are common. The Australian and UK way is to spell the noun with a "c" (I remember it as using a 'c' for the 'common noun'), and the "s" for the verb.

'He asked for my advice. I advised him to forget the whole thing.'

'I'm going to be late for music practice - and all that practising will have gone to waste!'

We don't use 'defense' at all these days - our noun is 'defence.'

'They organised the defence of the castle.'

Out here, a 'tyre' is what you put on the wheel of your car - something like a 'tire' in fact ...

While we're chatting about little things that cause problems, here's another one that I came across last week:

"Take 10% off of the total order ..."

Have you come across this too?

'Of' is redundant - you just don't need it ... '... 10% off the total price' is enough to keep us happy!

The latest (and last - for a while) winner of the monthly Webit is Charliegirl.

Prefixes can cause some problems at times - create the opposite of these words by adding the appropriate prefix:

e.g. accurate - inaccurate

1. honest

2. competent -

3. limitable -

4. movable -

5. constitutional -

6. limited -

7. timely -

8. pleasant -

8. grammatical -

10.repressible -

Column A contains the Australian/UK word, column B the US equivalent - fill in the blanks:

If you're stuck at home and have to wait another twelve months before your holiday, here's a chance to share in the travels of two young Aussies (friends of our son and daughter - they're part of our "extended family", and they went over to Scotland to get married in a castle). They regale us with their exploits - thanks to the wonders of modern technology ... I thought you'd enjoy these excerpts ...

"We have just arrived back in Edinburgh after a trip around Scotland. We saw some amazing sights and also got stuck in some really boring (but beautiful) places. At one point, just for some excitement, we contemplated the best way to blow up the Isle of Skye as we were stranded there for 24 loonngg hours. But, to be fair, we had a ball. The bus drivers were great and we became infamous (that's more than famous) throughout the Haggis bus network as " those Australian Newlyweds." The people at Haggis thought it was an interesting way to spend a honeymoon (ie. with a big group of people, and often sleeping in separate rooms).

You will be proud to know that as Australians we were always the first in the pub, but all too often the first out (pints of Stella are pretty strong). We saw some great Castles: Stirling castle was great and we even got to stay in an actual haunted castle in Carbisdale. Patchy spent half the night ghost hunting (I gave up the folly and went to bed in a room with snoring German women).

For you movie buffs we also saw the castles of "AAAAAAAAAAAARGH" and "Anthrax" from Holy Grail as well as the stunning castle Eilan Doonan (I think that's right) from Highlander and the new Bond movie. We also saw the site where they filmed the Scottish part (40%) of Braveheart and the field where Renton speaks sooo fondly of how "shite it is to be Scottish" in Trainspotting. We even took a drive thought the village where Hamish McBeth was filmed (whatever the hell that is: Diane).

All in all Scotland is "dead shexshy" (as we kept being told in a Connery-esk accent).

We are now on our way to Ireland and won't the trip be fun! We leave by train at 7pm, change at Manchester around 10pm and then arrive in Streaner at 11pm then we wait at Hollyhead for the ferry across at the awful time of midnight. The ferry
does not actually take us across until 3am, however, so this will be quality time that we can spend bonding with the ferry station floor. We then land in Ireland, in some place with a name about 500 letters long (most of them are L). We arrive
in Dublin at 5am and then have to wait for our room to be ready at 2pm that day. So if there was ever going to be talk of divorce, it will be some time in the next two days (tee hee).

Once in Ireland, the fun does begin. We have a few days to recover and find all of the breweries (Guiness etc) in Dublin. We then start the Blarney Bus trip which takes us everywhere. After about two weeks we are then off to London.

~ * ~

Need a sales letter, but can't write your way out of a paper bag?

~ * ~

When author Siliva Wright was a child, she heard an old Scottish ballad called "The Bonnie Earl of Murray," which includes the line, "They hae slain the Earl o' Murray/And laid him on the green."

Alas, Wright misunderstood that line as "They hae slain the Earl o' Murray/And Lady Mondegreen," and spent years pitying poor Lady Mondegreen before she finally saw the lyrics in print. Writing about this in a 1954 Harper's magazine article, Wright coined the term "mondegreen" to denote such words misheard.

Mondegreen-spotting is increasingly popular lately, probably spurred along by Gavin Edwards' book "Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy" (a mondegreen for Jimi Hendrix's famous line "Scuse me while I kiss the sky").

Tautology of the week: (in the light of our GST experiences, I just had to include this one) - "political ineptitude" (chuckle ... aah, revenge is sweet!)

And a useful Latin curse in the same vein:

Utinam coniurati te in foro interficiant! (May conspirators assassinate you in the mall!)

Regards,

Jennifer

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