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[Iceblaster]

It's because, at least in the US, most people pronounce it as 'red-iculous" rather than 'rid-iculous', and so they spell it accordingly.

...

You mean it isn't exclusive to the south/rednecks?

Fucking hell, I've just learned something new

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Perhaps the different cadence affects the pronunciation.

I've heard people go so far as "re diculous" with the first syllable matching the beginning of "real".

[Frumple]

It's because, at least in the US, most people pronounce it as 'red-iculous" rather than 'rid-iculous', and so they spell it accordingly.

... re-dick-you-luss. Not red-ick-you-luss or rid-ick-you-luss. Which is why people spell it rediculous. Because it starts with re, like refrigerator. Or reese's. Not red or rid. Least that's how I've always heard it said *shrugs*

[penguinofhonor]

I have never seen anyone misspell ridiculous this way. It's not even pronounced like it has an e!

We just need to lower the population of ignorant people. Either by educating them, or casting them into the wine-dark sea. Their choice! Besides, it's not going to matter to me, because I grew up archaic, and hopefully the worst of the devastation of English won't happen until after I'm being ignored by the young people anyway.

The devastation of English has been going on for hundreds of years. The worst of it probably happened long before you were born.

[Willfor]

We just need to lower the population of ignorant people. Either by educating them, or casting them into the wine-dark sea. Their choice! Besides, it's not going to matter to me, because I grew up archaic, and hopefully the worst of the devastation of English won't happen until after I'm being ignored by the young people anyway.

As you grew up archaic, you now have to spell it ridicvlovf from here on. :3

[GlyphGryph]

The devastation of English has been going on for hundreds of years. The worst of it probably happened long before you were born.

It's not devastation, it's "refinement".

[Flying Dice]

ITT: Prescriptive vs. Descriptive.


The descriptive approach is theoretically more desirable, and in some cases it is, but all too often it just results in enabling stupidity and further confusion of language, rather than the reasonable, adaptive, clarifying change that it's described as.

[penguinofhonor]

If the undirected natural change in language was somehow harmful, we wouldn't have language anymore. It has survived thousands of years of constant change.

While some individual changes might be viewed positively or negatively (I view doughnut to donut as positive, for instance), that's completely subjective. Change on the scale of an entire language is neither better nor worse, only different.

The devastation of English has been going on for hundreds of years. The worst of it probably happened long before you were born.

It's not devastation, it's "refinement".

I was only using the word he used.

[Darvi]

Frankly, I just want them damn kids and their newfangled vernacular off my metaphorical and linguistically absolutely correct lawn.

[Bauglir]

I think we can all agree that the worst thing to happen to language was the publication of dictionaries, because suddenly people started arguing about objectively correct language as though it weren't completely arbitrary, by any reasonable definition of the word "objective". Look it up in your dictionary today!

[MaximumZero]

I think we can all agree that the worst thing to happen to language was the publication of dictionaries, because suddenly people started arguing about objectively correct language as though it weren't completely arbitrary, by any reasonable definition of the word "objective". Look it up in your dictionary on Ninjawords today!

FTFY. Much faster and much less paper consumed.

[Levi]

Its the lose vs loose that always drives me batty.

[Frumple]

Its the lose vs loose that always drives me batty.

... and apparently contractions *rimshot*

Though that one does seem to trip people up, despite them being very different words in both meaning and pronunciation.

[Dutchling]

In Dutch, a lot of people say 'their' instead of them 'they'.

That's 'hun' and 'zij'... How the fuck do people mess this up >.>

[Sergarr]

"should have" vs. "should of"