Room 101 - what single aspect of modern life should be consigned to oblivion?

[cloughie]

The exclamation mark does not go on the end of 101, but Westward Ho!

P.S. That is quite a coincidence

OK pedant - if you want to be really picky there should be one on each, I must admit it that I hesitated as to whether to put on on Westward Ho! and thought it probably loses it locall, road signs etc than it gets it so I left it off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[cloughie]

"Thou whoreson zed! thou unnecessary letter!" Shakespeare, King Lear Act II Scene II.

At least it's 'zed' not 'zee'

[Pabmusic]

There are some interesting examples in Bill Bryson's "Made in America" about how several spellings and phrases that we think of as "Americanisms" are in fact relics of older English usage .....

Yes (an excellent book, by the way). Things like 'fall' for autumn - which apparently was common usage in Britain until almost the end of the 19th Century.

I like one in a letter from August Jaeger ('Nimrod') to Elgar, from the 1890s, where he's trying to lift Elgar's spirits and talks about "a day's attack of the blues".

[JFLL]

But there is a zeta in Greek, and that's where all these -ize words ultimately come from.

They were spelled with s in French, which is the route by which most of them came to us. But of course there are many English words that were never Greek at all, like surprise. So the easiest thing seems to be to spell them all -ise.

The one that really irritates me is the American spelling analyze, because although the noun analysis is Greek, there was never an -izo verb formed from it until we did.

Good points, jean. In theory, I suppose, we ought to use -ize for the English verbs formed from Greek stems which didn't come in from French in the Middle Ages, and use -ise for those which did (like surprise, never spelt now with a z – though Jane Austen uses surprize, I think). The trouble is, we'd all need to be etymologists to do that consistently, and anyway, what about modern words formed from Latin stems, like, say, prioritise/-ize? Do we use -ise in these cases as if they'd come in from medieval French?

I must say I've capitulated rather ruefully to the zedsters on this one, agreeing with The Oxford English Dictionary:

'… the suffix itself, whatever the element to which it is added, is in its origin the Greek -ιζειν , Latin -izāre ; and, as the pronunciation is also with z , there is no reason why in English the special French spelling should be followed, in opposition to that which is at once etymological and phonetic. In this Dictionary the termination is uniformly written -ize. '

[cloughie]

Yes (an excellent book, by the way). Things like 'fall' for autumn - which apparently was common usage in Britain until almost the end of the 19th Century.

I like one in a letter from August Jaeger ('Nimrod') to Elgar, from the 1890s, where he's trying to lift Elgar's spirits and talks about "a day's attack of the blues".

Whilst I generally dislike Americanisms, I recently used 'fall' as a convenient rhyme in a song lyric.
"a day's attack of the blues" could be a reference to Obama in Chicago singing with Mick!

[Hornspieler]

Use of the letter Z when S would suffice: eg Revolutionize; and of "-or" rather than "-er" at the end of certain words: eg Advisor.

To me, "Advisor" is a person holding a position. "Adviser" is someone who is giving advice.

If like me, you only have the American/English spellchecker, who have to put up with "Z" being offered as the correct spelling of, for instance, "advisor" or "adviser"

American English is a bastardis(z)ed language and I wish people, particularly the media, would avoid using it.

HS

BTW To list all of my complaints would be A BIG ASK

[MrGongGong]

One other thing I would like to loose
is the way in which ALL music is now referred to as "Songs"

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

the way in which ALL music is now referred to as "Songs"

[amateur51]

The weather forecaster as Celebrity/Personality! Computer graphics everywhere, arms flailing, grinning, mugging, some of them 'singing' their text. And the ones who tell you at 18:00 what it was like at 08:00 in Arbroath

Bring back Bert Foord-style weather-forecasting - sticky shapes that fell off, old tweed jacket with leather patch elbows, hair generally in need of a tidy and just as 'accurate' as these modern people but generally very calm.

More seaweed, less hysteria!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1468920.stm

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm not too bothered when people use the " ... ise" ending. As Morse demonstrated in The Ghost in the Machine, it makes it easier to spot the villain!

[salymap]

And all music, whether classical or pop is referred to as 'tracks' on the new- fangled things for storing CDs.

[MrGongGong]

And all music, whether classical or pop is referred to as 'tracks' on the new- fangled things for storing CDs.

Shelves ?

[Pabmusic]

...also those ugly angles...

You may have hit on something, you know. When Normans took over the administration of England, they couldn't cope with the English alphabet, so threw out the sounds they didn't use: Ash (æ = a as in cat), Eth (ð = th), Thorn (þ = also th), Yogh (ʒ = ch as in loch), and Wynn (ƿ = w).

They also imported some letters they were used to: z replaced s (which remained as a sibilant), k replaced c (which remained, but became a sibilant, too - actually the same sound as c), and qu replaced cw. But all these are angular (qu would usually have been written qv). So it seems the Anglo-Saxon alphabet became the Angular Norman one.

[Pabmusic]

One other thing I would like to loose
is the way in which ALL music is now referred to as "Songs"

Yes.

[Lateralthinking1]

Why, though? Do you know? (I haven't got time to explain now!)

I think my answer is yes. I know instinctively. It is like knowing there will be a strike in a bowling alley as soon as the ball leaves the hand or how close a car is to the kerb without seeing it or measuring it.

Some of it is common sense. You wouldn't have an irregularity such as "er" in "adviser" by default. It has travelled for a reason. The reason is that is how it was intended to be.

"Advisor" emanates from (a) people perpetually making a mistake on the basis that similar words are "or" and then (b) seeking to make that mistake regular by saying both are ok. See the suggestions below for accepting both "s" and "z" as a study of exactly that sort of procedure.

The other point is timing. I never saw the word "advisor" in a book or a "z" in the "ise" words until the late 1970s if not later. Now I see them everywhere. They existed beforehand but the changes have been widespread.

As those changes are comparatively recent, they can be dismissed as modish for the rest of our lifetimes. Business and the new Civil Service insist on "z". They also increasingly use "advisor". I rest my case.