No, what I have an issue with is something small, simple, and easily overlooked by most. Probably why most people don't notice or care when it gets misspelled.
It's the difference between breath and breathe.
Just one extra "e" on the end makes a WORLD of difference. The difference between taking a breath and being able to breathe.
Do you catch my drift?
(okay, this is coming from the girl who can't say "draught" as "draft." and constantly wants to say it as drought, but with an ah instead of a oh sound. I also say it geo-graphy, photo-graphy and bio-graphy. Make fun of me all you want but at least I can breathe with one breath, as opposed to being able to breath with one breathe, which makes no gorram sense whatsoever)
And lightning and lightening. I know in some areas lightning, the phenomenon of electricity creating sparks and light in the sky is SAID with the extra syllable (like athelete, when really, there's just no extra e in between), but one is lightning and one is the lightening of the sky in the case of lightning.
And athelete just isn't a word whatsoever. Athlete! Athlete! Think Mathlete without the M! (Mathlete isn't a word either, but for whatever reason, Mathletes are not called mathaletes or matheletes, probably because they are not athletes who say it athelete to sound smarter, when it just makes them sound dumb.)
Ugh, and saying "author" like "Arthur." It's another one of those area things (lightening, I'm looking at you), but one is the name of the person who wrote the book and one is just a name. Add the "u", it won't kill you, and it will help me realize you're not talking about Arthurian legend, and/or Mr. Weasley, and instead you're talking about Sir Thomas Mallory or J.K. Rowling.
But I was here to talk about breath and breathe, and it ended up being faster than I intended...
Sorry, I've had a whole day off, and spent it saving some of my favorite fan fictions to text documents so I can read them when the internet is off or down or I just don't have it, and I noticed the breath/breathe thing, and I remembered I dislike it. And then other things occurred to me while I was writing. It's tough living my life.
Okay, back to radio silence.
Until next time, dear readers
Me
As an English minor I enjoyed this a lot! Going through and editing my work I've seen that I have had difficulty with 'breath' and 'breathe'. There for a while I had to put my tongue between my two front teeth and make the 'th' sound...to make the distinction...and say 'No E...equal noun' 'E equals Verb'
ReplyDeleteBut as much as the minor may do for me on paper...we both know that I have my quarrels with other words too ;-)
-PG