english lesson

i'm awake very early on a sunday morning, why? cos i had to go for qing ming... grr. and of all places, where is my grandma laid to rest? lor 8 geylang. cos the lao ah peks who are spending eternalty there must be having a field day.

anyway, i was talking to luyi abt the word "programme". i had spelt is as "program" in one of my cover letters, and i started to panic, cos i thought i had made a mistake.

so, after talking to her, i realised that "program" is US spelling and "programme" is british spelling.

now, this sucks cos everyone who knows me knows that i have a spelling problem. i honestly think i'm mildly dyslexic... at least i don't see birds fly backwards eh.

SO, i asked my mum the english teacher her take on "programme"... and she said, yea, "programme" is british and "program" is american... cos she said the americans are lazy so they leave out letters, and have as little letters as possible in their words, eg. colour vs color.

and so my mum goes on to say, "it's the same with centre and center" and i was like, "WHAT?"

now, i've always been using "center" to mean middle of something, like the center of the table, or center of the room... and "centre" to mean a place, like shopping centre, city centre.

but apparently, i'm wrong! holy crap... and this after i consulted millions (ok, maybe just 2) dictionarys to convince myself.

didya guys know that? or am i still the only person in the world to know that?!!

ok, so comes my grapple with the whole english and british spelling... why can't there just be one standard english system?!! i mean, hey, it's bad enough that my english is under attack by the bigots who think singlish isn't english. comon!

u speak queen's english? i speak PCK english. i than power lar!

yes, so now i've got an additional task, to differeniate my audience, to write british english to a brit, american english to an american, and singlish to a singaporean.

tania @ 7:21 PM | |