[mea] Re: "Honourary" Mahatma Gandhi Walkway at The Forks
- From: cheri.frazer@xxxxxxxxxx
- To: mea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 15:08:52 -0500
I wish we could bring Katherine back for another speech. She was
fascinating. She talked about how dictionaries used to be prescriptive but
then made the move to purely descriptive, capturing what's happening with
language as it evolves rather than trying to pin it down. If I remember
correctly she didn't like honourary either but was out-voted. One of the
funnier parts of her speech had to do with slang for doughnuts! She said
there are huge regional variations for the meanings of jam buster, Boston
creme, Bismark, jelly doughnut, and others I can't think of. A city
somewhere in Ontario refers to a Boston creme as a "yellow jam buster."
Oh, the horror. But it's not as bad as some regions of the US that call a
turtle a gopher and an elastic band a "gum band". People are goofy.
I vote for Ye Olde Honourary Mahatma Gandhi Way!
From:
Karen McElrea <karenmcelrea@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To:
"mea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <mea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date:
2013-08-15 02:50 PM
Subject:
[mea] Re: "Honourary" Mahatma Gandhi Walkway at The Forks
Sent by:
mea-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
They should have spelled it "honorary," though, I agree - it looks odd!
Someone from Belfast writing on a forum on this question says that "the
OED mentions that 'honourary' was an alternative spelling in the 18th/19th
centuries." So maybe the sign should read "Ye Olde Honourary Mahatma
Gandhi Way."
Public Works and Government Services Canada's Translation Bureau site
states that "In Canada, honour not honor is the preferred spelling for the
noun and the verb. Both honorary and honourary are widespread in Canada
[really?], although honourary is rarely used in the rest of the world."
But the real Canadian authority, Katherine Barber, says on her Wordlady
site, "A recent Facebook poll I conducted about the spelling of this word
had 39 well-educated Canadians opting for "honourary" versus 22 for
'honorary,' similar to the results we found when we conducted a survey for
the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, as a result of which it is possibly the
only dictionary of current English to include "honourary" as a spelling
variant."
So popular vote rules our dictionary. In what field were these people
well-educated, exactly? Were the 22 also well-educated? Was such a small
sample also the basis for its inclusion in the dictionary? How would this
same group of people have answered the same question for "humourously"?
To: mea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [mea] "Honourary" Mahatma Gandhi Walkway at The Forks
From: cheri.frazer@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 13:14:13 -0500
An Alert Reader (stole that term from Dave Barry!) has pointed out that
the new signs at The Forks spell honorary incorrectly.
You can register your concern at 311@xxxxxxxxxxx and/or contact CTV News;
their crews were filming the signs today. Where are the Raging Grammarians
when you need them?!
-C.
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