adrian is rad

9/30/2008

I feel sorry for ESL people

Filed under: — adrian @ 8:15 am

arrangement keeps the ‘e’ but judgment doesn’t?

7 Responses to “I feel sorry for ESL people”

  1. Colin Says:

    Yeah, my wife just said to our daughter that she should be thankful that she’s learning English as her first language since it’s so complicated. I think this came up when we were explaining to her the appropriate contexts for using lose, loss, lost, and loose. She had been saying that she “losed” something.

  2. mummy Says:

    What about trying to explain the difference in spelling for though, enough and thorough??

  3. jan Says:

    or pronouncing bomb, comb and tomb…

  4. jan Says:

    what if it says “judg(e)ment” in my dictionary?

  5. adrian Says:

    Jan, I think the most common spelling is judgment.

  6. jan Says:

    In Great Britain and many of its former colonies, “judgement” is still the correct spelling; but ever since Noah Webster decreed the first E superfluous, Americans have omitted it. Many of Webster’s crotchets have faded away (each year fewer people use the spelling “theater,” for instance); but even the producers of Terminator 2: Judgment Day chose the traditional American spelling. If you write “judgement” you should also write “colour.”

    source: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/judgement.html

  7. adrian Says:

    Interesting. Thanks, Jan. That still doesn’t quite explain why we keep the ‘e’ in arrangement.

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