Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Things I Can't Stand About British English, Part One
They consistently use the word "orientate" in place of what I consider the correct word "orient." Adding extra syllables to a perfectly good word does not make it any better; it just makes that word harder to pronounce and sillier.
2 comments:
The single worst thing about British English is "maths". "Mathematics" is not a plural form of "mathematic", but "maths" suggests "math" is really plural. If so, why not "chemistries"? Why not "econs" rather than "econ" as shorthand for "economics"?
I don't much like "aluminium" either, but there's less justification for that. "Wireless" is pretty lame compared to "radio", come to that.
Some of us Brits do try to drop the 'ate' from 'orientate', you know.
At least we don't drop useful prepositions all over the place. As in, 'I wrote John to tell him about...'
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