You say 'potatoe', I say 'potato'!

 

YOU SAY 'POTATOE'-

I SAY 'POTATO'! 

WHAT’S the world coming to when the vice-president of the USA cannot spell a simple word like ‘potato’?

During his “back to basics” education campaign, the dynamic Dan Quayle stunned school kids when he told a puzzled pupil who wrote the word correctly on the board that a letter was missing. 

When the 12-year-old dutifully added an ‘e’, Mr Quayle smiled and clapped before being taken to task by the class. I ask you - what chance is there of him getting his own name right when signing important documents? 

 

 

It never ceases to amaze me how many people in this country get the most basic spellings wrong - and then insist they’re right because they’ve always written it that way but were never corrected at school. 

Common howlers include suprise, neccessary and seperate plus a strange confusion between there and their and the words two, to and too. And how many pub or restaurant menus have you seen with six different spellings of spaghetti bolognese? 

We journalists are not exempt. An editor once showed me a job application he sent back to a so-called ‘senior’ reporter on which he had circled eight absurd errors - including “Deer Sir”! 

 

OK, some gaffes are obvious one-offs due to typing errors or carelessness, but most, I suspect, are down to lazy (or even illiterate) teachers, who seem to give spelling a pretty low priority these days. A friend of mine, who has taught in primary schools for over 20 years, openly admits she does not recognise spelling errors because she is dyslexic! 

To Americans this week ‘Desperate’ Dan was merely living up to his media image of an ignorant rat - spelt with a ‘p’ of course.      

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CAN YE HELP ME OOT? 

 

THURSDAY saw the last in the current TV series by that hilarious Glaswegian folk hero Rab C. Nesbitt - hilarious if you could understand a word he said, of course. 

In frustration I turned to Ceefax subtitles, but all they did was spell out the Scottish words without translating them into the Queen’s English (eg “Whit day ye want - a boot aboot the melt?” etc). 

I still have no idea what a wee swatch, sally, leech, mockit or glaikit article is, when it’s aboot. Perhaps youse Jocko readers in Corby can help me oot?

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AND FINALLY...  

MY HEARTY congratulations to paranoid England soccer boss Graham Taylor. Mr Miseryguts was the only manager in the European Finals to run out of excuses before each match! 

(This column was originally published in the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph on Saturday, 20 June, 1992).