I always misspell remunerate as renumerate. And I do so with a cheerful memory. I had a Junior High school teacher, Miss Toadfree, who was a spelling stickler and passionately hated me. Why would an English teacher so despise a student? It had to do with my sister.
My sister was in a four-year nursing degree program. Her regular habit was to discard her used texts in my room. While my regular classroom curriculum in the New York City Schools held no interest for me, college textbooks brimmed with goodies. The advantage was that I could hop and skip through these as my interests developed and not follow an externally determined course of study. I could explore without restrictions.
Over a couple of years, I developed a knowledge of bacteriology and anatomy that would be helpful in later life. But the text in linguistics got me into trouble with Miss Toadfree.
One chapter in the text discussed developing the English language as a Creole amalgamation. One of the points it labored over was English’s erratic and sometimes inconstant spelling system. My dissertation on this theory in Miss Toadfree’s class one day added to her growing and passionate distaste for me. I delivered my take on spelling as she attacked my quiz results in front of the entire class. Remuneration was, of course, on the quiz.
I was off to the principal’s in a fast New York minute and failed the quiz.
Now, it was known widely at that school that I had a taste for absurdist revenge – nasty nicknames, truly nasty stuff dredged up from Shakespeare ( thou beetle-browed, bug-eared, whoreson of a knave!). So I was on top of the list of suspects when a typed sign appeared on Miss Toadfree’s classroom door – “Welcome to Toad Hall.” My fan base at the school all hated Miss Toadfree, and loved the sign. In May, I was summarily graduated and shuffled off to NYC’s worst High School.
About a year later, I enrolled at the Greenwich Village Lyceum for Folk Musicians, majoring in folksinging. Thank you, Miss Toadfree, wherever you are. I hope the renumeration is adequate!
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Well, heck. I was reading it as renumerate. Sounded right to me. 🤐 No, Autocorrect. We are not changing the spelling.
another vote for flexible spelling!
English is a whore. Many of the most fascistic English teachers refuse to accept this.
My JHS Spanish teacher lovedd to point out that unlike English, Spanish spelling made sense…the English teachers were pissed.
I don’t get that competition between languages but I remember that same story. 🙂
english has a chip on it’s shoulder left over from the Normans.
I don’t blame it! If it hadn’t been for them we’d have a nice Germanic language but NOOOOOOO. And to make the speaking of English illegal? Really, a bridge too far. BUT… I love this language. As Camille Paglia said — in one of her rhapsodies on English,
“What fascinated me about English was what I later recognized as its hybrid etymology: blunt Anglo-Saxon concreteness, sleek Norman French urbanity, and polysyllabic Greco-Roman abstraction. The clash of these elements, as competitive as Italian dialects is invigorating, richly entertaining, and often funny, as it is to Shaskespeare, who gets tremendous effects out of their interplay. The dazzling multiplicity of sounds and word choices in English makes it brilliantly suited to be a language of poetry..”
I’d rather listen to Italian. I think Chinese is brilliant with ideograms and no verb tenses and poetry that doesn’t just say but shows, but yeah… My book, “Martin of Gfenn” is set in a Swiss village (real place) named Gfenn which is an archaic German word (and spelling! for “swamp.” The word still exists in English. I love it. ❤️
I am left speechless, Martha. english lacks the words….oooooooh
Hahaha 😆