Mini Spelling Rant

[muckefuck]

Okay, it's official: I have now seen "Gandhi" spelled with the h in every possible position within the word. If you want to get my attention, you'll have to write it over the a or something.

Comments

[bunj.livejournal.com]

Hgandi?

[prilicla.livejournal.com]

I almost fell into this trap, too, but note that he specifies "within the word." While even the worst speller can probably avoid Hgandi, except as an actual typo, it's interesting that people don't seem to put the "h" at the end, either. Has anyone seen it spelled "Gandih"?

[sconstant.livejournal.com]

Google doesn't have a plausibe Hgandi, but:

http://www.dingwall.bc.ca/history/main.php3?cat=places&listing=Salt_March_1930

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

171 hits on Google. sigh

[go-wade-in.livejournal.com]

ghahandhi?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

You forgot an "h" after the "n".

[go-wade-in.livejournal.com]

i did at first, but then decided it would be completely predictable. notice the wrong spelling.

[grahamwest.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of a Christmas special of Blackadder where Baldrick becomes the first person not to get ANY of the letters right. So in that spirit:

Kumty

[0595.livejournal.com]

Wasn't Gandhi like, one of the founding fathers of the declaration of independence or something like that?

You asked for it, bucko...

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

Just IMAGINE the alt codes for THIS!

Yes, if you're referring to one of the greats of Indian history, then yes, it is Gandhi; it's become standardized into the English language as such, so others ARE misspellings (just as in Japanese, while Toukyou is technically a valid romanization, it is considered "misspelled" in English). But you have two problems in other references :

a) The roman script is seriously inferior to write something like Devanāgāri, considering how much more rich in unique vowels and consonants it is than, say, English.

THUS

b) If you know it's not in reference to Gandhi, then you don't KNOW that "Ghandi" is a misspelling (it CAN be another Hindi word), or for that matter, how that word is pronounced. Indeed this can be the gutteral "g" found in Dutch (the voiced X) OR it can be an ASPIRATED G, since those are also seperate letters and sounds in Devanāgāri, and the distinction is unknown since romanization from Hindi, like other romanizations, vary depending on the user (see the romanization nightmares from, say, Cantonese.)

Re: You asked for it, bucko...

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

a) The roman script is seriously inferior to write something like Devanāgāri, considering how much more rich in unique vowels and consonants it is than, say, English.

I'll grant you the unique consonants, but unique vowels? Name three that Devanāgarī (sp!) has that English lacks. On the other hand, many English vowels cannot be written unambiguously in Devanāgarī (or, for simplicity's sake, Devanagri).

I appreciate your point, Raj, but it's pretty clear from context when someone is talking about Mahatma. I only had to view a few of those hits to know that at least some of them, if not all 171, were misspellings for "Gandhi".

Re: You asked for it, bucko...

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

Without adding onto the base Roman set of characters via lines, dots, et al, it can be rather ambiguous. When you write au or ai, is it the seperate a/u (a/i), or is it the vowel that gets written as au (ai) but is, in itself, a unique vowel? Most people will, unfortunately, drop the line over the vowel, thus adding no distinction between a and ā, etc., thus giving multiple possibilities once you write back into Devanāgarī.

As for your query : R, e, and ai (standard pronunciations) are three vowels that are lacking in English. Ai is much less open than the a in bank (though is, in some regions pronounced in a way that rhymes with "my"), the e is much shorter (akin to French; again, American English dipthong-izes this), and people think you're on crack if you tell them r is a vowel (I've had arguments. I'm serious).

So long as they mean Mahatma, then it's misspelled, and the case is closed. Just giving the possibility of it NOT being a reference to him. I used to work with a Mr. Gandi who worked in our pharmacy, and I always "misspelled" it, and he kept correcting me. :: shrug ::

I just remembered! I love "moon and dot" ^_^

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

(Oh, with a candrabindu, you get 10 freely (key word here as some vowels in English are involuntarily nasalized depending upon the kind of English one speaks) nasalized vowels with also don't exist in English :: chuckle ::)

[currawong.livejournal.com]

Gandy?