Posted on 03/05/2006 6:06:52 AM PST by Loyalist
Between them, city councillors Howard Moscoe and Glenn De Baeremaeker have more vowels in their names than most of their colleagues.
But they'd like to buy one more -- the letter U -- for the city.
On Monday, they will try to sweet-talk the administration committee into a policy to buy software with a built-in Canadian spell-check.
"It is our attempt to keep a little bit of Canadian culture alive and well and not to be smothered by the great elephant next door called the United States," said Mr. De Baeremaeker, who represents Scarborough Centre.
"With all the rocket scientists out there, surely when we have our spell-checks they can put in a Canadian dictionary spelling."
The councillor conceded, with a laugh, that the issue may not be at the top of the city's list of worries -- there is that budget hole that's hundreds of millions of dollars deep.
And Mr. De Baeremaeker is not sure whether it would cost extra to add "u" to words, such as labour and colour.
Administration committee member Doug Holyday, a noted penny-pincher, doubts the idea will fly. "It's not a critical issue," Mr. Holyday said.
Don't you mean Scarboro Center?
Frankly, I think that we should hold what we've got. Language is a thing that changes with time as it is. I have notice the appearance of new words in the dictionary that have come about as a result of poor grammar and mispronunciation of words. The word "preventative" which replaced "preventive" and the phrase "He pleaded guilty" instead of "He pled guilty" come to mind.
All in good fun :-)
He was my great-great uncle. :)
What on earth are these dumb councillors thinking if that is all they are worried about? Crime is rampant, people are leaving, roads are crumbling, subways are overcrowded and there is a $500 million deficit in the Center of the Universe.
"Another classical distinction is between "in hospital" (CAN) and "in the hospital" (US), although lately Canadians have been substituting "on the waiting list."
Also, it always struck me as highly pretentious to use the
"went to university" distinction without the "went to trade school" option.
More to this than meets the eye. They must be selling a software program.
It is easy to add on your own spell check database to your wordprocessing program.
Right on, eh! :-)
Robin Williams is not a Canadian.
Date of birth (location)
21 July 1951
Chicago, Illinois, USA
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000245/
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