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    Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary: Or Why Can't Anybody Spell
    Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary: Or Why Can't Anybody Spell
    Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary: Or Why Can't Anybody Spell
    Ebook273 pages1 hour

    Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary: Or Why Can't Anybody Spell

    By Vivian Cook

    2.5/5

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    About this ebook

    "It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word." -- Andrew Jackson
    Weird or wierd? Necessary or neccessary? Recomend or recommend? English spelling is fiendish, but that doesn't mean you can't have fun with it.
    Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary is at once a celebration of spelling and a solace to anyone who has ever struggled with the arcane rules of the English language. As amusing as he is informative, Vivian Cook thrills the reader with more than a hundred entries -- from photographs of hilariously misspelled signs to quizzes best taken in private to schadenfreude-rich examples of spelling errors of literary greats -- that will tickle the inner spelling geek in every reader.
    It all adds up to a gem of a book that takes a wry look at the hodgepodge evolution of spelling and the eccentric way it actually works.
    Difficult Words Spelling Test
    Circle whichever one is right.
    1. dessicate desiccate desicate
    2. ecstasy exstacy ecstacy
    3. adress adres address
    4. dumbel dumbbell dumbell
    5. accomodate accommodate acommodate
    6. necesary neccesary necessary
    7. liaison liaision liason
    8. pronounciation pronounceation pronunciation
    9. ocurence occurrence occurence
    10. embarass embaras embarrass
    11. brocolli broccolli broccoli
    12. refering referring refferring
    13. cemetery semetary cemetary
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtria Books
    Release dateSep 13, 2005
    ISBN9780743289993
    Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary: Or Why Can't Anybody Spell
    Author

    Vivian Cook

    Vivian Cook, author of the bestselling Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary, or Why Can't Anybody Spell, is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University. He has written widely on English, linguistics, and writing, and is a well known speaker in many countries including Chile, Japan, Cuba and Canada.

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    Reviews for Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary

    2.5/5

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    • 2/5
      I didn't find this book as entertaining or informative as I had hoped. It is a collection of lists and examples that seem to be just stuff the author has amassed and decided to throw together. It certainly gives reasons why nobody can spell - our language is nuts! But I didn't really learn anything new, and I'm not even sure some of the information is accurate (for example, the author seems to think the word "fracas" has a silent "s" - maybe that's a British thing).
    • 3/5
      This is a strange book and I'm not sure how well it travels outside the specific region for which it appears to have been written (southern England). There are some fascinating history lessons on English spelling but many of the more modern examples don't make sense outside of specific dialects. For example: our and awe aren't homophones where I live. They aren't even close! There are also some examples of "American" example which may been regionally correct but aren't nationally correct. Here are some examples: dialog, glamour, catalog. In my neck of the woods, they are spelled: dialogue, glamor, catalogue (except in LIS which goes for the catalog option). Then there is the weird spelling of hiccup (hiccough in the book). I've NEVER seen it spelled hiccough and even found a couple examples from the BBC website of the hiccup spelling. In conclusion, I think this book would have been stronger if it had just stayed with one dialect and its history of spelling rules.
    • 2/5
      The subtitle is actually somewhat misleading here, since it's not actually about why nobody can spell, but rather just a series of anecdotes and quizzes about spelling in general. This is not a book you just sit down and read all at once, but rather something you pick up from time to time and read a few pages. Much of the volume consists of examples of nonstandard (or plain old incorrect) spelling, from lists of band names to photos of business logos. My favorite parts were the ones that dealt with the evolution of language; some of the humor essays on spelling were pretty amusing as well. I suppose if you're obsessed with proper spelling you might enjoy this one, but honestly I'm not surprised I was able to get it for all of a dollar at Borders. It's just a bit too niche for me.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book thoroughly: my spelling is shockingly bad - which caused a few problems when I worked as a cataloguer in the library! However, it has improved in leaps and bounds since I started working for a newspaper and although I still can't spell, I am now thoroughly irritated by people who spell even worse than I do.There are tests in this books and exercises and all sorts of interesting ways in which one can gague one's level as a speller. Mine was pretty absymal by the way - although I got cemetery and accommodate correct I was stymied by broccoli. Which really should have a double "l"...This book will make the ideal gift for a subeditor, a teacher or anyone else who has to suffer through the unnecessary spelling errors perpetrated by the likes of me, but is an interesting, informative and entertaining read for just about anybody - except it would seem for my fellow reviewers on libarything who were surprisingly unimpressed.
    • 3/5
      Spotty. Some good information on the English language. Fun insights into word origins and resultant spelling. But, a lot of lists that are just too long to be interesting, and began to seem pretty repititious about halfway through. Best if left by on a side-table to be picked up and browsed once in awhile, but there are better books about words than this to leave on the side table.Having said that, it would be a good reference to keep in the library, except that it has no table of contents nor index that would allow you to find that interesting discussion of the origins of some spelling convention.Also, can be confusing to the American reader, in that references to spelling and pronunciation that are particulary England English are not always noted, so that some of the information would seem to make no sense until you hear the words with an ear towards how it's pronounced on BBC-America..
    • 1/5
      Tries to be alot of things to alot of people and ends up not being much of anything to anyone - found myself skipping sections. Interesting in parts but not enough to make me want to read it again - will be disposing of soon.
    • 2/5
      I suspect this was an attempt to get in on the interest generated by Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. It disappoints. I also wonder if the irony of the first review here was intended ("A humourous look at spelling and gramar.")I shall stand by my 2 star rating - I didn't enjoy the book.
    • 4/5
      A humourous look at spelling and gramar.

    Book preview

    Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary - Vivian Cook

    Praise for the UK edition of

    Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary

    "Cook serves up a pleasantly diverting mishmash of word lists, puzzles, historical digressions and Private Eye–style howlers…as a browsable treat for self or others, it will fit that stocking-shaped gap in the gift market very neatly."

    —Boyd Tonkin, Independent

    A serious study of orthography in the trendy form of a book of lists.

    —Times Literary Supplement

    I started laughing as soon as I opened the book.

    —Barry Cryer

    First-rate bedtime browsing…will surely find a place in many cultivated loos.

    —Richard Jenkyns, Prospect

    TOUCHSTONE

    Rockefeller Center

    1230 Avenue of the Americas

    New York, NY 10020

    Copyright © 2004 by Vivian Cook and Robert Cook

    All rights reserved,

    including the right of reproduction

    in whole or in part in any form.

    Originally published in Great Britain in 2004 by Profile Books Ltd

    Published by arrangement with Profile Books Ltd

    TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

    Designed by Nicky Barneby

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Cook, V. J. (Vivian James).

    [Why can’t anybody spell]

    Accomodating brocolli in the cemetary, or, Why can’t anybody spell? / Vivian Cook.—1st Touchstone ed.

        p. cm.

    A Touchstone book.

    1. English language—Orthography and spelling—Problems, exercises, etc. I. Title.

    PE1145.2.C65 2005

    421’.52—dc22                          2005041891

    ISBN-10: 0-7432-8999-4

    ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-8999-3

    Visit us on the World Wide Web:

    http://www.SimonSays.com

    Introduction

    Should We Worry About Spelling?

    Many people argue that English spelling is terrible. George Bernard Shaw reckoned that the English spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is easy to find words like their/there/they’re with the same sounds but different spellings. Some words have unique spellings all of their own, such as colonel and yacht. Fifteen-year-olds can’t write ten lines without making at least one spelling mistake, and adults struggle with words such as accommodate and broccoli all their lives.

    By contrast, Noam Chomsky, the greatest linguist of our time, claims the current spelling of English is a near optimal system. He feels that spelling that departs from the pronunciation sometimes helps us to understand what we are reading. Silent letters like the g in sign connect one word to other words in which the letters are not silent, like signature; the fact that the past tense ending -ed is said in three different ways, t (liked), d (played), id (waited) but written only as -ed, makes clear their common meaning.

    The difference between Shaw and Chomsky comes down to how they think spelling works. One of its functions is indeed to show the sounds of words. The word dog links the letters to the sounds one by one—d, o and g. Italian and Finnish use such links virtually all the time. But in English the correspondence between letters and sounds is usually far less straightforward. Sometimes one letter corresponds to several sounds; the letter a, for instance, has three different sounds in brat, bravo and brave. Sometimes two letters link to one sound—the th in thin or the ng in wrong. The sequence of letters can be out of step with the sequence of sounds; the u in guess shows the pronunciation of the letter g, which occurs before it. Our problems with spelling are often due to not knowing the rules, say the doubling of c and m in accommodation or the consonants that go before particular vowels—cemetery (c is pronounced s before e) versus camel (c is pronounced k before a).

    With some written symbols, you either know what they mean or you don’t, say $, # or %. You can’t use the spelling to work out how they are said. The second function of spelling is, then, to show what words mean. Common words like the and of connect directly to their meanings in our minds, rather than being converted into sounds letter by letter. Unique words have to be remembered as one-off spellings, such as sapphire or chamois (shammy leather). Some systems of writing, like Chinese, work primarily by linking whole symbols to meanings in this way. To use English spelling, you have not only to connect letters and sounds but also to remember a host of individual words, whether frequent ones like an or unusual ones like supersede. In other words, English uses spelling both for sounds, as assumed by Shaw, and for meaning, as believed by Chomsky.

    English spelling is far more systematic than most people suspect. The best-known rule, I before e except after c, applies to only eleven out of the 10,000 most common words of English—eight forms of receive, plus ceiling, receipt and perceive. Other less familiar rules work far better, for instance the rule that a surname with the same pronunciation as an ordinary word can take a double consonant, Pitt and Carr rather than pit and car, or have an extra e, Greene and Wilde instead of green and wild.

    The great asset of English has always been its flexibility. Starting with a stock of letters borrowed from the Romans, the Irish and German tribes, it has evolved with the English language for 1,500 years. In the Old English spoken by the Anglo-Saxons every letter corresponded to a sound in words such as f der (father) and

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