Garth Wallace wrote:
>
> It's not a matter of pronunciation. "Your" and "you're" are
> homophones--they are pronounced exactly the same. It's a spelling
> mistake, like spelling "read" (past tense) "red".
>
I wonder. Do any other languages have the the scope for puns and other
"word games" that English is so suitable for? Also, do they have the
same phonetic clashes as English, e.g. yaw/you're/your, read/red,
threw/through, rose/rows/roes.
An extreme example is this, which passes through just about every
spellchecker (Mozilla's barfs only on chequer), and is phonetically
correct, but grammatical garbage:
Sum of you may not sea any problems with the following:
The Spelling Chequer (or Poet Tree Without Mist Aches)
======================================================
I have a little spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marks four my revue
Miss steaks eye cannot sea
Each thyme when eye have struck the quays.
I weight for it to say
If watt eye rote is wrong or rite
It shows me straight a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two late
And eye can put the error rite
No I shall find it grate.
I've run this poem threw it
I'm shore yore policed to know
It's letter perfect in its weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
--
"I would rather gnaw my leg off, pack the bleeding stump with salt,
and run in a circle on broken glass than have to deal with any
Microsoft product on a regular basis."
-- Dan Zimmerman,
Vanderbilt University, when asked about Windows NT.
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