Why do people spell bought as brought?

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singist said:
Earlier, someone posted something along the lines of "the question should be, who cares?"; the answer is, all those people who want to be able to communicate with the same language, not the bastardised version that someone just made up because they are thick and can't be arsed to learn.
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Since Americans have bastardised our language, should we point out their silly spellings?
 
NathanE said:
What about when you read things where it says something like:

"Product A is better then Product B."

I've no idea who started this off but it seems to be a fairly recent (past 10 years) thing.

I've also read the odd BBC News article that suffers from this mistake. Which does make me worry about the quality of reporters/editors they are hiring these days.
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That really annoys me, it's so weird how people are doing that, I've only really noticed it over the last year or two though.
I think the more you read mistakes like that, the more it imprints it in you, and eventually if you read that enough you will start making the same mistake.

I agree that people should make posts that are understandable, the odd typo or a misplaced apostrophe nobody really cares about (except the grammar nazis).

singist said:
No one expects perfection and most people here understand that the forums are for informal chat where one doesn't have to be an English graduate but the standard that some think is acceptable just shows them to be thoughtless plonkers.
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This pretty much sums it up, everyone has a different level of what constitutes an acceptable level of English. IMO getting their/there/they're, brought/bought, except/accept is pretty basic.
 
ChrisJSY said:
One problem is that when you try to correct someone or tell them how it is supposed to be they get all defensive. Are we supposed to let people use our language incorrectly these days?
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I agree.
My mum get's defensive when i correct her! I think she's started to pick it up from my niece and nephew. Their grammar is awful and apparently its because their teachers are not allowed to correct spelling mistakes or grammar!

absolutely ridiculous!

one of my friends also says brought instead of bought... drives me insane!!
 
I heard about it from my mum when my niece was still in primary a couple of years ago i think. I cant remember the exact reason but something about how it might "offend/upset" the child if they were to mark a mistake!

I thought the whole point of school was to learn. Shouldnt that include learning grammar and spelling?

Some of these new "laws/rules" are just ridiculous!
 
rypt said:
Since Americans have bastardised our language, should we point out their silly spellings?
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If you are refering to the use of 'z' rather than 's', I believe the American form is the original English spelling. British English later morphed to use 's'.

secretspy said:
I heard about it from my mum when my niece was still in primary a couple of years ago i think. I cant remember the exact reason but something about how it might "offend/upset" the child if they were to mark a mistake!
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My Auntie told me the same when I was last visiting. She is banned from correcting more than 3 spelling errors per page. The reason is to prevent disheartening the child.

I read through a few of the homework books she was marking and they were shockingly bad. Some kids reached their page quota in the second sentence!

secretspy said:
Some of these new "laws/rules" are just ridiculous!
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The spelling mistake that really annoys me at the moment is "ridiculous".

For some reason seeing this error makes me question my spelling more so than with other words. A few days back I even had to check the spelling to make sure it wasn't me being confused :(
 
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Fourstar said:
If you are refering to the use of 'z' rather than 's', I believe the American form is the original English spelling. British English later morphed to use 's'.
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No, I mean things like mould/mold, plough/plow, draught/draft, cheque/check, aluminium/aluminum, aeroplane/airplane, arse/ass, coupé/coupe, moustache/mustache, snigger/snicker, speciality/specialty and so on

The above are all changes Americans randomly made, rather than the UK version of the word evolving sensible while the Yanks stayed in the past (and the UK evolution mainly makes sense, random letters missing does not).
 
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