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Engaging/ Imaginative spelling or correct spelling?

  • Aug 8, 2016
  • 2 min read

Do not worry this post is not designed to forgive me bad spelling as I am pretty good. If there is a bad spelling in my works over recent years it is more likely a typo than my inability to spell. But (oh and I did mean to start the sentence with but) here is where I am weird(probably not the only part of me that is) as I love inappropriate spelling, different word forms and even tech speak. I count Feersum Endjinn by Iain M Banks among my favourite reads, also the machine speak of Dan Simmons (and earlier by Gregory Benford) in Olympos and even the trinary talk of dolphins where each utterance must be a haiku and a thought, sent together that David Brin postulated. After all compared to today's norms, Dickens, Shakespeare and Chaucer could not spell and the poor old Saxon that wrote down Beowulf was just an idiot. Except that we all know they were not and we know that Messers Brin and Benford have a wide range of doctorates between them, both advisers to NASA. Benford even helped teach Hawking astrophysics. I think that we have too narrow a view on spelling and that it should be more open. The first word that jumps to mind is Eskimo, the French Esquimaux is more expressive (and Impressive), its clarity greater.

Endjinn, that I mentioned earlier, to my perception is put together better in all way's than the natural "Engine". The word itself conjures the Jinn of the desert and swirling dervishes that steam describes in the air as it roils and boils with moisture and heat. It should most certainly be a steam Endjinn rather than a steam engine, where is the romance, the vision and the imagery? Many other words can be adapted and enhanced in the same way creating a vision of what the word means. I recommend this. I have never had the guts to use such enhancements in any of my books though I have written little pieces (as yet unpublished) that show the remarkable imagery created in such a simple task as a misspelling. But other's have and those adaptions of the language; shine. They do not detract, rather they add to the glorious mass of the English language that add's and adapts. Probably because we suspect that we are superior to other peoples, perhaps because we do not have a real urge to learn other languages being rather insular. Our language contains many words that are Latin, French, Italian, Anglo Saxon and I could write almost every language that the earth has spawned. All have a foot hold in English and that is what makes it great, let us make it greater still by adding imagery and poetry to the very words we write..

 
 
 

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