Catalog / protolog versus Catalogue / protologue

[Eric Dunbar]

> Hence check means exactly the same as cheque in American 'English'  That
> makes perfect sense

The wonderful vagaries of English with its identical spelling for such
different words and different spelling for the same sounds. phot = fish.
ph-ilosophy + w-o-men + igni-t-ion.

Then again, the local accent even modifies how you *should* logically spell
a word. Whenever I see color (syn. of colour ;) I can't help but think the
word is pronounced 'colon' but with r (as in r-oad) instead of n. Arguably
color is an arbitrarily incorrect spelling of colour (if you want to
standardise and simplify spelling), unless the spelling of colon is changed
to match the pronunciation established by color.

Until the English language standardises pronunciation, the only thing
spelling will reflect are your background (and possibly your nationalistic
preference and dislikes).

The Dutch have undergone an interesting transformation in the past two
decades in what is considered acceptable and official spelling. Bureau
(desk) is now spelled buro (as are other such words as cadeau (present/gift)
= kado). Both spellings of desk are pronounced b-ui-row (b-utane + s-ui-t +
row) (I can't find a suitable English word to perfectly reproduce the u from
buro... it's a "hard"/short u), whereas a literal Dutch speaker would
pronounce bureau as bu-r-ay-ou (bu-tane + a-r-il + s-ay + ou-t)).

Sorry for the digression.

Eric.