Skip to main content

What Thyme Is It?

Saturday, September 18, 2011
... where is the rhyme and rhythm with spelling...
I
struggle to spell any number of words in the English language and all of the ones in Greek, Spanish and Russian. I think it has something to do with the funny alphabets. But that aside, let’s face it, English is not easy on the mind or spirit when it comes to spelling and pronunciation. It doesn’t help that certain folks took it on themselves to fix the discrepancies, but only made it worse.
Two of my trouble words are: Rhyme and Rhythm.
It’s troubling because I am a student of the Theory of Music, I write songs and most songs have rhyme and rhythm. Fortunately you don’t have to be able to spell these words to be a songwriter or musician. At least, so I thought, when I signed up for Music Theory 101 in university.
I think I have rhyme down because if I can spell thyme without any problem I should be able to spell rhyme. Just switch T with R. Bingo. Until a moment of self-doubt kicks in. Such an odd looking word.
Rhythm is even worse. I’m still working on a fix. If I start with rhyme and drop the E I have rhym. That’s close, but I need a TH in there. So, rhym becomes rhythm, but I always seem to forget where to insert it and have to look it up. Pass me a dictionary.
I prefer these spellings: Rime and Rethem. Those ones I don’t have to look up.
Posted 2011/09/18 at 13h22ET in Words.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

If Only We Could Agree

Monday, June 11, 2012 ... have you been accused of misspelling a word you know is correct ... S usanne O’Leary wrote an interesting article on her experience with the variations of the English language in different countries. You know the obvious ones like colour with or without a “u” but less obvious ones like travelled versus traveled. Growing up in Sweden she learnt English in school—the UK variation. In publishing her books, she read reviews where she was criticized for improper spelling. False accusations as it turns out. While I write tire and cozy, it’s not incorrect to write tyre or cosy. Same language. Both accepted. Just different. You can read her write-up here along with the numerous comments posted by readers. I found it interesting, but that’s me. As a Canadian I deal with this issue everyday. I feel her pain when she’s criticized for something based on ignorance. No fun. I was told by a boss that “data are” isn’t correct. It should be “data is.” Read
2 comments
Read more

Days 9-108: Writing a Novel—The Deep Blue Hold

November 25th, 2016 to March 5, 2017 Note: Unedited writings from my notebook for this novel. Square bracket items represent added comments. At 15:53 Office ... And so began a three month odyssey away from writing this novel, The Deep Blue Hold. ... W herein I try to explain why I stopped working on this novel. The shortest answer is I gave up. The short explanation is I struggle with mental health issues (MDD, GAD, PTSD) that paralyse me at times. When it happens, I’m not able to do much of anything. Don’t want to do anything and that includes things one might expect to enjoy. For a while I spent time trying to create some thirty-second videos that would play a word puzzle like a crossword. Here’s the clue. Here’s the blank spaces. And after an interval, one of the letters would appear until all the letters appear. A bit of a crossword puzzle in that sometimes you come to a word where crossover words give you certain letters and you have to fill in the rest. A
Post a Comment
Read more

Words: BONE—GONE—LOAN—BOAN

Friday, March 31, 2017 You’d think BONE would rhyme with GONE but no. This is the English language after all. But BONE does rhyme with LOAN so we’ll spell it BOAN. It will take some time to update all the existing writings but it can be done. Meanwhile, if you smash up your car, the insurance company will allow you to get a LOANER and if you happen to meet the right person you may get a BOANER. boan Post comments on facebook page Posted 2017/03/31 at 17h28ET in Words .
Post a Comment
Read more