Words with more than one spelling
Learning English Vocabulary
BBC
4.5 • 523 Ratings
🗓️ 7 November 2022
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Disk or disc? Confused about which one to use? Finn and Catherine talk about spelling.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a download from BBC Learning English. To find out more, visit our website. |
| 0:07.0 | Six-minute vocabulary. |
| 0:09.1 | From BBC LearningEnglish.com. |
| 0:14.0 | Hello, welcome to six-minute vocabulary with me, Catherine. |
| 0:18.1 | And me, Finn. |
| 0:20.6 | And today we're talking about words that have more than one spelling. |
| 0:25.8 | Let's start by listening to Jack. |
| 0:28.5 | He's a professor of linguistics, |
| 0:30.6 | and he's talking about changes in the English language. |
| 0:34.5 | While you listen, think about this question. |
| 0:37.4 | How do you think the word disc is usually spelled in British English? |
| 0:42.3 | Today, most of the influence on English spelling comes from North America. |
| 0:47.3 | For example, the words analogue, disc, inquire are spelled differently in American English. And these spellings are often used |
| 0:56.5 | in British English too. And that's generally all right by us. However, there are other spelling |
| 1:02.9 | differences that we don't think are correct in British English. For we Brits, it's definitely |
| 1:09.3 | wrong to spell colour or neighbour without the U. |
| 1:13.4 | It's also wrong to spell theatre in the American way. |
| 1:18.6 | So we asked you, how is disc usually spelt in British English? |
| 1:23.8 | And the answer is that it's usually spelled with a C, so D-I-S-C. |
| 1:29.3 | But in American English it's spelled D-I-S-K. |
| 1:34.3 | So two different spellings there, but it's okay to spell disk with a K in British English |
| 1:40.3 | when we're talking about computers and computing. What other words were mentioned? |
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