Rufio ([info]oracular_rufio) wrote in [info]linguaphiles,
@ 2005-12-04 12:23:00
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Entry tags:english

"Kidnaped" and "worshiped" are American English???
I recently bought the first five Harry Potter books in Spanish in order to practice reading it, and got down my big hulking Spanish/English dictionary in case it was necessary. At some point, I noticed that towards the front there was a short section in English about spelling idiosyncrasies in Spanish, and a significantly longer section in Spanish about spelling idiosyncrasies in English, about a third of which was dedicated to the differences between American and British English. I read through it, just to see how it was explained to potential learners of English, and bumped into a paragraph which stated that when adding affixes to verbs ending in a single consonant, the consonant was doubled in British English and not in American English. As British/American examples, it gave kidnapped/kidnaped and worshipped/worshiped. The latter are supposed to be American - but they look totally wrong to me. The dictionary was published in 2002. Where on earth did they get that these were correct spellings? Does anyone actually spell them this way?


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[info]carakarena
2005-12-04 07:37 pm UTC (link)
That reminds me of how my spellchecker always corrects "travelled" to "traveled." Weird. I always use the double consonants, but there are over 2 million hits for the word "worshiped" on Google. Go figure?

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[info]imluxionverdin
2005-12-05 12:58 am UTC (link)
What spell-checker do you use? If you use Bill Gates 'Word', then you can set the language, "Tools/Language/Set Language" to be your particular English variant (e.g. UK English, South Africa English, US English, etc.).

In British English it's "travelled" and in American English it's "traveled".

Both Amereican English and British English (according to Bill) accepted Worshiped and Worshipped.

However both British and American English would only accept kidnapped, with 2 p's, and both said kidnaped was wrong.

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[info]carakarena
2005-12-05 03:10 am UTC (link)
I use American English, so I'm sure that's why it's correcting "travelled" to "traveled". I didn't realize that this variant existed, so it always puzzled me to have that corrected.

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[info]yukinoitazuchi
2005-12-04 07:39 pm UTC (link)
I do not spell them that way. =)

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[info]crinklebat
2005-12-04 07:39 pm UTC (link)
I've seen "worshipped" spelled both ways. However, both double-p versions have way more hits on Google News than their corresponding single-p versions - so it looks like the single-p spellings are acceptable but unpopular, at least in the press as indexed by Google News.

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[info]sollersuk
2005-12-04 07:51 pm UTC (link)
I've seen the spelling, but only in American: it was explained to me as part of the early 19th century spelling reforms that were supposed to a) make the spelling more phonetic and b) be less English. The idea was to drop doubled consonants in present participles, but it leaves me at a loss how one is supposed to differentiate between the present participle of "sit" (over here, "sitting") and "site" ("siting") without having a horrendous stack of exceptions to the rule.

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[info]pynkbyrd
2005-12-04 09:10 pm UTC (link)
When I was younger, I was taught to double the final consonant if you were changing the tense in any way, and I have stuck with that. Woe is me when a lot of things like "travelling" are now picked up as wrong in my spell check. Color me prescriptivist, but dang it, if it was once "worshipped", it should still be worshipped!!!

(The only word I can think of off the top of my head that I'm happy we've mangled, though, is "jewelry.")

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[info]pne
2005-12-05 06:22 am UTC (link)
The rule I heard was that final consonants are only not doubled when the final syllable is unstressed.

So "sit" is "sitting" on both sides of the pond because the last syllable is stressed -> even the US doubles the consonant.

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[info]zubird
2005-12-04 07:49 pm UTC (link)
i think that's one of the things that the spelling reformer folks tried to change that nobody paid attention to. the only time i ever saw "kidnaped" was in an Encyclopedia Brown book. it looks to me like it should be pronounced with a long A.

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[info]marnanel
2005-12-04 07:53 pm UTC (link)
I could say the same about "traveled". :)

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[info]zubird
2005-12-05 01:24 am UTC (link)
fair enough. ;)
i think the American spelling reforms are kind of stupid too, but i also think Americans who affect British spellings are motivated by wild pretentiousness, so i stick with "color" and "traveler".

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[info]thesparque
2005-12-04 08:23 pm UTC (link)
The word "kidnaped", to me, would be pronounced with a long A sound. Like the nape of the neck. No way I'd ever spell kidnapped like that. Nor anywhere else I've ever seen it, either, honestly.

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[info]embryomystic
2005-12-05 01:18 am UTC (link)
IAWTC. (ha. How silly; I've never typed that before.) I'd only be okay with the single P if you did the Shakespearian thing and replace the E with an apostrophe: kidnap'd. Looks kind of weird, but still, better than kidnaped.

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[info]seilens
2005-12-04 08:48 pm UTC (link)
I don't spell them that way, and if I saw them spelled that way, I would pronounce them with the long vowels instead of the short ones. To me they're not the same words.

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[info]mexonxpedestal
2005-12-04 08:56 pm UTC (link)
I've never seen it like that. o.O;

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[info]nur_ein_tier
2005-12-04 09:29 pm UTC (link)
Somebody spells them that way, I suppose, but I don't. Actually I was reading a book last week and I was very disturbed to see 'kidnaped' in it. The first time I thought it was a typo, but it showed up a few more times. lol.

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[info]siuil_a_run
2005-12-04 09:31 pm UTC (link)
I've always been taught in my English classes that the doubled consonant was the correct way to spell it.

I'm American.

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[info]seraphicmirth2
2005-12-04 09:57 pm UTC (link)
Same here.

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[info]carakarena
2005-12-05 03:11 am UTC (link)
Me too.

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[info]bekkle
2005-12-05 08:01 am UTC (link)
holler.

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[info]paladina
2005-12-04 11:13 pm UTC (link)
"kidnapped" and "worshipped" look normal to me, but then so does "traveled."

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[info]akibare
2005-12-04 11:15 pm UTC (link)
I'm American, and I DO see "kidnaped" - in the newspapers, and starting RECENTLY it seems to me. I agree with others that it seems it would be pronounced like the nape of the neck, and it looks wrong to me.

In fact, I've been wondering around "kidnaped" in particular for a few years. I could swear it's been "kidnapped" in the US for a while and only changed in the past few years. Does anyone know?

In a related vein, reading my town's papers from the 70's and looking at old pictures, the word "employe" was spelled like that, rather than "employee," then. "Employes Only" was okay - or, "okeh," when it comes to the 50's papers. I dug up a paper from July 1953 under the floorboards in a friend's kitchen, and the headline was "Congress Okehs Defense Spending." The paper in question was the Urbana Courier (Urbana, IL).

Anyone know of other changes like this?

I'm one of those people who holds that "correct English" (or "correct Japanese" for that matter) is something decided by consensus over time, with 90% overlap but really only "correct" according to the style guides for the major newspapers and/or academic conferences. As such, there are always bound to be gray areas. As long as some well-respected style guide has the usage, I'll use it.

As for "kidnapped," I still spell it with "pp."

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[info]banzaigrrl
2005-12-04 11:48 pm UTC (link)
I seem to be the exception rather than the rule, but I've *always* spelled them "kidnaped" and "traveled," based on instruction I received in school as a sprout. (This may also have to do with the amount of time I spent reading the dictionary as a child, however.)

I've grown out of the habit of using "kidnaped" in the last few years, but "travelled" strikes me as peculiarly British.

(St. Louis, Missouri, USA here)

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[info]banzaigrrl
2005-12-04 11:49 pm UTC (link)
And because I'm not yet fully awake and responded as much to the first comment as to the original post, I also use "worshiped."

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[info]darkmab
2005-12-05 12:10 am UTC (link)
Hmm. I would say that kidnaped and worshiped are wrong, to me. I would never use them and if i saw them, i would notice and think that there were wrong. I'm American.

However, i would say that i do use travelled/ traveled interchangibly. Neither one looks wrong, nor do either seem to be more British or American than the other.

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[info]solaria
2005-12-05 01:35 am UTC (link)
I'm another one of the Americans who still spells these words "kidnapped" and "worshipped", but uses "traveled" as well. If the first two were spelled with a single consonant, it would just look misspelled to me. I've never heard of this distinction between British and American English before.

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Kidnapped, worshipped...but traveled...hmm...
(Anonymous)
2006-02-11 05:42 am UTC (link)
Me, too. Wonder why? I was willing to buy the idea of "traveled" (maybe because I'm not inclined to pronounce it differently?) but "kidnaped"? As someone else pointed out, I'd pronounce the last syllable like "nape" of the neck, rhyming with "raped" - no, that just looks wrong. I think I'll go back to "travelled."

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[info]timeisahelix
2005-12-05 02:00 am UTC (link)
Ha! I recently spelled the it "worshipped" in my lj, and the spell-checker caught it, so I changed it to "worshiped".

Either way seems okay to me.

"Kidnaped" looks just plain wrong, though.

(I'm American.)

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another American here
[info]ctegan
2005-12-05 04:16 am UTC (link)
I've never seen "kidnaped" or "worshiped" spelled like that before now. I've always spelled them "kidnapped" and "worshipped," but I have seen both the double consonant and single consonant spellings for words ending in in the letter "l" .. traveled/travelled, canceled/cancelled, etc. *shrugs*

Online, I found an article on the doubling of consonants: Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.

http://www.bartleby.com/68/69/1469.html

Although the first point mentioned in the article supports doubling the "p" at the end of kidnap or worship, there is a listing of American English vs. British English examples of words, and both the single & the double consonant spellings are listed under the American English column.

This spelling difference might be similar to the pronounciation of "aunt" which varies in the U.S. For example, my area (south of Boston, in Mass./New England), I've always heard the word "aunt" pronounced similar to "taunt" or "want" whereas in other areas of the country, I've heard it pronounced "ant." Both are correct pronounciations in the dictionary (most American dictionaries anyway; see http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=aunt or http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/aunt, for example). I wonder if the spelling differences are a regional thing?

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Re: another American here
[info]mizbrified_box
2005-12-05 11:01 am UTC (link)
Is it weird I found that example kinda funny? xD In NZ English (at least) all those three words would be pronounced differently, like:

Taunt = Torn't (long o sound)
Want = Font with a W (short o sound)
Aunt = Aren't (..no o sound xD)

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Re: another American here
[info]ctegan
2005-12-05 02:36 pm UTC (link)
No, you're absolutely right! Bad example on my part! ;)

If you click the links for my "aunt" example, you can see (and in one case hear) the two most common pronounciations in the US for "aunt."

Sorry! I only meant that maybe there are regional American English spellings in the same way that there are regional American English pronounciations and that one is not necessarily more correct than the other.

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[info]lyssiae
2005-12-05 10:02 am UTC (link)
I haven't seen "kidnaped" before, but "worshiped" and "traveled" quite a few times, all in American English. "Kidnaped" just looks wrong anyway, to me.

Of course, now that I know a bit about Dutch spelling rules, these examples have a whole new meaning for me. And power of inducing nightmares.

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[info]koffie_addict
2005-12-05 03:43 pm UTC (link)
i was just thinking about how i would automatically double all those consonants because i'm dutch..

dutch spelling rules are fun!

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