The Irish Constitutional Convention has decided in favor of gay marriage, but it is likely to be opened up to a referendum of the people next year. So we get a little poll, testing the waters.
How will you vote on gay marriage?
Against 48%
In favour 44%
Undecided 7%
I see the problem! They misspelled “favor”, so everyone is confused. I’ll help: in Ireland, voting “in favour” means you approve of gay marriage.
There. That should swing the voting around just right.
Unfortunately, we can’t pharyngulate the actual vote, unless they do it as an online poll …
…wait a minute!
Since God hates teh Gays, but has lousy aim, can we start a betting pool on which natural disaster hits Scotland?
Adam and Steve
I beg YOR pardoun?
Since I’m not Irish I can’t vote. But that poll is a tight race, 46% against 45% now.
“They misspelled ‘favor'”
The Queen Mother begs to differ, it’s ‘favour’.
Æren’t all the Irish gay, in a sense? Merry and gay?
Or at least gaylic.
Given that he’s hit Texas for California’s indiscretions, I’m pretty sure it’s not going to end up in the actual British Isles. My money’s on Brittany, or maybe Spain.
‘They misspelled “favor”…’?
Do you know why Americans misspell “favour”, “flavour”, and “colour”, etc?
Because they are so selfish, there is no room for “u” in their language!
Rutee said,
Really? Which one’s? Maybe we should do more of that. Maybe if we do something really, really bad God will smack both Texas and Florida, and heck throw in some other places while at it.
Oh dear – it appears that somebody might be Pharyngulating the online poll – wonder how that could have happened :-) The vote is swinging in favo(u)r of gay marriage as of right now.
Why won’t they LEAVE BRITTANY ALONE!
Scrap Saturday made by the people who went on to do Father Ted.
Scrap saturday probably posted it before. If your wondering who is godboting the poll it’s the Iona institute and friends.
I’m sure you got number of digs a few weeks ago for trolling your own blog, you can do better than that dude.
Hi marko,
Are you new here?
In the REAL English speaking world, the one where the original version is appreciated, the word favour is pronounced that way, same with colour. You yankees say it differently and your spelling reflects that.
Hey! I’m as American as they come and I still know how to spell “favour.”
Qoted for Trth! Yo said a mothfl, Kimpats.
Because it’s inconsiderate to put “u” there and then just ignore “u.” Damn rude Brits.
Oh, sorry.
Baecause it’s incounsidaerate tou put “u” thaere aend thaen jstu ignoure “u.” Daemn rude. Brtsi.
Heh, I’d vote in favour. My pet peeve is “thru”. Even worse is “1 thru 8”. WTF? Reinvent spelling, USAians, but leave our grammar alone!
Oh hey, that’s how we spell it in Australia as well!
I guess I can go vote in favour of that!
Don’t you mean “graemmra?”
Yeah, it should be “þurh”.
Attested since 1798.
Poll is now 51% in favour :) but the best thing about Pharyngulating that poll was the link at the top of the page, which informs me that Marriage Equality in England and Wales recieved Royal Assent yesterday, and will come into effect roughly one year from now :)
*victory dance*
As an Englisher, I am pretty proud of my country right now :)
Also, who the hell took all the Us out of American English? You had a perfectly good language and then went and fucked it all up. :)
Hi Sili,
No, I’ve been around for a while, but a bit sporadic on the comments.
As much as it pains me to say it, it was a fellow Scot who was one of the leaders of the movement to destroy the language:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Spelling_Board
You can vote from the UK (or at least this little bit of it)
@Marko
The “Simplified Spelling Board”?! I used to joke that American English had all the Us taken out to make it easier to spell, it never crossed my mind that I had inadvertantly stumbled on the truth! I just assumed it was a consequence of the langauge naturally diverging due to isolation from each other.
Damn, America *shakes head*
What I particularly enjoy about American English is the literality of it. Any “s” that is pronunced like a “z” is replaced with a “z”. “U”s which have only a subtle effect on pronunciation are discarded. “Pavement” gives no clues to the purpose of the object, so “pavement” becomes “sidewalk”. “Horse riding” specifies the animal you are riding, but where on Earth do you sit!? “Horseback riding”, ah, I see! And what the hell’s a “bin”? A can you put trash in? “Trash can”!
Love it :)
OK Thumper; explain ‘Faucet’ (rather than ‘tap’). ;-)
Also ‘bin’ is short for ‘rubbish bin’ where one puts one’s rubbish!
@Doc
Admittedly there are exceptions… I’ve never got faucet. Where did that even come from?
Hmm, that gives rise to another question. What do you Americans call tap water? As in, water that comes out of a tap? Presumably you do differentiate between tap water and bottled or mineral water?
I like to tell myself that it’s due to US taps being very stiff. Therefore you have to ‘force it’ open.
I’ll get me coat.
@30 & 31: We call it tap water. Faucet is in your court. The OED lists it as of unknown etymology, but gives a first reference in 1388. From all the uses it sounds like it was always a synonym of tap, like that used on a barrel of beer.
@Captaintripps
So tap water comes out of a faucet? K.
A quick google of faucet has revealed it is from Middle English, from Old French fausset, “cask stopper”, from fausser, “to break in”, from Late Latin falsre, “to falsify”, from Latin falsus, “false”.
Huh. Odd how you guys kept faucet but call it tap water, and we just moved to tap completely. Etymology is fun :)
That etymology looks suspect to me after fausser.
As for whether tap water comes from a faucet, it comes from both a faucet and a tap. We’re something of a largish country with multiple regional variations.
If you travel about 2 miles east from where I am, the bin becomes a bucket, and, as follows naturally, the bin man becomes the bucket man.
Hey, leave the USA spellings alone. Every split second wasted inserting superfluous ‘u’s’ is a split second that they can better use stuffing burgers into their oversized gobs to feed their oversized bodies.
But if they don’t stop rhyming ‘laboratory’ (lab-orra-tor-ee) with lavatory, I will declare war.
Fingers feeling better, AoS?
Yay! Spelling reform! :-)
In favour: 7143 (53 %)
Against: 5367 (40 %)
Undecided: 903 (6 %)
~:-| The fuck it does.
How does u indicate that the r is pronounced as such???
Thread won.
Uh, those are due to Noah Webster. The Simplified Spelling Board had nothing to do with it.
You wish. This is only done with -ise endings, for which -ize (following the original Greek) is accepted by dictionaries in the UK as well.
Even ss can be pronounced [z], as in scissors and Missouri.
Þred, even.
Chigau, much better, thanks. It’s far easier to type now I can use my left hand too.
Almost Australian, really.
“Right fellers, we need a name for that great sandy desert. Any ideas? Then there’s that bay that’s always full of sharks. Oh, and that bloody great barrier reef too, not to mention that bit of ocean off the East coast that’s full of coral, and the bit of coastline where we found all the gold. And there’s a shed-load of sandy bays along the coast; they’re gonna need a name”.
It’s up to 54% “in favour”, with 39% against.
Despite the gains of the non-religious, Ireland is still heavily Catholic.