Popular misspellings of "pregnant" in discussions of pregnancy on Yahoo! Answers

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/10/21/popular-misspellings-of-preg.html

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Stands to reason, since that’s what causes babby to form.

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When searching for a convertible on Craigslist, be sure to also search for a “convertable” or you’ll miss out on a lot of results.

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Oh Jesus that was awful, and not just the spelling.

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I think they burned a Luigi board to spell those questions. I have encountered far more spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors over the past fifteen years than I ever saw during my prior decades of life.

It tests my tolerance, because this seems so lazy when one has instant access to most of human knowledge. I have worked with people who moved to the US and known zero English, so I can empathize with the effort required, but it seems that many don’t try.

Then again, I used to read some of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language nearly every day through my childhood, so maybe using online dictionaries seems more obvious to me.

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Yeah, if you have access to most of human knowledge, why in the hell would you hit up Yahoo Answers?

Besides, some of those were downright appalling. The “will pregnant sex hurt the top of the baby’s head” is particularly egregious. Either the poor woman had nobody, not even a doctor, to explain the process of pregnancy to her, or there’s some jackass out there having sex with a woman whose baby is crowning :open_mouth:

I could read before I could talk, and I’d look up all the words that were unfamiliar to me. I went from being totally nonverbal to speaking more or less like an adult, but with no ability to code-switch whatsoever :confused:

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“Hot take: Yahoo Answers remains of the last places on the web where young women can talk candidly about their sex lives in relatively safety, and it’s probably going to be gone soon.”

Yes I’m glad someone else noticed this as well. If Yahoo! Answers is any indication, we still appear to be doing a pretty miserable job at sex ed. Many of these questions show every sign of being written by honestly confused teenagers (mostly girls.)

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For me it was a ca. 1945 Merriam-Webster dictionary, that had a ton of scientific and medical stuff in it. I would go to look up a word and then get lost for an hour. Still got it, with duct tape on the spine.

I love the Chrome "Search Google for " word that you’ve highlighted. I correct so many spellings that way – which is why my comments here are so perfect. :grin:

Well, OCD helps.

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Both English and Spanish are my main languages, but i did spend quite a bit of time reading encyclopedias and dictionaries for fun. I do struggle a little bit with English on occasion with some particular words that i can never seem to remember the correct spelling for. But thank god for dictionary.com

In regards to the Yahoo Answers video. Holy cow did that crack me up, some of those spellings are just… so egregious it boggles the mind.

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Somehow I doubt that, except that Yahoo Answers is going to get gone soon.

I wouldn’t be surprised if these girls were all seriously disadvantaged. Lack of sex ed is probably the tip of the iceberg. They probably have little in the way of formal education, some form of learning disability, and probably limited access to medical care. If they could ask a doctor these questions, they wouldn’t have to ask Yahoo Answers.

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So that’s where babby comes from!

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Is there an internet access device available that won’t spell check for you?

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From what I’ve heard of American sex education, this seems very likely. Besides, it’s a myth that’s been around since way before the internet.

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Arguably not a bad thing considering the quality of answers that generally pop up.

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Anyone who’s ever been pregnant would realize that the baby does not sit inside the vagina for nine months. Hopefully someone would have set her straight on this, but maybe not.

ETA: Thanks to the video, I’m having a hard time typing the word pregnant without totally mangling it.

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Me too, and English is my first (and only) language, if you discount the French I took in high school, which I do not really remember. I can’t figure out why US schools can’t figure out that the time to teach language is a LOT younger.

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Sounds great! I wasn’t endorsing our 1970s AHDotEL, it’s just what we had in the house.

I don’t really use spell check. I spell fairly well and am always, even after two years on my current system, adding words to its dictionary. But I suppose that I am familiar enough to already be aware that the way I spell a word is probably incorrect.

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In my case it’s a kind of word blindness almost. I repeatedly have problems with the same words. Exercise is one i often have problems spelling, couldn’t tell you why.

And i can’t speak for the US since i was raised in Venezuela but a secondary language is required and students start as early as 2-3rd grade with English. Though i had a good number of friends that never took it seriously and by the time they graduated high school they knew almost no English. But it’s definitely a good thing starting early and making it a requirement.

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Me too. There are so many ways to spell some sounds, it’s almost laughable. s, c, x all make the s sound, and “exercise” uses all three (although I guess the last one is voiced, but z does that too).

That’s the way to do it. I’ve read the window to easily learn a language closes at about 12. Or maybe even earlier.

You bring up a good point! Saying “that doesn’t look right” sometimes isn’t enough to recall the right spelling.