QUILTS & FABRIC: PAST & PRESENT


Friday, January 3, 2014

Tranzlating English

Hexagons from Morris Modernized

A stitcher in Tasmania tells me she is having trouble finding fabric from my Morris Modernized collection for Moda. With all the online shops delivering fabric all over the world this should not be a problem. Many stores still have the prints in stock although it was delivered last fall.

View from the Southern Hemisphere

I zoon realised however that we have an international zpelling problem.

View from the Northern Hemisphere

She is typing in "Morris Modernised" because that is the right way to spell the word modernised  in Tasmania.

At Moda we are spelling it with a Z.

Europeans had a hard time figuring out how
people in the Southern hemisphere got around.
Here's one concept of Antipodal transportation.

I hope I fixed her problem, one small glitch in international trade.


6 comments:

  1. Maybe the view of the world use of 's' should be changed, because it is only in North America that the 'z' is used. The rest st of the English speaking world use an 's'. As an educator this is something I frequently have to explain to my students - personally I blame it on a certain spell checker used by a certain software company!

    Ah, the vagaries of the English language! Where would we be without them?

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  2. Maybe Moda should be conscious of this difficulty when naming their fabric lines, so as not to lose sales in the former British Empire. ;-)

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  3. Of course William Morris would have spelt it "modernised"...

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  4. When I do a search, I usually mess up a letter and the search engine usually catches it and gives me hits with the right spelling, a life saver for me lately, lol.

    Debbie

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  5. That's not the only vagary in the English language - a couple that come to mind are - cheque/check (what we use to pay bills); colour/color. As to that spell checker I use "English" not "USA" as the default speller.

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  6. It is not a north south thing. I like to think my English spelling is correct, after all I am English. I find the z used in this way somewhat strange. It is your version versus the English speaking world.

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