Spelling is ruining the English language

[Kingswood]

Originally Posted by Jill

Dude, [hacienda]'s not even an English word. :p

My copy of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, tenth edition, includes that word. Is it in your dictionary?

[Jill]

Originally Posted by Kingswood

My copy of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, tenth edition, includes that word. Is it in your dictionary?

For someone so pedantic about the English language, its origins and its spelling constructs and "broken" rules, you really, seriously put up 'hacienda' as an English word that doesn't follow the "'i' before 'e' rule, just because your dictionary has it in there? That's like a bunch of Danes debating the ridiculous letter 'd' rule and someone trotting out the word 'sandwich' as an example of something, because it's in the Danish dictionary.

Hacienda is not an English word any more than Sandwich is a Danish word. The fact that each language has taken words from other languages and used them without change, and therefore added them to their dictionaries because they've fallen into common use, does not qualify them as those languages' words. Most especially when whining about how they don't follow the rules of the language they've been adopted into.