Google and the English spell-checker

I have always liked Google. I use their search engine and their browser and here I am using their space for blogging. My English is reasonably good, but like others, I often suffer from 'Digital Dyslexia'.

This is where I think my fingers are hitting one key, when in fact, they have hit the wrong key and then end up with a typo.

Up until a little while ago, I used to be able to spot this easily, which is fortunate, because it happens with boring regularity and the faster I type, the more often it occurs.

You can imagine my dismay when I discovered that my spelling was being highlighted when in fact, I hadn't spelt anything incorrectly. In fact, as I sit here, Google in its infinite wisdom has decided to highlight 'spelt', yet my use of this word is not incorrect.

Spelt definition: a simple past tense and past participle of 'spell'

So what's wrong with it?

I think Google is trying to remove British English from the internet - invented by an Englishman, by the way - and has removed British English from its spell checker.

Now I realise this is a free service (realise in English does not have a 'Z', but an 'S'), but I don't understand why British English should be removed. They haven't removed French, German or any of the other languages from their spell checker.

I've said this before and it looks as if I will have to say it again: American English is no longer the same as British English.

• We do not have sidewalks, but pavements. We walk on pavements, we don't (or shouldn't) drive on them.
• We do not have windshields, we have windscreens.
• Knickers are forms of feminine underwear and pants are the male form.
• Fenders are not car bumpers, but the plastic or rope things that hang off the side of boats.
• Trunks are large cases and boots are what Americans call trunks.
• A bonnet is what you open to see the engine and a hood goes over your head.
• If you are tired, it means you lack energy and would like to sleep, it doesn't mean that you have a new set of radials. Those are tyres (which the spell checker has again marked as incorrect).
• The man dragged the body out, he didn't drug it out. A Drug is a medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body.
• The man dived into the water, he didn't dove into the water. A dove is a bird.

As you can see with the few examples above, British English differs from American English in numerous ways and therefore should be treated as a separate language. America is not the only English speaking country in the world, in fact, they are only a small proportion of English speakers and thanks to our 250 year (or so) separation, the American version of English has evolved and not in the same way as British English.

That's your prerogative, America, but let's get this straight. American English is now sufficiently different to British English (or the English that's used in the rest of the world), with its own dictionaries etc, that it's high time it was just called American and not English.

In the meantime, Google, can we have our spell checker back, please?

I'm going slightly mad...

For those of you who don't know, my wife and I live in a small village in Normandy, France. By chance, our village is wicked quick for the internet due to the telephone exchange being here.

For that reason, we are having all our electrical and phone feeds changed from above ground to below ground. We will also be getting fibre optic feeds, but that's going to be happening later.

We were informed some time ago that work would begin in September and true to their words, the work began last week and some of the houses and the school round the corner, got the new electrical boxes mounted on the outside of their buildings.

Ours began yesterday, so for about an hour, the man cut a appropriately-sized hole in our wall, to set the box into, his big Kango demolition hammer rattling a number of chunks of plaster off the wall in our kitchen/dining room behind where it will be placed.

We didn't mind, as it was only a small amount and when we spoke to the man himself, he promised that today he would come and repair it. Well, a couple of hours after he saw it, a larger chunk fell off and repairs have been postponed until tomorrow as he didn't have enough plaster to fix the huge chasm that had been exposed.

Meanwhile, work continues and they started next door, working their way up the road and the other buildings. It seems that whatever the next door's facade is made of, he can't get through it and so, from 08:30 this morning, with a ten minute break for coffee about half ten and lunch hour - or portion thereof - the bloke has been trying - unsuccessfully, I fear - to create the recess in the wall to fit the new box.

This means that whilst I have tried desperately to work on the two websites I have to complete, I cannot. For five straight hours - minus the all but brief respites for coffee and lunch - I have been bombarded with the sound of the power tools rattling the walls, floors and windows.

I cannot escape.

Fortunately for Penny, she has had to work out near Gorron, leaving me to here - alone.

Work?? Huh! Fat chance.

You know the sound of the dentists drill? Well this is worse... much worse and much, much louder. Worse still, who knows when it will let up.

The cat's gone bonkers, while I'm just go slightly mad, chewing my fingernails back to my elbows. I'm beginning to feel like Goldie Hawn's character in 'Overboard', wondering whether I too will be going "bub-bub-bub-bub..." by the time Pen returns.

Oh wait...

It's all gone quiet.

Or after five hours and twenty minutes of ear-splitting, teeth rattling noise that could in all likelihood wake the dead, have I gone deaf?

No, it's just quiet.

Hopefully, that will be an end of it, but I'm not counting my chickens...

Yet.