>Chuck Palahniuk
I've been reading his books since I found out who wrote Fight Club in 1999. My brain does NOT want to remember how to spell his name. It makes me feel like I have a learning disability.
I've been reading his books since I found out who wrote Fight Club in 1999. My brain does NOT want to remember how to spell his name. It makes me feel like I have a learning disability.
I always get there, but it always takes me there tries.
Then it was easy.
Maybe you can make a mnemonic, how are you with spelling burette?
A crazy person is using a burette with a gold (Au) end, extruding a 3D wireframe model of a desk (bureau):
Bure(tte)+au+crazy ... and hopefully you can remember where the final "c" goes.
Edit: this got me wondering about bureau’s etymology. It’s a strange one:
The story of the word bureau is one of substitutions. In its original French, bureau originally named a “coarse woolen cloth,” particularly baize, the green, felt-like fabric that covers card and pool tables. Historically, bureaus draped desks, desks filled offices, and offices housed the business of governmental agencies ... Etymologically, though, bureau wasn’t green. The term derives from burel, an Old French diminutive of bure, “dark brown cloth.” Bure, in turn, may be from the Latin burrus, a word for “red” and related to the “fiery” Greek root that gives English pyro. Alternatively, the Old French bure may come the Latin burra, “shaggy garment” or “flock of wool.”
Bureau appears in English in French contexts as early as 1664 for an “office” or “business,” natively established by 1720. In the 1690s, bureau harkened back to its earlier sense of “writing desk” and extended to a “chest of drawers” by 1755, which the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes as a chiefly American usage.
https://mashedradish.com/2017/05/16/the-bureau-of-etymologic...
B-E-A-Utiful
Surprisingly it helps with words that have that 'eau' mash of vowels.
Same thing with P-A-R-T-Y? 'Cause we gotta!
If it makes you feel any better, it trips me up reading it; I had to do 3 takes before my brain accepted that those letters were a word, and I still can't tell how to pronounce it. I suspect the problem is "eau"; that is a lot of vowels together for an English speaker.
Beurau... no that’s not right what is it again? Buer... fuck.
Probably because it's more french than english :) Not an easy one either: English speakers have a lot of trouble with the "u" sound and "eau" pronounced "o" is far from obvious.
And when they borrow words from other (not phonetic) languages, they just say "to hell with that spelling", and spell it in a perfectly logical way themselves.
It took me about one hour to understand which band we were talking about. The Eagles was spelt like 'los egles'
It sometimes help if I try to remember "bureau". bureaucracy is an organization governed by bureaus. But if I think about it too much, I just lose the ability to spell bureau too.
I still trip out on tongue and related brethren.