Gray
The American spelling
I am an old fart. By Medium standards that means that I am over the age of 35. For well over a half century I have been spelling the word, gray, with an ‘a,’ the American spelling, rather than with an ‘e,’ the British spelling. As with hundreds of millions of Americans, that is how we were taught to spell the word in school.
But all that changed just a few short years ago when a British novelist came out with a series of novels about sado-masochism. The novels have been turned into movies. The movies have been humongous hits and somehow those movies have convinced hundreds of millions of Americans to switch their spelling of gray to grey.
We Americans used to learn how to spell in school. Now we learn how to spell at the movie theater.
Seriously?
And all because of the popularity of sado-masochism?
Seriously?
It utterly blows my mind that an entire nation of hundreds of millions of people would suddenly and collectively change their spelling of gray to grey just because of a series of Hollywood movies about sado-masochism. Even authors that I’ve been reading for around half a century suddenly switched their spelling of the word because of those movies.
Is it just so that they would fit in with the collective herd mind? Is Hollywood really the place where we learn how to spell? Are the rules of language that we grew up with and lived with for decades really that expendable? Is the sway of mass popularity that powerful that all humans reject what they are taught in order to fit in with the herd? Does everyone really have to be just like everyone else?
Yes, I know that language and spelling constantly changes. The American spelling of gray (with an A) has been the accepted spelling for almost two hundred years. Then, suddenly within just a few years, it changes to an old archaic spelling without anyone really noticing.
As a kid growing up, when I heard someone calling someone else a ‘dog’ it was a very derogatory term. It meant that they were ugly. Nowadays the word has an entirely opposite connotation. It has somehow turned into a connotation of brotherhood.
Growing up during the Cold War the word, bomb, had a very negative connotation. It was downright scary. And if you used the word in relation to a movie or Broadway play or any artistic endeavor that meant that that endeavor totally flopped; that it was a failure. Now, suddenly, the word means the exact opposite of what it used to mean!
And then there is the N word. I grew up during the fight for civil rights. I distinctly remember watching Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech on TV. Tingles raced through my body and I was overcome with emotion and empathy. I vowed to God above that I would never, ever, ever use the N word. My white parents used it constantly but I vehemently refused to use it. I wanted to be part of a new and changing mentality in America. I wanted to be part of the spiritual evolution of a nation.
But now African Americans use that very offensive word as a term of endearment! What the goddam, mother-fucking, bloody hell? I utterly cringe every time I hear a black person use that word. It’s disgusting! Has the fight for equality already been forgotten in just a generation?
Language, like everything else, is not a constant. It changes. Spelling changes as soon as we are old enough to go to the movies. Thanks to social media, all semblance of grammar has been thrown out the window. Soon we will all be communicating in abbreviations and emojis. Language is marching rapidly towards its very demise.
Damn, it sucks to be over thirty-five!
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