yea-grey

Um, you know how the British spelling differs from the American?

The British spell it ‘grey’, Americans–‘gray’. And of course, we all know the ‘re’ instead of ‘er’ at the end of such classics as ‘theatre’; or the ‘our’ instead of ‘or’ in colour, behaviour, etc.

Well, is ‘yay’ the American way of spelling ‘yea’? I’ve always spelled it ‘yea’. Mainly cause I learned British-English growing up. I think. In primary school, they beat the ‘our’s & the ‘re’s right outta me. Well, ok, so they didn’t beat me here in the States*. But they def worked their patooties off to re-condition me to spell things the American way instead of the British way.

Um, does anyone else also call it ‘primary school’? Grammar school? Grade school? Anyone?

But I guess they never noticed the ‘grey’. Maybe I just didn’t use it back then. I mean, how many 8 year olds use the word grey? I use it all the time now, complaining about yanking out yet another couple of hairs. So, it hasn’t been til recent years that I even noticed that it’s correct to spell it ‘gray’ as well.

But what about ‘yay’? Is that the same thing? Or, is it just these young punks now-a-days. W/ their adding words like ain’t, bootylicious, & google (as a verb) to our dictionaries?

*Although when I was in preschool overseas, my teacher used to threaten to tie me to the ceiling fan at least twice (or thrice) a week. No kidding. My mom & grandma had to go to school on several separate occasions to ask her to stop.

Aside: I was trying not to post b/c I wanted to keep the link to write about the crisis in the Dafur region at the top of my page; but please do scroll down & click on the link to help. Amnesty is trying to get a massive amount of letters to Washington by Monday.

7 thoughts on “yea-grey

  1. I spell “yay” as “yea” and I spell “gray” as “grey”. I have been educated in the US public school system my whole life (I even went to public college). Oh, and I call it “elementary” school. It’s a bit crazy ’round these parts, eh? 🙂

  2. i spell it yeah, unless you’re talking about when you’re really excited and happy about something and then you say “yaaay!” or maybe “yippee”, also, i call it “elementary school”

  3. There we go, lilies givin us the ‘youth perspective’. At 20, I think she’s the youngest person who reads my blog.

  4. I always thought that ‘yea’ was like ‘yeah’ as in yes. and ‘yay’ was just ‘yay’ as in yippie. I think I have been miscommunicating this ‘yea’ thing my whole life. It’s all so clearer now… -Liz

  5. I’m constantly misspelling the two. I also end sentences in prepositions & forget to put question marks at the end of questions. I’m working on it though.

  6. I’m with Liz. Yea = Yeah and Yay = Yaaaaay! — for me at least.

    And I say elementary school.

    That is all.

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