Re: Litre, liter (was Re: OT Marx Brothers)

Mark J. Reed wrote at 2003-05-15 19:52:55 (-0400)
 > I can understand that.  I was aware of many British spelling
 > distinctions: "-ise", "-our", doubling final "l"s before suffixes,
 > keeping "ae" in Greek roots instead of shortening it to "e", etc.
 > And of course "tyre" just looks like a misspelling rather than a
 > new word.  But the first time I ran across "gaol" - in a British
 > novel I read in college - I had absolutely no idea what it was.
 > Even after reading enough context to determine that it referred to
 > some sort of prison, it just never occurred to me that it could be
 > an alternate spelling of "jail".  I mean, it so clearly must be
 > pronounced "gay-ole", or perhaps "gowl" (rhyming with "fowl").  I
 > just assumed it was some sort of foreign borrowing akin to "gulag".

If it's any consolation, it took me some years to catch onto this
myself, despite having lived my entire life in England and speaking
basically BrE.