Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> The etymology is also different.
Not really. I don't know about the languages I don't speak (i.e.
everything apart from English, Japanese, French and a little Latin),
but
in general the spelling has little or nothing to do with the etymology.
Sometimes one spelling is definitely known to be derived from another
and both remain in use in various places. For instance the Spanish word
for "peanut" was borrowed from Nahuatl in Mexico as "cacahuate" but
when it was later borrwed into Spain itself it became "cacahuete". It
would
be a shame to not have a way to record such things in the cases we do
know them.
Indeed, but hopefully the area of the entry where spellings are given
will be
able to contain notes describing the who/what/where/why/when of the
spelling--
tho thus far all I've heard about is the who, i.e. dialect and
so-called authorities--
and it won't have to be lumped in with the etymology, whose job is to
explain
the etymon or etyma of a word and shouldn't have to touch on spelling
(unless
perhaps to explain why a certain spelling came to be, but even that
could be
handled by an annotation to the spelling itself).
There are times when the etymology can be a guide to the spelling,
especially when questions of double letters are involved. Thus "toroid"
and not "torroid" or "millennium" rather than "millenium".
Ec