Or do most people just mispronounce it?
Also, if I am doing a project on cars, is my project “car oriented” or “car orientated”?
mor gij
It’ silent.
Websters says so.
and…“car oriented”, not "orientated.
Orientated referes to the dealing with the Orient, the countries of the East.
Since it’s oriented and not orientated, why is it orientation and not oriention?
Thank you, thank you.
all the online dictionaries (don’t have a real one) give oriented and orientated as being synonymous. I think modern usage is either, only a pedant would really worry.
Because words were not designed to follow rules. Rules were designed to describe words – often inaccurately.
Yes, it’s silent. Like the “P” in toilet. 
I’m Australian, and until I really started mingling with people from the US online (and watching American TV shows), I had ONLY heard people say Orientated. I believe it’s a regional thing and both are considered correct - in the US at least. (I once lost marks at school for using the spelling “color” because “It’s wrong - that’s the American spelling” so I’m not going to put money on it being totally accepted in Australia).
Now I understand why I’ve felt somewhat disorientated at times.
[slight hijack]
Talking about the orient: there’s a sport called orienteering. Can anyone explain to me why a person involved with it is called “an orienteer” instead of “orienteerer”? WHen I first saw this spelling by native users of thee English spelling (which I am not) I started correcting it.
[/slight hijack]
Orientated = geographically positioned, located. As in how far East you are
Oriented = inclined, or “about”, as in a car-oriented project.
Mortgage is from French for “dead pledge”. In French “mort” (dead) is pronounced “more”.
as opposed to another early form of pledging land for security, the vif-gage, in which the mortgagee was in possession of the land and received the fruits of the land to pay down the loan, hence a “living pledge.”
NO!!!:eek:
Orientated is never, ever correct. Stop making up meanings for it. This is bad! Nearly as bad as apostrophe abuse!
Because “oriention” would be pronounced “or-i-en-shun”, and that loses the hard “t” of the root form, “orient”. Thus, the “-ta-” syllable is added. The same pattern is evident in many other words: “notation” (from “note”), “citation” (from “cite”), “reputation” (from “repute”), “regimentation” (from “regiment”), “accreditation” (from “accredit”), “deforestation” (from “deforest”), and countless others. “Orientate” is wrong for the same reason that “deforestate”, “accreditate”, “regimentate”, “reputate”, “citate”, and “notate” are wrong. The only exception I am aware of is “rotation” (from “rotate”, not “rote”). In general, if you want to denominalize a “-tion” form, and the resulting word ends in “-tate”, please consider whether the “-ta-” should be elided. In almost every case, it should be.
But not as bad as ranting opinions in GQ without citing any sources. If you were to look up orientated in a dictionary you’d find that both alternatives are accepted.
For a more thorough study, look at Michael Quinions excellent article at WorldWideWords
He quotes Fowler saying that (at least in the UK)
Supposedly the longer form is slightly less common on the other sode of the pond, but both Merriam-Webster and American Heritage accept both spellings.
My recomendation is to relax a bit. And always to back up opinions with fact! No amount of colours, exclamations marks or smilies can make up for absence of hard facts.
Here’s another cite:
The Oxford Guide to English Usage says
Dictionaries report on what is actually used, not on what is acceptable. “Orientate” is not acceptable just because there are a lot of idiots who use it.
Since, unlike the French, American speakers of English don’t have a Ministry of Culture to arbitrate language issues, who exactly decides what is acceptable?
If a lot of past “idiots” hadn’t changed the way they used the language, we would still be speaking the English of Chaucer, or that of the KJV.
There are two major philosophies guiding dictionary writers: descriptive or prescriptice.
[ul][li]A descriptive dictionary describes the way the language is spoken today. A good example would be the New Oxford Dictionary of English (NODE) (It is unfortunatelly not available on-line.)[/li][li] A prescriptive dictionary describes how the language ought to behave. A good example is American Heritage Dictionary (available on-line at www.bartleby.com/61/ )[/ul][/li]To get a taste of the difference, look at the entries for hopefully at American Heritage and Merriam-Webster, which will here serve as an example of a (relatively) descriptive dictionary.
Let’s now get back to the OP: orientate:
Even American Heritage accepts the variant orientate, which means that it has managed to get through what is considered one of the most conservative usage panels known to man. (In the English language, that is - we all know about hte French;) - And JohnM, it’s not the ministry of culture, it’s the Academie Francaise)
That’s what Celebrity Boxing was missing last night… Merriam-Webster versus American Heritage!