Presidential candidate Bob Graham doesn't count

[december]

Graham, who participated in a candidate’s forum at the NAACP convention, was asked if the president lied to the American people when he said in his State of the Union address that Iraq had been trying to buy uranium in Africa to develop nuclear weapons – a claim the White House has acknowledged should not have been included.

“I would not use the three-letter word,” the Florida senator told reporters. "I would use the five-letter word: deceit."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,91921,00.html

This faux pas hasn’t received much publicity, and I agree that it’s no big deal. OTOH, can you imagine the furor if Dan Quayle said it?

[UrbanChic]

Bob Graham’s a Democrat. They’re expected to be stupid. Quayle, on the other hand, a conservative Republican, should know how to spell potato.

[Fang]

*Originally posted by JuanitaTech *
**Bob Graham’s a Democrat. They’re expected to be stupid. Quayle, on the other hand, a conservative Republican, should know how to spell potato. **

Psht. Everybody knows potato is spelled potatoe.

[Beagle]

OR

The same phonemes in Spanglish would be pateito
In U2 it would be pctAtO
In New Spelling (circa 1910) “potato” was spelled P O E T A E T O E
…where the silent e was used as a long vowel marker. /ou / was always spelled [OE]

Truespel, another reform orthography, spells POETTAETOE almost the same way. The double T indicates that the stress is on the 2nd syllable. This effectively makes the initial [oe] an unstressed vowel similar to schwa.

RES (Restored English Spelling) spells it POATAYTO.
RES uses positional spelling, the [owe] sound in the terminal position is spelled O.
This works for SILO and GAZEBO but not for follow [Sp. faalo].

Spanglish spells [potato] according to the spelling guide in the dictionary P A T Ei T O or pateita
where [a] refers to the unstressed schwa sound. [M-Webster p&'tAt&] &= schwa

Thus, Dan Quayle’s spelling is not all that inaccurate. There is no need to mark a terminal vowel since it has to be free and long. The terminal [e] is unnecessary. The traditional system sometimes marks them anyway [fallow]. (bolding mine)

See? Clearer now?

[UrbanChic]

Wow, it’s true. You really can spin anything!

[iampunha]

I’d say it’s not so much furor that would ensue but hilarity etc. I don’t remembr much of anyone getting really pissed off when Quayle misspelled the word, but then I was what, ten?

[iampunha]

So looking at Beagle’s cite, unless I’m missing something it’s basically saying “Quayle spelled it in one of any number of other possible ways”. Twain would be so proud:D

[SmackFu]

How about this for spin…

Spoken words don’t have proper letter counts. Graham didn’t write it down incorrectly, he said a word that sounded like “deceit” had five letters. Maybe he was thinking of “deset”?

[AHunter3]

He’s a Floridian, isn’t he?

'Nuff said.