Shades of Grey

The Troll started a brand new school year in Maryland this week. She is excited to be working with a lot of her students from last year as part of their English as a Second Language curriculum. Most of her students are from Spanish speaking countries, though many are from former British colonies in Asia and Africa. The Troll recently started a second masters program in ESL because she is passionate about making sure that America's newest immigrants learn the language skills necessary to succeed in this country.

Incidentally a lot of her students (especially the ones from current or former Commonwealth countries) have a good grasp of English. However, many are assigned to ESL because it's been determined that their heavily accented version of British English is not going to help them assimilate with the average American middle schooler. My Boston born and Boston bred sister is tasked with teaching them slang and American figures of speech (eg: you're gonna die when you hear this!). However, one of her most difficult tasks is having to unsuccessfully explain to them why using the words "colour", "favourite", and "neighbour" is incorrect, though not entirely so.

Most Americans can agree that spelling "centre" makes you sound pretentious (or worse, Canadian). Even the American English version of MS Word will remind you that spelling it this way is not going to help you win any popularity contests. However, two words that were of particular interest to us were "grey" and "theatre". We both learned in school to spell it the British way, and most people in New England probably have never given it a second thought. In Maryland, spelling it this way is considered incorrect which the Troll and I find absolutely baffling.

Apparently the Troll and I are not the only people who think about this stuff. Googling "Grey vs. gray" will yield over 9500 hits yet there is little consensus on which spelling is the correct spelling. So which version is correct? Like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie pop, the world may never know. In the meantime, screw you MD Public Schools. This blogger is sticking with what she knows in her heart to be true.