Spelling pedants -- your votes required!

[frogs]

Dd1 (9) has been sent home with a spelling list that gives the plural of 'gateau' as 'gateaus'.

Being a clever-clogs know-all, she apparently informed the teacher that she'd looked it up in the dictionary, and the plural was actually 'gateaux'. Teacher maintains the normal spelling is the -s one, with the -x spelling as an unusual alternative. Dd1 is spitting tacks.

Who do you think is right? Your votes, please.

Well I was horrified when I saw this and wrote another message which I've had to erase cos I Googled this just to be sure - here you go:

\link{http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861674627/gateau.html}

I'm no good at these link things but thats the site anyway!

so seems to be either or but we were taught 'x'

Gateux without a doubt.

Or even gateaux!

encarta is American English though, Jools - I just tested it with colour and aluminium, and it cross-referenced to color and aluminum, and the definitions were only with those.

I'm an X girl too, frogs - but I agree that DD1 should maybe concentrate more on her diplomacy than her spellings for a week or two!

How about gateauxes ?

JanH - well you learn something new everyday! thanks I never knew that

OED online requires registering, not sure if you have to pay, but Cambridge online is free and look, it's X too!!!!

OMG, it's £50 for 3 months!!!!

Agree with Hulababy that it would have been better if the teacher had been sufficiently gracious to admit that dd1 had a point. So much wiser to admit when you don't know something, I've always found. In any case, dd1 has now decided that the plural of 'gateau' should be 'cakes'.

Postscript: had another quick look at the spelling sheet this morning and saw that the teacher had given 'criteria' as an example of a noun which is the same in the singular as in the plural. Aaaaaaaaagh.

She's far from alone in that, frogs, sadly!

Media is another example and I know there are others but my brain can't produce them this morning...

What a small minded teacher!! FFS, admit you were wrong woman. I'd simply tell my child the teacher was being silly and she was right and well done.

BTW frogs, I think your dd will go far!

your poor dd1 - no wonder she's feeling challenged - bet there are regular solecisms throughout the day - would wind me up like anything

Yes, binkie, the life of a spelling-and-grammar pedant is a constant trial.

gateux ...

I know JanH. I work for a media agency and am appaled by the number of people there who use media as the singular. I always correct it and thet never learn!

I like the sound of your daughter frogs

Definately gateaux.

It is a problem if a teacher can't admit that there may be another 'equally correct' answer.

My stepdaughter and I had a discussion years ago about how to pronounce the letter H when spelling out loud. She insisted it was correct to aspirate, as in Haitch. This was because her English teacher did it.

and as for 'criteria', oh dear ........

I'm slightly torn, ks, since although I admire dd's spirit (and her spelling ability), I feel I shouldn't encourage her tendency to be an insufferable know-all. Some teachers do take to her and enjoy teaching her, but others, particularly the less secure or more authoritarian ones, clearly find her a nuisance.

She's in a notoriously difficult Year 5 class, in which a third of the class is on the SN register for learning and/or behavioural problems. Classroom management has become worse over the years as the few bright kids, including dd, have become cynical and lippy in the face of the significant amount of mediocre teaching they've been exposed to.

I do have sympathy for the teacher, but it's hard to persuade the more able kids that teachers are worth respecting in the face of this kind of thing. Another recent run-in apparently involved the teacher maintaining that it isn't necessary to indent the first line of a new speaker's direct speech when representing dialogue. Dd armed herself with half a dozen books from Harry Potter to Animal Farm and went to prove her wrong.

Dd undoubtedly will go far, but I'm just not sure where to...

oooh this reminds me of an argument I had with my geometry teacher in high school. She was an awful woman. She marked me down for not having calculated out the square root of a primary number. However, she had asked for the most accurate answer and in mathematical terms, writing the square root of something is more accurate than estimating that square root. I ended up bringing my parents in for a meeting to get my grade changed (I was successful).
However, frogs, I would encourage your dd to pick her battles. There are more important things to stand up for in life than a year 4 (?) teacher who doesn't know or is confused by her latin/english plurals.

I, personally, would always spell it "gateaus" in English, because if you're using the word in an English context, I feel you should pluralize it as you would in English. We simply don't use an "x" to express plurals in the English language.

Similarly, if pluralizing a Latin phrase like memento mori, I'd say (& so would publications I've seen the phrase used in) "memento moris" not whatever the plural would be in Latin.

But that's an American aesthetic, I think. In the US it would be pretentious to say "gateau" instead of cake and doubly pretentious to say "gateaux". But then we're rather farther away from France than you folks. . .