Honorary Degree/ "a" Level Whatever It's Called These Days,

[ukelele lady]

Many years ago ukelele lady I played ukelele (hence my many Formby references)

Interestingly it is now making a come back and becoming a popular instrument again and our music department gets kids playing it.

Recently, while checking my forms end of year reports for spelling mistakes I found out that ukelele is more commonly spelt ukulele these days which looks wrong to me so I checked it out and it more common to see the wrong looking ukulele than the more familiar ukelele, after George played the "uke" not the "uku".

More annoyingly many recent re-releases of Formby's songs have the ukulele spelling!!!

Oh well, I already have to put up with sulphur being spelt as sulfur!!!

When I was talking to some of my form about playing the uke, encouraging them to keep it up, we discussed the unusual tuning of the instrument compared to other string instruments, in that the open strings do not just increase in pitch from top to bottom, the 3rd string having the lowest pitch. When I referred to this as the "My Dog Has Fleas" tuning they didn't know what I was on about and found it amusing.

The George Formby Society always spell it ukulele as it seems to be the English way but Ukelele is the American way.

But as you say , when you shorten it to uke it it makes more sense than uku.

Oh yes , if you haven't got a tuner. . . " My dogs got fleas " will do. lol

[DaveH]

The George Formby Society always spell it ukulele as it seems to be the English way but Ukelele is the American way.

But as you say , when you shorten it to uke it it makes more sense than uku.

Oh yes , if you haven't got a tuner. . . " My dogs got fleas " will do.

I thought that at first, but now I am not so sure.

The older spelling is ukelele in this country, ukulele seems to have come from America with the age of the Internet as it is the more recent recordings / releases which spell it this way.

Also, the ukelele, being Hawaiian in origin IS an American instrument, and I think ukulele is the Hawaiian spelling.

On my computer in MS Word with UK English (not US English) it accepts either ukelele or ukulele as correct without any red underscoring to mark mistakes, BUT it discretely tries to alter ukelele to ukulele without you realising it unless the spell correcter is disabled.

I suppose really I wil just have to accept that there are 2 acceptable spellings of the word, but I will continue to accept ukelele as the better of the two, just as I do with the spelling of sulphur.