Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2006

Does any one know of an on-line British dictionary where I can use "wild
cards" to search for letter combinations, e.g. <*gn> (without the brackets)
to find all the words ending in "gn"?

I'm becoming increasingly interested in all the phonetic and unphonetic
variations of our spelling. When I hear foreigners at the night class I go
to pronounce "work" as if it were "walk", I begin to understand how
problematic our spelling must be for them. I've seen web sites advocating
wholesale reform, but I think that's too radical. I'm interested to see how
extensive the less radical option of a "repair system" would have to be,
e.g. changing "work" to "wurk" and "walk" to "wauk". It's purely for my own
amusement, as there's more than enough on the subject out there without
adding my two ha'p'orth.

Baboon.