My entire life I have known speach to mean verb that describes act of speaking in the present tense, while speech to be the verb that is the past tense act of speaking professionally/publicly to a group.
According to google :The correct spelling is speech. “Speach” is an outdated spelling from hundreds of years ago and is now considered a spelling mistake.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
English degree and retired schoolmarm typing here.
If you and I were speaking in person, what we were doing could be described as the act of speech. (act and speech are both nouns in that phrase) For the past tense you would say we spoke.
Einstein up there looks like he’s giving a speech. Speech is a noun, like a candy, or a damn, which he could also give if he chose to.
Sounds like you got corrected on the spelling in the context of “he gave a speech” and decided that spelling was special to that meaning.
Which is reasonable and allowed you to continue thinking
(incorrectly, but also reasonably)
speak–>speach
But the truth is more boring, it’s only the one word for ordinary and special speech. And the correct spelling is not the reasonable one you derived.
As to how it’s been this long…It’s the kind of error people might notice but assume it’s a typo and not bother to mention, because it’s not confusing.
spazzman6156@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
I can’t let this one go.
That’s not Einstein, that’s Christopher Lloyd as “Doc Brown” in Back To The Future.
His character’s look was likely influenced heavily by Einstein’s appearance, so I guess I see the confusion. But hard to believe you’re old enough to be retired and haven’t seen that movie, or at least references to that character.
MrChewy@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
I don’t know what I’m more annoyed at. That you confused Doc from back to the future with Einstein or that as I’ve now seen “speach”, I can’t help but “ew” at “speech” despite first time ever hearing of “speach”. “Speach” is SO much better Dx