Why "telly" and not "telly"

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

One simple school rule will help you remember the correct spelling of this spoken word.

The word "telly" is considered to be reduced and refers to colloquial vocabulary, but it is recorded in dictionaries. With writing exactly through "and".

Although the variant "TV" seems logical: the word "TV" has two letters "e", we shorten it to the first root TV - we get a word with two "e". Not surprisingly, so many people write this way. However, everything is not as simple as it seems.

Let's observe similar words: a bicycle is great, a VCR is a video recorder, a mobile (telephone) is a mobile phone.

Such colloquial contractions are formed by attaching the suffix -ik-, and not the suffix -k-, and the root of the word is truncated to a consonant, and not to a vowel. Otherwise, we would have had a “well”, not a “great”.

But why is this suffix spelled with "and" and not with "e"? After all, the -ek- option is also in Russian.

It's like that. And at the same time, the diminutive suffixes -ik- and -ek- are often confused. A simple rule helps to avoid mistakes. Rules of Russian spelling and punctuation / Complete academic reference book edited by V. V. Lopatin:

• If the vowel drops out during the declension of the word, then the suffix -ek- is written: a piece - a piece, a lamb - a lamb, a ravine - a ravine.
• If the vowel is preserved, then the suffix - ik- is needed: a glass - a glass, a table - a table, a kalachik - a kalachik.

When declining the word "telly", the vowel does not drop out: there is no telly, on telly, behind telly, about telly. So, we write "and" in the suffix.