Vacuuming sucks.

Due to a long history colonizing Africa, the British acquired a surplus of U's for the purpose of transliterating strange native language place names. After re-spelling dozens of places with names like Uganda, they were forced to retrench as the effective empire shrank back to the home islands and they found no better use for the now surplus u's than in absurd spellings like vacuum. 

Wow, and all this time I simply assumed that the Welsh and the New Zealanders both just loved have extra u's around! 

I am pretty sure the Welsh would spell it vacwm 😂

Glyn Barnes
I am pretty sure the Welsh would spell it vacwm 😂

Even worse, "gwactod" is apparently how they spell it! 

craigb

Glyn Barnes
I am pretty sure the Welsh would spell it vacwm 😂

Even worse, "gwactod" is apparently how they spell it! 

As in "Mae angen i mi gwactod y grisiau gyda fy Dyson"
I like the welsh phonetic spellings of modern words like Ambulance = ambiwlans
Vacwm would be the phonetic spelling of Vacuum

Dysons are a working class status symbol in the UK. There's someone on every council estate who will get you one for cheap. I'll never forget being over at a friend's house in Byker to pick up some "plant material"  and there was this young guy there in the obligatory Reebok sports wear talking about how he'd just moved out of home into his first apartment, and one of the older guys there (also in Reebok sports wear) immediately says "you got a Dyson yet?"

sharke
Dysons are a working class status symbol in the UK. There's someone on every council estate who will get you one for cheap. I'll never forget being over at a friend's house in Byker to pick up some "plant material"  and there was this young guy there in the obligatory Reebok sports wear talking about how he'd just moved out of home into his first apartment, and one of the older guys there (also in Reebok sports wear) immediately says "you got a Dyson yet?"

Then of course there were the Kirby salesmen going door to door, seems to have died out in the UK, Dyson may have finished the off? But just before I left Dubai  a very smartly dressed Indian gentelman knocked on the door wamting to sho us his wonderous Kirby vacuum.

Reminds me of a story which illustrates just how much the world has changed since the 70's. When I was a kid we were saying down south at my aunt's place and it was her birthday. My uncle got her a vacuum cleaner as a gift. Romantic, yes? While she was at work, he had us kids make a huge mess on the carpet - we scattered potato chip crumbs, emptied ashtrays, that sort of thing. When she came home tired from work and saw the state of the place she freaked out. My uncle let her reach boiling point and then wheeled out the new vacuum, complete with bow, and said "happy birthday."

The sad part is she was over the moon and within 2 minutes was happily vacuuming up the crap while we all sat and watched, feeling thoroughly pleased with ourselves for making her day. Makes me cringe to think about it.

Is what spelled vacuuum? (No it is spelled er,what "cough").
 
BUT, more important... how do you pronounce Hoover in GB? Is it like hoover or hoover or hover? Huuvah?