I know this is silly and there are many odd words in the English language what with our silent letters and all the grammatical acceptations BUT why isn't a lot one word??!! I think it should be alot.
grammatical exception...i before e except after c. . . . words that dont follow the rules, duh.
Scott
Favorite Answer
If that's your argument, then logically you have to use "abit" instead of "a bit".
Anonymous
What about the "of"? There is already a facetious spelling that includes the "of" (but not the "a"), "lotta". Another thing—what would happen to the "whole" then when you say "a whole lot of love"? It would become like "a whole nother aminal [sic]". You're creating more problems than you're solving with this. By the way, what is a grammatical acceptation?
jon
It seems that the reason you'd like 'a lot' to be 'alot' is because it often is used to mean 'much'. 'I much like that.' 'I like it a lot.' However if we think of the etymology, a 'lot' can be space, like a parking lot, or a unit (a lot of cloth).
Of course this points up the old argument of language standards versus accepted usage. It seems that most modern dictionary editors go by usage. So, if enough people mispronounce a word (which Amairikuns are famous for doing with foreign words), the mispronunciation becomes the pronunciation.
Chris P. Bacon
Because the pronunciation would sound different. You have to understand that there are rules to the English language and those rules can't be ignored just because we're too lazy to follow them.
Brooklyn Ray
i think it should be a word too! my teachers always correct it when i turn in papers because i thought it was one word. so now i spell it like this : a-lot