Jose Carillo's English Forum

English Grammar and Usage Problems => Use and Misuse => Topic started by: Cruise on September 28, 2009, 11:00:37 PM

Title: Hello, Joe!
Post by: Cruise on September 28, 2009, 11:00:37 PM

Joe,

I have watched the movie entitled "The Pursuit of Happyness," several times in 2006 but I still do not why they misspelled the word "happiness."  ???

Title: Why "happyness" is mispelled in that movie
Post by: Joe Carillo on September 29, 2009, 12:04:20 AM

I watched “The Pursuit of Happyness” myself sometime back and thought of finding out the reason for its having misspelled the word “happiness” in the title. I never got to check, though, until you asked me today. I was then able to gather the following information:
   
In the movie, the word “happyness” appears on graffiti in the child care center where the real-life main character, Christopher Gardner, takes his son Chris Jr. The father expresses concern about the quality of the child care his son would be getting if the immigrants attending that child-care center couldn’t even spell the word “happiness” properly. He says in the dialogue: “It’s not H-A-P-P-Y-N-E-S-S. Happiness is spelled with an ‘I’ instead of a ‘Y.’” :)