Are you old enough to remember when it was spelled pyjamas?

I always write it as “pyjamas”.

I still do. I don’t wear them, but that’s how I spell them.

The first spelling I saw was pajamas. I think that was in 1955.

According to Webster, the first known use of pajamas was in 1800.

If there was a time when the only spelling was pyjamas, it was probably before I learned to read. ;-)

I have always written pyjamas as far as I can remember. I do recall having a brain fart one day and having to look up the spelling and being surprised about the spelling options I found. I think the problem was probably that I wrote pyjamas and it comes up as a spelling error through Google spell check.

Yeah, nowt to do with age, it’s always been spelt pyjamas over here, except for in Scotland where they spell it Mybestsuit ;-}

I spell it pyjamas. Pajamas looks really weird to me.

Nope. I was taught pajamas and had never known there was an alternate spelling until this Q.

Interesting. I don’t think I ever saw it written with a “y” anywhere I’ve lived. Anyway, I just call them p-j’s.

@JLeslie Pajamas is the alternate spelling.

It’s still pyjamas here, too. Do you suppose the American spellings for words like pyjamas, colour, centre, etc. all appeared within a short period of time, or has it been a long, gradual process?

The last pair of jim-jams I wore featured dozens of little footballs dotted across them & a little piss flap in case of emergency…oh to be 12 again.

@glacial I’m pretty sure @Hawaii_Jake is in America.

My guess would be some of the changes are gradual, some might have happened in blocks where a lot was changed at once. It is an interesting question.

I’m a self-taught reader, and most of my first books were written by British authors. My first instinct is to spell them “pyjamas”. I tend not to “Americanise” my writing, unless Microsoft Word autocorrects it for me.

This is very interesting about the word pajamas. Like so much of English this word is taken from another language and it looks like the Brits spelled it one way and the Americans another. Is one really more correct? Not that I am fighting to say American English is more correct, as I said on another Q I intuitively sometimes spell the British way depending on the word.

On the other Q someone said there have been attempts for English to make more sense when it comes to spelling, because it is such a mess. That sounds perfectly logical to me, because English spelling is tremendously confusing. Other languages as long as you can say it you can spell it.

I still wonder how long it will be before we officially go from America to ‘Murica! .

@jerv That’ll be just after we officially institute “y’all” as a second person plural pronoun.

No, I am definitely not old enough to remember it being spelled like that.

What @Seek_Kolinahr said. I grew up on AA Milne..colour, and pyjamas and pourch and stuff. Those were some of the first words I learned and I still want to spell them that way.

This is the first I’ve heard of it. My fact for today’s day.

Until I saw this question I wasn’t aware it wasn’t spelled pyjamas anymore

I use pyjamas, but I cannot remember when I picked that spelling up, but I vaguely remember arguing with my older siblings about it. I don’t particularly like the way “pajamas” looks.

The Pajama Game opened on Broadway in 1954, so it was the standard American spelling before that. The spelling with a wye is typical British Imperialism and mispronunciation of the Farsi word.

Both spellings are familiar to me but I believe the spelling with the “y” was the one I learned first back in the early 1960’s when I was in early elementary school.

The more I think about this Q, since the word is from Farsi, the more I don’t care exactly how it is spelled. It’s like Chanukah, hanuka, hanakkah; Koran, Quran; Muslim, Moslem; mishpachah, mishpookah. Even my married last name that has an h in the third syllable, my mom still sometimes writes it wrong and puts ch. I don’t see the big deal, or why one would be more correct than the other.

Always been pyjamas here in Oz

Spelling is a mess!