After weeks of local speculation, the purchasers of 55,000 acres of northern California land have been revealed. The group Flannery Associates – backed by a cohort of Silicon Valley investors – has quietly purchased $800m worth of agricultural and empty land, the New York Times has reported. Their goal is to build a utopian new town that will offer its thousands of residents reliable public transportation and urban living, all of which would operate using clean energy.
They misspelt distopian.
You also misspelt dystopian.
Oh god… Its an epidemic!!!
Both are correct, because there is no universal spelling standard in English.
Even if there was, it would be run by nerds and you can beat them up.
In seriousness, both are correct, but dys is more correct. Dis is the Latin prefix, dys the Greek (from the Latin, language is fun), but utopia is Greek as well.
Dis was nonetheless a common enough spelling before dys became the generally preferred.
I’ve never seen “dis” used, and even if we were using Latin prefixes wouldn’t that mean “benetopia” would be as correct as “eutopia”? It’s pretty clear that OP spelled it wrong which was very funny in context.
Funny you bring that up, because “cacotopia/kakotopia” (re: spelling is largely aesthetics) was actually the first iteration of the idea.
I see no problems with anyone wanting to be fancy and dropping a “Benetopia” in any future manifestos.
In spanish we use “dis”
Do you have a source? I looked it up just in case it was a regional or outdated spelling, but all I could find was “Dustopia”, the original spelling of “dystopia”, first appeared in Lewis Henry Younge’s Utopia: or Apollo’s Golden Days in 1747.
My source is the personal experience of having to listen to linguists too much, and having read enough English works and journals prior to the popularization of standardized spellings under the likes of Webster.
They just did whatever they fucking wanted, sometimes, it’s actually the worst.
Why improve current cities where people want to live when you can build the cyberpunk future distopian citry right here in your desert backyard.