behaviour (bad)

[MarkTime]

Hey RedWarrior, you may be interested to know, that the default spellchecker we got installed on an internally developed app where I work, was the UK version...we caught it just before going into production.

that's one for the Queen, I guess.

[KapitanKlystron]

@ RedWarrior:

That's right! You are correct and everyone else is wrong or is that wroung.  Continue to use words incorrectly.

P.S. I feel the same way about Australian slang that you feel about good english words (color,fiber, etc...) :-o

[Wain]

In America there is a usage distinction between theatre and theater.  The latter shows movies (Kino), and the former shows live performance.  I have no idea how this reads in the dictionary, but the word is always 'theatre' in a performing arts establishment.

[Wain]

Actually viruses is the correct plural for virus.

My medical dictionary says otherwise, but it's a bit old.

Interesting...I wonder when this was changed.  

[Marky_D_Sahd]

I know what you mean.  I have Wordworth on my Amiga, and I had to teach it to spell!  It kept insisting that "learned" was spelled "learnt", and "spelled" was spelled "spelt," which, as we all know, is a violation of the rule for regular past tense verbs.

Also, it keeped (damn!  I just knew I was going to wander into the only American exception to the regular past tense verb rule) changing the word ""semi" to "lorrie,"  "trunk" to "Boot," "hood" to "Bonnet" and switched the keyboard preferences so that all the heavy-traffic keys were on the other side of the board!   :-D

[aardvark]

Well, I'm a Canadian, eh.  And neither the American spellcheckers or the English spellcheckers work right.  Here it's colour, labour,neighbour, but tire (not tyre),meter (pass the volt meter), metre ( it was a metre long).  Then with plurals you have cactus, cacti; hippopotimus, hippopotimi; apple pus, apple pie :-D

[Methuselas]

Just because microsoft (and Amiga, and apple... all those American computer companies) infect the world with bastardised English spell-checkers (otherwise known as American English) does not make incorrect spelling correct.

Actually, most spellings such as these were changed years ago, 1776 to be exact, in rebellion to 'Queen's English' and to show the American Colonies independence from England. That's why we spell it 'realize', instead of 'realise'. You may think it's bullocks (or as we might say here, bullsh!t), but considering the time and how sh!tty England treated the American colonies, it's no wonder they rebelled in such a way that Americans did.

To gripe about spelling is ignorant, 'cos its common knowledge that english is a language created from butchered words from other languages already spoken. German and latin seem to come to mind.  :-P

In fact, that's almost as ignorant as an American telling a Native American to 'go back where he came from.'

Sheesh.....they're just words...get over it.

 :-(  

[Cyberus]

@ Methuselas

I think its YOU that's displaying the ignorance. For a start, when America rebelled, England had a king. Therefore the US, would've been rebelling against King's English, if such a term existed then, which I doubt very much.

Secondly, the revising of English spelling (in the US) has been attributed to Noah Webster, and to a lesser degree, Mark Twain (although I gather this can still be debated).  Also, don't forget spelling was non-standardized, and only became so when people decided to write dictionaries (even in print it is inconsistent - writers like Shakespeare spelled words many different ways).

The us of z in standardize, realize etc is perfectly good British English spelling. Many people use s instead, but the older z variation is acceptable (I tend to use it because I prefer it). The suggestion that people in the US used different spellings as a form of rebellion is just ridiculous.
It is far more likely they use them because scholars like Webster believed them to be superfluous. The reason that the Us exist in such words as colour is due to the fact that they came in to English from French cf couleur, for example.

English is not created from 'butchered' words. English is a rich hotch-potch of languages. That is why we have such a large vocabulary (in fact, I believe it is the largest vocabulary in the world). The biggest contributors to the pot are Gaelic, Latin, Norse, French, Old English (which is one of the West Germanic languages, like Dutch, modern German, Frisian etc), the old Scandanavian languages (which are now Danish and Swedish, Icelandic, Faroese etc). We also have more recent influences, from languages such as Urdu, Hindustani, Punjabi etc

I think you just wanted to use your post to attack the British posters in this forum, rather than have some kind of discussion about language.

[Cyberus]

Back to the original topic, both spellings of plurals are acceptable. I just think that to argue that we must used 'fora' 'because its Latin' is ridiculous IMO.

Are we to decline nouns if they have roots in languages with cases? Are we to conjugate verbs that have been imported in to English, just because they do in the original language?

Language is a constantly evolving phenomenon - it 'belongs' to nobody. I get sick of people saying that the Americans can't spell words properly. English does not belong to the English people! It's spoken by  between 320 and 380 million people worldwide as a first language, 150-300 million as a second or significant language (in India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Singapore etc), and by a rough estimate of 100 million to a billion as a language that people know to a small extent. [These figures are estimates taken from Harmer, the Practice of English Language Teaching]

One of the prices British people must pay for English being a global language is that it isn't ours anymore - its everybody's.

[JaXanim]

'The way he speaks is quite different than you and I'

Who thinks this is OK?
Who thinks it is not OK?

JaX

[mikeymike]

Color, Theater, Meter, Fiber, Center are not misspelings of those words. That's how they are spelled in a languauge that has different rules than yours.

You spelt "language" wrong :-D

If I ever write an autobiography*, there'll be a section about language.  Under "pointless language variations because one nation 'wanted to be different' from one of its ancestors"...

* - but then my autobiography might be a bit unsual with a "technical reference" :-)

To gripe about spelling is ignorant, 'cos its common knowledge that english is a language created from butchered words from other languages already spoken. German and latin seem to come to mind.

Any sensible language nicks words from others.  Otherwise you end up with this stupid business that the French.gov are up to of "trying to preserve their language" and insisting that people/media use their stupid french variations of words that have become standard the world over.  We say restaurant, even with the French pronunciation.  We have done for a long time.  Nobody moans about it.  Get over it.

[Cyberus]

JaXanim wrote:
'The way he speaks is quite different than you and I'

Who thinks this is OK?
Who thinks it is not OK?

JaX

I think this is not OK
'than' is used in comparative sentences
[comparative adjectives are better, bigger, more intelligent, smaller etc]
So my computer is better than your computer (for example) is acceptable

'Quite different':
Different is not a comparative adjective here, so cannot be used with 'than'

Sorry, now I'm being anally retentive - but it is my job after all!

[stuart]

Well I just couldn't resist commenting on this thread... I can relate to most of what's been said in this thread.

:ranting: There is a difference between spoken and written language, people become protective of the words that are written because it represents who they are and what they are about, it contains meaning for them and when it changes they feel as though they have lost something of themselves. On the other hand language evolves all the time and dictionaries are being revised constantly. There are also different emphasis put upon words and meanings depending on who you are; for example if you are a doctor, there are strong rules you must follw when writing because accuracy is important or someone could not heal or even die if mistakes are made in interpereting someones work engineers speak in numbers, poets speak a language many of us cannot understand! Artists speak in pictures or even some other way. And then there are other languages completely, like Japanese, Arabic, Slang etc - I think you get my point.

My point is that this all comes down to communication, and someone said it already... The point is to be understood.

:rtfm: I love dictionaries, they contain word meanings and without them we couldn'y communicate in a sophisticated way, people are right to defend them, but it's a balencing act, like most things in life.

:idea: Has anyone mention grammar yet? :pint:

[Cyberus]

My point is that this all comes down to communication, and someone said it already... The point is to be understood.

hear hear! I agree

[JaXanim]

Yes, provided the speaker and the listener understand each other explicitely, that's all any spoken language requires. The written word is different.

It's interesting that while the BBC for example, allows its broadcasters to switch the subjective 'I' and objective 'me' with impunity, it's written English is superb. I think those of us with a 'traditional' English education accept most bastardisations of the spoken word as normal and acceptable, but one or two do tend to gripe, with me anyway.

My personal pet hate is, I'm afraid, an Americanism. As noted above, the use of 'than' instead of 'from' is quite appalling. How something can be 'different than' something else suggests a complete ignorance of the basic tongue. I have never, ever, heard the term 'different from' spoken by an American. I guess it is down to education. So do American schools teach 'English' or American English'?

JaX

[Cyberus]

Careful Jax - generalising (or is it generalizing ;-))

I used to live with an American, and I'm sure she said 'different from' and 'different to'...