British versus American English spelling (Warning Rant)

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FineWine

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# 249181 29-Apr-2019 16:17

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As I have grown older and since the advent of mass produced and affordable personal computers and eBook readers, I have become more and more frustrated with the Americanisation of the English language.

The American dictionary is always the default dictionary in operating systems, web browsers and text & number based programs. Without going into a separate rant for which there is a separate forum, it is becoming particularly bad in journalism and even British authored and published books. In particular the use of ize instead of ise (standardise vs standardize), or the dropping of the letter u (labour vs labor) and the swapping around of the letter r at the end of a word (centre vs center).

I spent many a sad hour labouriously copying out 1 to 4 pages of my spelling book during my immediate school years as a way to work off my many “Black Marks” but that still did not make me a great speller, only a good speller who knew when a word was misspelt.

In Firefox I have set my language settings but even then I am forever ‘training’ the browser:
English (NZ)
English (UK)
Maori (mi)
English (AU)
English (US)

In macOS I have only ticked British & Australian English NOT American and yet I still find Americanization’s versus Americanisation’s.

Learning the correct way to spell is not helped by advertisers who are huge culprits in bastardising the English language; lite vs light, nite vs night.

Following on from this is the misuse and mispronunciation in the spoken English; eg, brought & bought, something & somethink or off-en vs off-ten.

Now I realise that the English language is a polyglot of a multitude of languages and because of the poly-ethnic movements of populations it has adopted many words and I really would not like to see us going the way of the French when it comes to language purity but if we are going to adopt a word lets keep it in its original form.

Then we have the Spell Checker programs themselves who have now made at least two generations of bad spellers and bad grammarians. One of my pet peeves is youre instead of you're or even bear vs beer I spotted in one sentence concerning drinking and I see these inaccuracies most frequently in eBooks, which is where I am seeing this bastardisation of the English language beginning to occur the most. The English language is complicated enough without AI spell checkers making it worse.

Ok end of rant 🎓😀

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# 2227492 29-Apr-2019 16:33

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FineWine: [snip] centre vs centre

I think your auto-correct stepped in there.

Aredwood

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# 2227500 29-Apr-2019 16:42

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The early spell checker that was built into the Nokia 3315 cellphone was excellent. As you had to manually tell it to add a word to its dictionary. If I didn't know the correct spelling of a word, that phone forced me to keep on trying different button combinations until it displayed the correct word. This helped me alot to improve my spelling.

Yet the spell checker on Samsung Galaxy phones is terrible. As it keeps on changing words between singular and plural forms. And if you type a word wrong, it will often silently add that word to its dictionary. Meaning that the inbuilt dictionary is now polluted with incorrectly spelt words. Yet other times, it will change a valid word to something completely different. As it also tries to do grammar correction. And the grammar checker thinks that I typed the wrong word. (But the original word was spelt correctly and it was also the word that I wanted in the sentence).

It would be far better if it would only autocorrect words that are definitely an incorrectly spelt word. And dont bother trying to do grammar correction. And definitely dont try to autocorrect singular/ plural, Numbers, measurement units, or anything with special characters in it.

Millameters gets corrected to meters (thanks for making my measurement 1000 times wrong). The sentence “A cars” is definitely not correct (thanks for trying to correct singular/ plural). And trying to type BB code, It is painful to even think about that.

Rikkitic

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# 2227504 29-Apr-2019 16:47

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It doesn't help to live in a country with the world's worst spellers. I don't know what happened to the schools here a generation ago but most English speakers seem to have completely lost all sense of English grammar or the Latin and other languages that underlies it. Some of the made-up spellings I see simply defy belief. Language is fluid and does evolve and I don't have a problem with that, but spelling aside I also don't see why we all have to end up sounding like literacy-challenged American rappers.

I reject your reality and substitute my own. - Adam Savage

FineWine

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# 2227505 29-Apr-2019 16:48

RunningMan:
FineWine: [snip] centre vs centre

I think your auto-correct stepped in there.

Oops. Thanks. Corrected.

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Rikkitic

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# 2227507 29-Apr-2019 16:50

Aredwood: The early spell checker that was built into the Nokia 3315 cellphone was excellent. As you had to manually tell it to add a word to its dictionary. If I didn't know the correct spelling of a word, that phone forced me to keep on trying different button combinations until it displayed the correct word. This helped me alot to improve my spelling.

Yet the spell checker on Samsung Galaxy phones is terrible. As it keeps on changing words between singular and plural forms. And if you type a word wrong, it will often silently add that word to its dictionary. Meaning that the inbuilt dictionary is now polluted with incorrectly spelt words. Yet other times, it will change a valid word to something completely different. As it also tries to do grammar correction. And the grammar checker thinks that I typed the wrong word. (But the original word was spelt correctly and it was also the word that I wanted in the sentence).

It would be far better if it would only autocorrect words that are definitely an incorrectly spelt word. And dont bother trying to do grammar correction. And definitely dont try to autocorrect singular/ plural, Numbers, measurement units, or anything with special characters in it.

Millameters gets corrected to meters (thanks for making my measurement 1000 times wrong). The sentence “A cars” is definitely not correct (thanks for trying to correct singular/ plural). And trying to type BB code, It is painful to even think about that.

In my old age my typos have become truly terrible and my spelling has also declined, so I use an old copy of Word to filter out the worst mistakes. Without it I would be truly lost. If my spelling on Geekzone seems good, it is because I think it is important enough to take trouble over, not because I am a good speller.

I reject your reality and substitute my own. - Adam Savage

Behodar

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# 2227516 29-Apr-2019 17:09

Aredwood: This helped me alot to improve my spelling.

You were saying? 😛

FineWine

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# 2227533 29-Apr-2019 17:40

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"Now I realise that the English language is a polyglot of a multitude of languages and because of the poly-ethnic movements of population......"

Have I just written a "double entendre" ??

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KiwiSurfer

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# 2227545 29-Apr-2019 18:14

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I generally just use the English UK option where possible. Often the AU/NZ dictionary includes lots of American words (sometimes alongside British words so you have spell check declaring both as correct). Hence my use of UK dictionary so I can be sure it's all British spelling throughout whatever document I'm typing.

SirHumphreyAppleby

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# 2227561 29-Apr-2019 19:04

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KiwiSurfer:

I generally just use the English UK option where possible. Often the AU/NZ dictionary includes lots of American words (sometimes alongside British words so you have spell check declaring both as correct). Hence my use of UK dictionary so I can be sure it's all British spelling throughout whatever document I'm typing.

Likewise, I use the UK dictionary. If I were to accidentally use a word that is only used in New Zealand, it won't be in the UK dictionary and I'll either look up the word to confirm its applicability elsewhere, or simply use another word.

I use the UK English version of Windows. They manage to spell colour correctly, but programme is still spelt the American way.

For my own software, it's UK English only.

k1w1k1d

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# 2227603 29-Apr-2019 20:21

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I have Windows 10 set to use English (New Zealand) and have New Zealand English Dictionary installed in Firefox. Works well.

Don't forget that the Aussies like to use American spelling, so you will have issues if using an Australian dictionary.

allstarnz

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# 2227695 30-Apr-2019 06:42

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Try living in Canada where they seem to use a mix of 'British' and 'American' English with no amount of consistency!!

http://www.lukemastin.com/testing/spelling/cgi-bin/database.cgi?action=rules

Item

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# 2227702 30-Apr-2019 07:27

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Aredwood: alot to improve my spelling.

https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

On the topic of American Vs. English spelling; as a Brit it used to make me twitch and rage, but the older I get, the less it worries me. Indeed, my understanding is that the "American" spellings are more closely aligned with the original "English" or Anglo Saxon version and it is the modern English way that has become bastardised (bastardized?) over time.

Language and spelling are fluid and ever evolving and as long as meaning is clear, it is not something to get too hung up about IMHO.

SirHumphreyAppleby

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# 2227703 30-Apr-2019 07:31

Item:

bastardised (bastardized?)

It's from French/Latin, so it would be -ise.

Item:

Language and spelling are fluid and ever evolving and as long as meaning is clear, it is not something to get too hung up about IMHO.

We'll have to disagree on this one.

Bung

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# 2227705 30-Apr-2019 07:33

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FineWine:
As I have grown older and since the advent of mass produced and affordable personal computers and eBook readers, I have become more and more frustrated with the Americanisation of the English language.

The American dictionary is always the default dictionary in operating systems, web browsers and text & number based programs. Without going into a separate rant for which there is a separate forum, it is becoming particularly bad in journalism and even British authored and published books. In particular the use of ize instead of ise (standardise vs standardize), or the dropping of the letter u (labour vs labor) and the swapping around of the letter r at the end of a word (centre vs center)

Sometimes you just have to relax a little. The 1st instance in your list is not really something to get riled about. From the Oxford Dictionary "The dictionary on the UK/World side of our website gives alternative ‘-ise’ spellings at the main entries for all ‘-ize’ words where it’s appropriate. In British English, it doesn’t matter which spelling convention is chosen: neither is right or wrong, and neither is ‘more right’ than the other. The important thing is that, whichever form you choose, you should use it consistently within a piece of writing."

Behodar

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# 2227706 30-Apr-2019 07:36

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Item: Language and spelling are fluid and ever evolving and as long as meaning is clear, it is not something to get too hung up about IMHO.

I know someone with a form of dyslexia. He can read correct sentences without a problem, but the moment he runs into a misspelled word his brain just goes "I don't know that word" and it acts as a roadblock.

Even if a sentence is clear to some people, if it contains errors then it can be decidedly unclear for other people.

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