Wikipedian Spelling

Best of both worlds!

(first comment! hells yeah!)

Oh my. Did I lure Lackadaisy from “British Spelling? ;)

I use both spellings myself, in reality! That’s what you get from using the internet so much. :)

Well, that’s good. I’m glad we’re attracting voters to our little faction from either side of the pond.

Down with arbitrary rules! Up with common sense!

I cannot control myself!

I do this all the time! (Thought it was just silly little me.)

American spelling … pah! Aren’t all Americans originally from another country … like BRITAIN ! Unless you are a Native American. And I do not think they spell “colour” without the “u”. I honestly do not know, though.

By the way, British spelling is also the same as Canadian spelling.

“Travelled” versus “Traveled” and all that jazz.

Let’s not drag Canada into this.

Canadian spelling isn’t the same as British, actually; they use “Z”s in words like “realize” , keep the “U” in words like “colour” and generally accept both options for other words. Personally, I think they’re preserving the lamer elements of each country’s rules, but that’s me.

Ermm… ‘Native Americans’ came from Asia… after migrating from Africa.

I’ll add this.

(And for the record, I have both British and American on my best list; British as “Best Pretty Spelling,” American as “Best Practical Spelling”...sorry guys, but we’re really more phonetic! But my point is, each has its merits.)

And although I’m a rather fervent defender of the American way most of the time, there are a handful of British spellings that I do insist on using. Like “cancelled”...it looks so wrong with one L.

inyourpanorama has a point, there: some words do look wrong in some spellings.

‘Focus’ is another example I’ve spotted; should it be ‘focussing’ and ‘focussed’, or ‘focusing’ and ‘focused’?

I tend towards the first pair, being English.

That double-s looks rather unpleasant to me. :) I think I generally go for the latter. But I’m English too!

I use the first pair because it avoids argument when teaching optics. Perhaps I should have stated that.

It avoids focused rhyming with excused.

Well… the last syllables, anyway!

I also prefer the single Ss, though I like the double Ls. I quite like the addition of U after O. Also, I am quite partial to the replacement of Z with the S.

I’m often the same way. Flavour, colour, realise…then that blasted Microsoft Word has the nerve to tell me I’m wrong.

Microsoft Word = Bane of My Existence

Microsoft Word says my NAME is misspelled. I loathe that program. AppleWorks all the way!

Although sometimes I admit it does bug me when Americans only use British spellings. C’est prétentieux. (But I guess I’m nobody to talk about pretense since I drop in random French expressions—like that one—into my normal speech. For one, I can’t ever think the word “useless” anymore, it’s always inutile...but I’m digressing. I do tend to do that.)

It says my name is misspelled too.

But my name’s Saderholm, so no surprise there.

Isn’t digression the better part of valour?

On the use of z* and *s in words like realise/realize, the actual answer lies in the word’s etymology. If the word derives ultimately from a Classical Greek word that ends in -iz*ein, then *z is OK.

But who outside printing houses gives a flying furcula about that?

Oh, hell!

I think I’ve over-reached the limits of the formatting system here. Let’s try again.

Typo:

Isn’t digression the better part of valour?

On the use of z and s in words like realise/realize, the actual answer lies in the word’s etymology. If the word derives ultimately from a Classical Greek word that ends in -izein, then z is OK.

But who outside printing houses gives a flying furcula about that?

Flying furcula.. what a nice phrase.

So what is a “furcula” anyway?

Proper name (means ‘little fork’, from furca in Latin) for the wishbone of a bird (also theropod dinosaurs, I’ve just found out through google); the two fused clavicles that strenthen the chest of birds so they can fly more easily.

Ostriches have a furcula. Intelligent design people, please take note.

Why, thank you, NimbleMarmoset. I invented it, but I waive copyright for anyone here.

Oh, and while I think on, a Phororhacus had a furcula too.

I think my biggest thing is not necessarily using British spellings per se, but using typically British speech idiosyncrasies. I go on a couple message boards where I’m around a lot of Britons, so it rubs off on me! Although these aren’t necessarily limited to Britons, I do use “rather” and “quite” a lot more than your average American, and there are some words, like “dodgy,” that I’ve been tempted to use a lot but would sound rather (there it is!) weird to American ears. But there’s no real American equivalent!

There’s a lot of variation in usage of such words around the UK. ‘Rather’ is a word I never use on its own (southerners would) but is a usual synonym around here for ‘fairly’; a phrase I use a lot – stolen from one of my schoolteachers – is ‘rather splendid’. ‘Quite’, especially by itself, is a word I use so much I watch myself in case I overuse it.

‘Dodgy’ is a great word; it can mean either ‘untrustworthy’ (person, machine, thing), or ‘crafty, cunning, slick’.

One word which I don’t use is ‘absolutely’ to mean the humble word ‘yes’.

I find switching randomly between British and American spellings tends to occur most frequently among people who read too much. After a while, no matter how you spell it, it still seems correct because you’ve seen it spelled that way in some of the books you’ve read.

I just thought of a couple other British spellings I insist on using. One is “cognisant.” It seems a bit weird since the vast majority of the time I use a Z like most other Americans (including the etymologically similar “recognize”) and “aware” is a perfectly acceptable and less fancy substitute for “cognisant,” but when I saw “cognisant” spelled with a Z my reaction was “NO. NO NO NO. That is a WRONG and UGLY word.” Yes, I care about the aesthetics* of words, so what? But then again, I originally thought it was spelled “cogniscent,” so you can imagine my shock when I learned the supposedly correct spelling…

Another one’s “exorcise.” When I see it spelled the so-called American way, my brain goes, “X + Z = This does not compute!” Besides, if “exercise” doesn’t have a Z, why should “exorcise?”

*On a side note, I have actually seen “aesthetics” spelled without the A, which is wrong beyond belief. But at the same time, I don’t like the addition of an A to words like “hemophilia” or “pediatrics.” That’s a bit…egregious, if you ask me. Ah well. You should have all figured out anyway by now that I have my own Cattish set of rules that’s based partially on habit, partially on appearance.

Yep.

 A few observations:

Chambers Dictionary allows 'cognisant' or 'cognizant'. That's enough for me. 

 But on aesthetic, do you spell "without feeling" an-esthetic? Or do you follow the British way and include the 'a'?  Chambers (of course) allows esthetic, esthesia, etc. as US spellings.

 There is a word cognoscente, pl. cognoscenti, meaning those in the know about art, music, literature... perhaps that was lurking in your thoughts.

 A final note: egregious comes from the Latin word grex 'herd, flock'; so your use of it is certainly appropriate - it literally means standing out from the herd.

Ah no, I write “anesthetic,” “anesthesia,” etc.

I always thought “anaesthetic” should mean “pertaining to ugly things” since the “an” makes it the opposite of “aesthetic.” But clearly my definition of “aesthetic” is more specific than yours.

All the words derive from the Classical Greek word aisthesis, which means feeling or perception. Now, you are quite entitled to make a distinction in meaning - and I like the nicety of having a medical word anesthetic, together with another to pertain to ugly things anaesthetic - since other sets of words clearly deriving from a common source can have different meanings.

One pair of words which springs to mind is isolate and insulate. Both derive ulitmately from the Latin insula, island (i.e. land cut off from the rest by water; yet houses that are isolated calls up a different mental image from houses that are insulated; the former implies lack of exposure to other houses and the latter lack of exposure to extremes of temperature.

When Lewis Carroll wrote this he was being serious.

And I was also just thinking that the British spelling of defense, defence, really ought to mean “to tear down the barriers to one’s yard.” (or garden, as it is called in the UK)

But maybe there should be a hyphen in there; de-fence.

Also, even though spelling reform has been met with disastrous reception in years past (and for good reason), I often wonder what it would be like if the situation was supposedly defused by introducing country-neutral spellings of disputed words. For example, "culler" for color/colour, "nayber" for neighbor/neighbour. More phonetic, too!

The reason Americans have a different way of spelling their English words in the first place is because they wanted to separate themselves from all things British. Benjamin Franklin started the Americanization of English spelling, and Noah Webster finished it. For most early Americans, spelling wasn’t a thing of importance anyway; most didn’t really even know how to read or write very well to start with. American spelling was consequently taught in all New England schools and became the “American” way of doing things. The Catholic Church did a similar thing to distance themselves from the Orthodox Church. Basically, everything that was done in the Orthodox Church was changed to it’s opposite (sign of the Cross from left to right, instead of right to left, wedding ring on the left hand instead of the right, etc.) in order to show that they were an entirely different entity. It makes sense, I suppose. “Us against them” and all that. ;)

Spelling reform?

Oh, give up now!

Language isn't logical unless you write it for a computer. If you try reforming it, the results - as even the Chinese have found, though they're not likely to admit it - are no better and often worse than before you started.

'Nayber', for just one example, for 'neighbour/bor': this word derives from the German 'Nachbar' and Dutch 'nabuur'. You can see the reason for the silent -gh- in the German word, and hear where our pronunciation came from in the Dutch word. Using such an approach, you can often make an informed guess as to the meaning of an unfamiliar word in another language that you only know quite well. An example of this is the Dutch word 'boomstam' which I recently came across; 'boom', I knew, was tree, and after a little logical reflection I came up with stem for the second element. 'Treetrunk' (or 'beamstem', if you know your archaic English) is indeed the meaning of the word.

There are inconsistencies in such an approach; historically, would should have a (once not silent) 'L' in it, whereas the same silent letter in could is a mistake, put in by false analogy. Scissors, similarly, has a mistaken initial 'S' stuck on to the old French word 'cisoires'.

But on the whole (hole would not be a good spelling for that, would it?), given the multiplicity of homonyms and other barriers to progress - leave well alone and admit that revolution isn't as good as evolution (evolushun? ) in the area of written language. Or most other areas, in my humble opinion.

You're excused because of your relative youth!

What ever happened to Esperanto?

Oops, pardon me, Nomi! We've been typing simultaneously.

Hey, don’t patronize me! ;)

I was kind of kidding in the first place—of course I don’t want spelling reform. It’d be nearly like asking every English speaker to learn a new language!

All I really wanted was to see your reaction, truth be told. =P

Yeah, I guess that didn’t work out too well. (Esperanto). You are correct, Finrod, on the reasoning behind the various spellings of words. If we change them, the etymology becomes unclear, making it difficult to discern the word’s true meaning (when you don’t already know it).

(To iyp) Why, you little...!

(To Nomi) And you are correct, too... your accentuation of the them and us mentality is cogent here. Similarly, back before iyp's time  there were two 'official' languages which didn't actually exist - 'Czechoslovak' and 'Serbo-Croat'.

I fell into a man-sized trap in the first when I attempted to surprise a Slovak (in the UK) by saying "I only speak a little Slovak' and they immediately shot back with 'Where did you learn Czech?' The words for 'speak' are completely different in the two languages.

As for Yugoslavia... well, tragedy is probably the best word.