My turn to vent on English
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At the end of the day the yanks actively sought to dumb down english, I think it is kind of appropriate. Read into this what you will. Tryhard :-)
That is as silly as saying that the English have tried to dumb down cooking.....the english simply can't cook.
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Without actually doing a spec of research to back this up, I've always just assumed that under Americanized English we refer to companies as entities, and under the Queen's English companies are referred to as groups of people. In Canada we use colour (although it's pretty much 50/50 across the population, including in the national media). As to Michael's point we use 'has' rather than 'have'. I have a question though, does anyone else use center with a spelling like this? The Resource Centre David http://www.dundas.com
In Melbourne, Australia "The Age" newspaper spells (well spelt, when I still lived there 2 years ago) colour without the u; I think I also saw neighbour without the u as well... Sigh. Have fun, Paul Westcott.
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Ok, it's a Yank's turn to nitpick on the Brits and Aussies. ;) You say "Microsoft have announced" (treating Microsoft as a plural) instead of "Microsoft has announced" (a singular). That's always weird when I read it. --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ If there's something strange / in your VC code / Who you gonna call? / Ghostbusters! :love: your :bob: with :vegemite: and :beer:
And have you noticed with MSN Messenger, that it says: "None of your contacts is online"
:cool: -=:suss:=-
Dr David Wulff, Phd Aqkuoerian Sciences dwulff@battleaxesoftware.nospam.com Founder of The BLA iF yuo find speeling mistkaes, don;t blaem me, blaem my keybord.
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That is as silly as saying that the English have tried to dumb down cooking.....the english simply can't cook.
That is as silly as saying that the English have tried to dumb down cooking.....the english simply can't cook I resent that! I can boil an egg (just);P Roger Allen the :) man
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At the end of the day the yanks actively sought to dumb down english, I think it is kind of appropriate. Read into this what you will. Tryhard :-)
What you blatantly fail to comprehend is that the various waves of migration from England to the colonies which became the U.S. happened before standardization of the language had occured even in Britain. In 1600 there were a zillion dialects of English in England. Some of those dialects, became more common on this side of the Atlantic than on the other simply because proportionally more of the population here spoke a given dialect than back in England. Standardization of the language in England resulted in many of those dialects dieing away. While standardization here reinforced some of the other dialects. It is not a question of dumbing down. Rather, in England standardization occured at the whim of the elite classes, where as here, it occured as a more eglitarian, more democratic process by the common people. :rose: "But, daddy, that was back in the hippie ages..." My twelve year old son - winning the argument. "Stan, you are an intelligent guy who responds in meaningful ways" Paul Watson 16/10/01
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What you blatantly fail to comprehend is that the various waves of migration from England to the colonies which became the U.S. happened before standardization of the language had occured even in Britain. In 1600 there were a zillion dialects of English in England. Some of those dialects, became more common on this side of the Atlantic than on the other simply because proportionally more of the population here spoke a given dialect than back in England. Standardization of the language in England resulted in many of those dialects dieing away. While standardization here reinforced some of the other dialects. It is not a question of dumbing down. Rather, in England standardization occured at the whim of the elite classes, where as here, it occured as a more eglitarian, more democratic process by the common people. :rose: "But, daddy, that was back in the hippie ages..." My twelve year old son - winning the argument. "Stan, you are an intelligent guy who responds in meaningful ways" Paul Watson 16/10/01
True, but things like the net are making these language differences into abrasions. I'm going on a trip soon to the US, and whilst I can "generally" read a book without picking up on the slight differences (my original "write me" example is more from web-sites, etc. used in the context of a sentence or paragraph of text, I doubt it'd register), I was mentioning to my sister that I might be able to pick up some books for her daughters, she was adamant that even if the books were very cheap, not to buy any [her daughters are 5 1/2 and 4] the complexities of "learning wrong" at their age could be very disrupting. I made a similar argument a few years back in a philosophical discussion (in a pub close to closing time) that all of the companies and products called Kwik-(something) or EZ-(something) [which I still hate, Z sounds like "said" with a harder "s" [like in German] not "Zeeeeeee"] must be affecting the spelling of children. Regards, Ray
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Without actually doing a spec of research to back this up, I've always just assumed that under Americanized English we refer to companies as entities, and under the Queen's English companies are referred to as groups of people. In Canada we use colour (although it's pretty much 50/50 across the population, including in the national media). As to Michael's point we use 'has' rather than 'have'. I have a question though, does anyone else use center with a spelling like this? The Resource Centre David http://www.dundas.com
Yes, all of the time (except in programming), it's centre as in metre, litre, fibre, theatre, sceptre, lustre, sabre. Generally an indication that the words came into English from the French language. Regarding my except in programming comment, any other Commonwealth speakers change their language from normal when programming? E.g. "TV Programme" and "Computer Program" "Point of dialogue" and "dialog box" I refuse to use "color" though (unless it's in the function I'm calling). e.g.
COLORREF colourWindow = GetSysColor( COLOR_WINDOW );
Regards, Ray
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Funny, I read it as a "tense" difference, "have" and "has" are *very* similar when talking about a past action, it's more likely a difference in usage than anything else. Besides, you Yanks keep missing words out: "write me" rather than the correct "write to me" Hmm, I sense this could go on for a while yet! Regards, Ray
"write me" rather than the correct "write to me" The "to" is superlative. The statement "write me" sufficiently communicates its intention.
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And have you noticed with MSN Messenger, that it says: "None of your contacts is online"
:cool: -=:suss:=-
Dr David Wulff, Phd Aqkuoerian Sciences dwulff@battleaxesoftware.nospam.com Founder of The BLA iF yuo find speeling mistkaes, don;t blaem me, blaem my keybord.
That's actually an area where the language is going through change right now. If you showed that to someone of a couple generations ago (grandparents/great-grandparents) they'd probably say it's perfect, with "none" being a singular. However, the common usage in younger folks today is to treat it as a plural, "None of your contacts are online," which is what I would say. And just so nobody thinks that this is a weird English thing, French is evolving a change right now too - dropping of "ne" before negative verbs. If you listen to informal speech, people will drop that "ne" all the time. So "je ne suis pas Francais" becomes "je suis pas Francais". (Can you tell I studied linguistics in college?) :cool: --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ If there's something strange / in your VC code / Who you gonna call? / Ghostbusters! :love: your :bob: with :vegemite: and :beer:
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That's actually an area where the language is going through change right now. If you showed that to someone of a couple generations ago (grandparents/great-grandparents) they'd probably say it's perfect, with "none" being a singular. However, the common usage in younger folks today is to treat it as a plural, "None of your contacts are online," which is what I would say. And just so nobody thinks that this is a weird English thing, French is evolving a change right now too - dropping of "ne" before negative verbs. If you listen to informal speech, people will drop that "ne" all the time. So "je ne suis pas Francais" becomes "je suis pas Francais". (Can you tell I studied linguistics in college?) :cool: --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ If there's something strange / in your VC code / Who you gonna call? / Ghostbusters! :love: your :bob: with :vegemite: and :beer:
French is evolving a change right now too - Yeah but I wish France would evolve ! Regardz Colin J Davies colin@vmtu.com
Love comes between labia and Lust in the dictionary. Quote from Gimme Gimme Gimme
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What you blatantly fail to comprehend is that the various waves of migration from England to the colonies which became the U.S. happened before standardization of the language had occured even in Britain. In 1600 there were a zillion dialects of English in England. Some of those dialects, became more common on this side of the Atlantic than on the other simply because proportionally more of the population here spoke a given dialect than back in England. Standardization of the language in England resulted in many of those dialects dieing away. While standardization here reinforced some of the other dialects. It is not a question of dumbing down. Rather, in England standardization occured at the whim of the elite classes, where as here, it occured as a more eglitarian, more democratic process by the common people. :rose: "But, daddy, that was back in the hippie ages..." My twelve year old son - winning the argument. "Stan, you are an intelligent guy who responds in meaningful ways" Paul Watson 16/10/01
No what you blatantly fail to comprehend is that America actively setup a society to simplify English. (dumb it down) The English-speaking emigrants to America took with them a well-established and relatively uniform system of spelling. The other immigrants who came to America from different countries had to adopt the English language. The cultural and language backgrounds of these people were very diverse. In order to make the English language easier to learn to the emigrants, it was necessary to simplify (dumb down) the spelling. This began in 1768 when Benjamin Franklin proposed a new phonetic alphabet. Some twenty years later Noah Webster continued the project Franklin had started. However, the American people were not willing to take in the complete reconstruction of spelling. In 1790 in his Collection of Essays and Fugitive Writings, Webster attempted a new, modified reform of English spelling. He did not use any new symbols but the principle was to omit silent letters and to use analogy to groups of spellings for the purpose of getting rid of anomalies. The new way of spelling was not received any better than the previous attempt to simplify (dumb down) spelling. Gradually Webster became less radical. With each of his published works on spelling he seemed to become more conservative and more approving towards the tradition and general usage in spelling. In American Spelling Book Webster had given up the idea of complete reform of the English spelling and was satisfied to base his spelling on the recognized authors of English language. He was, however convinced that the spelling of words such as publick, favour, neighbour, head, prove, his, give, debt, rough would sooner or later become "more rational and easy." Some spellings have changed according to what Webster anticipated: public, favor but most of them have not. For example, the omission of silent letters in words like neighbour - nabor, head - hed or rough - ruf have not come true the extent Webster suggested. What has remained from Webster's spelling for today, is the omission of k in final syllables in words like magic, tragic, havoc, logic. This feature is common for both the American and British English of today. The omission of u in the final syllable of words like favor, honor, behavior is however peculiarly American English phenomenon and today's British English tends to retain the u; favour, behaviour, colour etc. Webster was much more radical in reforming the spelling of peculiarly American place names. He, for example w
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No what you blatantly fail to comprehend is that America actively setup a society to simplify English. (dumb it down) The English-speaking emigrants to America took with them a well-established and relatively uniform system of spelling. The other immigrants who came to America from different countries had to adopt the English language. The cultural and language backgrounds of these people were very diverse. In order to make the English language easier to learn to the emigrants, it was necessary to simplify (dumb down) the spelling. This began in 1768 when Benjamin Franklin proposed a new phonetic alphabet. Some twenty years later Noah Webster continued the project Franklin had started. However, the American people were not willing to take in the complete reconstruction of spelling. In 1790 in his Collection of Essays and Fugitive Writings, Webster attempted a new, modified reform of English spelling. He did not use any new symbols but the principle was to omit silent letters and to use analogy to groups of spellings for the purpose of getting rid of anomalies. The new way of spelling was not received any better than the previous attempt to simplify (dumb down) spelling. Gradually Webster became less radical. With each of his published works on spelling he seemed to become more conservative and more approving towards the tradition and general usage in spelling. In American Spelling Book Webster had given up the idea of complete reform of the English spelling and was satisfied to base his spelling on the recognized authors of English language. He was, however convinced that the spelling of words such as publick, favour, neighbour, head, prove, his, give, debt, rough would sooner or later become "more rational and easy." Some spellings have changed according to what Webster anticipated: public, favor but most of them have not. For example, the omission of silent letters in words like neighbour - nabor, head - hed or rough - ruf have not come true the extent Webster suggested. What has remained from Webster's spelling for today, is the omission of k in final syllables in words like magic, tragic, havoc, logic. This feature is common for both the American and British English of today. The omission of u in the final syllable of words like favor, honor, behavior is however peculiarly American English phenomenon and today's British English tends to retain the u; favour, behaviour, colour etc. Webster was much more radical in reforming the spelling of peculiarly American place names. He, for example w
"The English-speaking emigrants to America took with them a well-established and relatively uniform system of spelling. " That's absurd. Read "The Story of English" by McCrum, et al. "But, daddy, that was back in the hippie ages..." My twelve year old son - winning the argument. "Stan, you are an intelligent guy who responds in meaningful ways" Paul Watson 16/10/01