i could go on all day, but this is the item bugging me at the moment

[fox]

My Fellow Americans:

Please don't spell color and other such words with a 'u' -- colour -- because you think it makes you look smarter, differently educated, more cultured, richer, or any of that.  It doesn't.  British and US English have different ways of spelling things and that's okay.  If you use colour and honour and whatnot and say "oh, that's how I learned to spell it, I can't spell it the other way", you are exposing yourself as little better than ignorant.  Of course you can spell it the other way.  You know how I usually type all in lowercase around here, capitalizing only in instances of special emphasis, Pooh-style?  It's not because that's how I learned to type and I can't use the shift key, yo.  It's a choice I'm making -- just, I submit, as you are making a choice to spell flavor with an extra letter that doesn't have any place in the written representation of your dialect.

Which -- okay, choices are choices, and I should back up a step and admit that your choices are your own and you do your own thing.  I'm sure the fact that I don't customarily use capital letters (although I do spell things correctly, eschew netspeak, use punctuation, and so on) must cause some people to think of me as ignorant or selfish or pretentious or a variety of other things.  But I want you to be aware that your habit of spelling things in the British style makes some of us -- me, at any rate -- think you are aiming for a level of haughtiness you can't quite reach.  It's the written equivalent of a really bad imitation of an accent.  If you write colour but not centre, I mean to say, the game is up.  You're exposed.  (I give special dispensation for theatre, because I -- and I know there are others like me -- make a distinction between theatre and theater.)  If you don't know a license from a licence, or spell organization with an 's', or eat biscuits instead of cookies, or recycle aluminium instead of aluminum, etc., etc., etc., then for the love of god get the 'u' out of color.

Because the thing is this:  there's nothing wrong with American English.  Nobody looks smarter or more cultured or any of those things I mentioned up top for spelling things in the British style, because there is nothing inherently stupid or uncultured or any of that about things spelled in the American style.  There's no earthly reason to try to pretend to be something you're not, and fail, because there's nothing in the world wrong with what you are.

signed,
Fox

People actually educated in British schools are exempt from the above rant.

Comments

[misia.livejournal.com]

What if you were just exposed to too many Roald Dahl books (in the UK editions because a lot of the US ones didn't exist then) as a child and sometimes you add 'u' to things because it looks right? I have a tendency to write them in different ways -- sometimes it seems to be a subconscious usage thing, as indeed in the case of theater/re. I particularly find that I write "favour" a lot because it looks correct to me. "Colour" doesn't, but "colourful" does.

Also, "biscuits" are, in my household, both American-style biscuits (e.g. buttermilk biscuits) and also sweet baked things that are not American-style cookies. Garibaldi sultana biscuits, for instance, are a favorite of my Belovedary's and they are NOT cookies. Ditto with the things that the Belovedary is fond of that are like Club crackers with crunchy sugar crystals on top -- sugar biscuits.

However, my car does not have a bonnet and a boot. Nor do I pronounce "schedule" incorrectly (heh heh). Or put the extra syllable into my tin foil. All those things seem wrong to my ear and eye.

I should tell you a story, though. When I began working for an NPR station a long time ago, one of my jobs was to set up and start recording the satellite feed of BBC World Service overnight programming. I looked forward to it because it gave me a chance to listen in, and I was so starry-eyed impressed by the BBC radio at the time (NPR-kiddies tend to have a terrible inferiority complex with regard the Beeb) that I thought "Oh, great, this will give me a chance to listen to how they pronounce all kinds of things, so I can do it right, just like the BBC does."

All fine and well until I heard a report from a place called "Nick-a-rag-yew-uh" that included the word "eye-gwa-new-uh." After I got over being shellshocked I thanked my lucky stars they hadn't gone to Ti-jew-an-yew-uh as well. Nicaragua and iguana had been quite enough.

[osymandias.livejournal.com]

The BBC's awful with regard to foreign names. They try hard to pronounce them correctly, which I suppose is good, but this results in the pronunciation changing weekly as they try to work out how to do it properly. It's great fun to watch, but very silly.

I thought the whole point was that, if you're an American, you're *meant* to pronounce schedule incorrectly? :p

[darthrami.livejournal.com]

See, I'm with her. Due to the fact that my grandmother spelled things that way - colour and humour and theatre and grey and all of that - plus the inundation of UK versions of childrens books as a child, that's what I knew for a long long time. Crappy US elementary schools managed not to break me of the habit, and by the time I got to the point where I realized that the reason I was spelling them differently from everybody else was that I'd read these books and such, I was in a rebelious stage, and it stuck.

And so, yes. I can, and do, write it the other way. On professional documents and such, I do. But in my own personal space, it's what looks right to my eyes and my brain, and it's just that - my own personal space.

But then, you and I have had this conversation before. *g*

[the-emu.livejournal.com]

I'll let you have your American spelling, but please, please, not 'jewelry'. It's horrendous. Come back on that one.

But really I'm posting to adore your icon.

8^-

[reginagiraffe]

Ah, I'm afraid I must respectfully disagree. I think 'jewellery' is one of the silliest words I've seen. That's not how we pronounce it (jewelry has two syllables, not three) so that's not we'll spell it.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

People actually educated in British schools are exempt from the above rant.

Phewww!

*feels better*

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

dude -- you were exempt anyway, not being one of My Fellow Americans. the rant wasn't addressed to you in the first place. :-P (also, non-native english speaker? you're way off the hook.)

[reginagiraffe]

For some reason I spell grey 'grey' and not 'gray' (I think it's because one of my favorite books when I was a kid was The Greymouse Family) but I'll give you everything else.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

i do too. :-) [guilt]

[reginagiraffe]

I actually just recently had a long conversation with someone about this. That one of the things I really *like* about American english is that it's efficient because most of the extraneous letters have been removed. Why add extra U's and extra syllables that aren't actually pronounced (or can be left out without compromising the comprehension of the word)?

I've read a theory that english was well on it's way to become "regularized" (i.e. that most of the irregular verbs and irregular noun spellings were being phased out) but then there was the invention of the dictionary where the current spelling became 'set in stone' so we got stuck with a bunch of weird shit. I think the process is still going on, but it's much slower due to people being able to point to the dictionary and say, "No, that's wrong."

[misia.livejournal.com]

'Grey' and 'gray' are actually two different colors to me. papersky, who is a Welsh-raised professional writer living in Canada, once had a bit of a discussion in her LJ about variant spellings and Britishisms versus Americanism and this was one thing on which we agreed: the 'e' version is a different color from the 'a' version.

To me, the 'e' grey is a warmer hue, the color of a mouse's back. The 'a' gray is a cooler one, like the gray they paint battleships.

[reginagiraffe]

Huh! That's the first time I've heard that. Interesting!

[osymandias.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but the point is... colour just seems so much better than color. Superfluous 'u's are nice.

Also, is there 'a' license, even in America?

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

there's no 'even' about it. here, license is a verb and licence is a noun. in US english, there is no licence; both verb and noun are spelled with an 's'. [brandishes driver's license as proof]

[batdina.livejournal.com]

People actually educated in British schools are exempt from the above rant.

Thank you for that. My spelling's a mess, but mostly because my teenage years were spent in Europe and then the Middle East.

:::shrug:::

[thyesc.livejournal.com]

Um. Um. Um. Wow. Um. This so applies to one of our dear friends. Um. Thank you for expressing it clearly.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

it does, a bit, doesn't it? but he wasn't even any of the people driving me nuts with it lately. [pats him]

[thyesc.livejournal.com]

we love the Unnamed. But ouchkabbible for him. Alternately, I so agree with you it hurts.

[jgesteve.livejournal.com]

(I give special dispensation for theatre, because I -- and I know there are others like me -- make a distinction between theatre and theater.)

You damn well better have 'cause I'd have to get on a plane and come kick your ass if you didn't... 'cause to me theatre is the live performing arts or any use of the term in association with said live performing arts (dinner theatre, musical theatre, theatregoer -- well as long as they aren't dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt in which place they are a theatergoer who got lost). Theater has to do with the motion picture, medical, or war industries (unless you are discussing Bush or Rumsfeld's acting abilities in which case you can substitute the -re spelling).

And sorry... I use grey, but that's also what I was taught in my 100% US-based education.

Also, I only use centre when referring to the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City because that's its name.

Also Also, I'm surprised I didn't see cheque/check mentioned at all.

[corvidae9.livejournal.com]

Should I be amused? I'm amused. *petpets* (or is that *cossets*?)

*offers something pretty to look at*

[kmg-365.livejournal.com]

If you write colour but not centre, I mean to say, the game is up.

You'll love the name of the place where we spent vacation:

Harbour Town

:-)

[dorotea.livejournal.com]

I am so GUILTY of this. That said, I'm not apologising. :)) My Word, email and Semagic spellcheck are all set to UK English due to fanfic writing and RPG'ing, so it's just easier to stick with the English spelling in everything.

[elance.livejournal.com]

I'm guilty of this, but I'm trying very hard to become an eventual Brit, and only slip up out of ignorance or forgetfulness. I have a learning curve. *grin*

[amoeba-j.livejournal.com]

In my own defense, my parents are from Canada (so I got dual citizenship), and the only dictionary in our house when I grew up was a Canadian one with British spellings...so I tend to spell words that way b/c that is how I first learned them. I even had to bring in said dictionary to prove to teachers why I spelled certain words in a "non-traditional" manner ;) I tend to use Canadian (read: British) spellings without a thought, although I sometimes backtrack and edit to the American way to "fit in" if the situation demands it.

Spending ever summer in Canada also lent quirks to my accent and vocabulary, which ended up being a mishmash of southern US/northern US/Canadian -- imagine trying to explain that one ;D

[anariel-di-gaia.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I kind of agree because I hate the idea of that kind of snobbery, on the otherhand, I think US spellings look uglier (sorry) and so the English spellings should be favoured for the prettification of the world in general (though using that arguement we should all write in chinese).