Jean, I very much agree with you.
Actually color/colour was another thing the (electronic) typesetting
people queried because both are in Ed5. It's color in 'J&P Coats Color
Twist' because that's how the label is, it's an old reel of cotton from
America, but all other instances of the word in Ed5 are spelled the
British English way, colour.
The Americanism that bugs me is their use of single consonants in words
like travelled/traveled. The basic rule of grammar that I learned was
that a vowel followed by a single consonant and then E says its own
name, ie a long sound whilst a vowel followed by two consonants then E
is prounounced with a short vowel sound, so travelled is pronounced
TRA-VEL-D (as most people do pronounce it) but traveled should be
pronounced TRA-VEEL-D.
Another Americanism that I find odd is that they have exhibits but they
don't have exhibitions.
The -ise -ize is thing is more complicated and goes back to whether it
comes from a Greek root. In older British English writings the ize
form is more common than it is today. The French/latin influence over
the last century has made a lot of words in British English take on the
ise form instead of ize whilst America, and surprisingly Canada, have
not taken the French influence so much.
There is one Americanism that I do like though (I think it stems from
middle English and the very earliest settlers) and that is gotten, past
tense of the verb get. In British English we just say got. Unusual
for the American version to be longer than the British form.
On 20 Mar 2009, at 08:32, Jean Nathan wrote:
Not adopt, but accept. Both s and z are now acceptable for words
ending in 'ise' - ie your spelling probably wouldn't be marked as
wrong if you used z. Color - no. A lot of us cringe at 'aluminum' and
I don't think that will ever come into general use here. 'Program' is
used for anything computer related, otherwise it's 'programme'. With
appalling spelling often coming from texting (that hasn't made it into
my spell checker yet) - never will understand that - I don't doubt
that once us old fogies are gone an entirely new system of spelling
will emerge. No need to learn shorthand any more
Brenda in Allhallows, Kent
http://paternoster.orpheusweb.co.uk/index.html
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