I'm guessing that the word "cheque" (proper spelling) (just joking, American friends!) became "check" when Webster's first dictionaries came out. If I recall, he "rationalized" many British spellings so that they were more phonetic - for instance, "harbour" became "harbor", "centre" became "center", etc.
I, for one, am glad he did it, so that we Canadians can retain our linguistic purity over you Yanks - ties to the motherland and all! <vbg> But, seriously, I agree with your assesment of English, Kevin. It is a wonderful language, having drawn on so many sources. Certainly, with the demise of Latin among academics and certain professions over the last couple of centuries, English has become the closest thing to a universal language - of course that whole British Empire thing in the 19th century, and then the US being the dominant economic and military power over the last 100 years hasn't hurt much either! If anyone ever gets the chance to see Robert McNeil's "Story of English" (originally on PBS, but it is available on tape), do so. It's an amazing history of the language, and traces many or most of the current accents and dialects. It's wonderful - see it if you can. He even talks about us Canucks using "eh" all the time! :-) regards, frank Kevin Hall wrote: > Actually the invasion in 1066 was the best thing that had happened to us; > Britain had been invaded for over 1000 years, but has never been > successfully invaded since. The Norman conquests made Britain a nation, > something it had never really been. > > The multi-lingual heritage of English is something I think is really > beautiful and unique; not many languages have grown and changed as much as > English over the last two thousand years, it still has the most words of > any language in the world! > -- "The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true." -J. Robert Oppenheimer - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
