A clear and exhaustive presentation!
Agreed. A most impressive treatise.
I will apologize (apologise) for my fellow American who is so intolerant of alternative English spelling that he would make an issue out of it.
As someone who often uses American spelling, I can assure you that British and even Irish members of newsgroups can be just as intolerant of spellings from the 'other' dialect, often with a nauseating (and totally unjustified) sense of superiority.
One is not better than the other, just different. I understand the words in either form.
Exactly. I would never seek to 'correct' the use of either. I tend to use American spelling or -er words and omit the 'u' in color/valor etc because it seems to me to be better indicative of the pronunciation (I know there are a very large number of words in English that are not spelled as they are pronounced, but there is nothing I can do about them; if there are two different standards for a particular word, one of which matches the pronunciation, and the other doesn't, then I'll use the one that does).
I would never spell 'kidnapped' as 'kidnaped' or 'cancelled' as 'canceled' because the double consonant affects the sound of the preceding vowel (the difference between 'hoping' and 'hopping'). I also tend to use 'organize' over 'organise' as the 'z' sound is not ambigous.
Since our favorite (!) unit of measure is pronounced MEE-ter rather than MEE-treh, I will use the American spelling for this too. The advantage of having a separate spelling for a measurement device is largely ephemeral - there are many words in English that have more than one meaning, and the context normally makes it clear.
As for the International Bureau of Standards, they simply have no authority to standardize on languages. The symbols are sacrosanct, but the unit names as spellings vary from one language to another (and one character set to another). For documents that need to be precise, write "100 m" not "one hundred meters" or "one hundred metres".
However, there is one very important advantage to 'meter' over 'metre' in the context of American adoption of the metric system which dwarfs everything else: it makes the unit look less 'foreign'. One of the biggest obstacles to the metric system in America is that it is seen as a 'foreign' thing, often producing an almost xenophobic reaction. You can point out that miles, yards etc are also foreign (which is why I always refer to them as 'Colonial' measures to highlight their foreign origin), but 'metre' just looks too damn French to some people! At least 'meter' fits in better with other American words like 'theater' & 'center'.
So the bottom line is, if the aim is to maximize the chances of the metric system being accepted in the US, then it's a no-brainer which one you should be touting: the one that looks like good 'ole American spelling rather than this nasty 'furrin' thing. Let's not lose sight of what the objective is.
--------------------------------------------------------- Tom Wade | EMail: tee dot wade at eurokom dot ie EuroKom | Tel: +353 (1) 296-9696 A2, Nutgrove Office Park | Fax: +353 (1) 296-9697 Rathfarnham | Disclaimer: This is not a disclaimer Dublin 14 | Tip: "Friends don't let friends do Unix !" Ireland
