"Two countries separated by a common language." Take your pick, Wilde or
Shaw (not Churchill). But Noah Webster was prescient.
Jim
Pat Naughtin wrote:
On 2009/04/25, at 11:04 PM, John M. Steele wrote:
I suppose it is all a matter of how your mothre and fathre taught you
to spell. :)
It has never been clear to me when British English uses -er and when
it uses -re. The -re ending is very uncommon in American English,
although there are exceptions like acre, where -er would change the c
from hard to soft.
Obviously I could concede two words out of all the spelling
differences, but, in general, I prefer the simplified American
spellings, which have been around since the time of Noah Webster. In
most words, the differences are minor and I read right over them.
There are a few medical words in which we have simplified dipthongs,
and I actually have to stop myself and ask "is that the same word?"
I know you will point out the use of theatre and centre in the US, but
they are only used in proper names, and, frankly, by organizations
attempting to be somewhat "snooty."
I will point out that meter and liter have been used in the US at
least since the Metric Act of 1866. They appear in the original text;
those spellings have a basis in Federal law.
Dear John,
Several points:
1 I like your spelling of mothre and fathre.
2 Noah Webster balked on acre because of its obvious mispronunciation
when it is spelled acer.
3 Noah Webster had good commercial reasons for wanting the USA to spell
in a different way to the rest of the world. In /An Essay on the
Necessity, Advantages, and Practicality of Reforming the Mode of
Spelling/ …, Noah Webster wrote:
/But a capital advantage of this reform in these states would be, that
it would make a difference between the English orthography and the
American. This will startle those who have not attended to the subject;
but I am confident that such an event is an object of vast political
consequence. For, … The alteration, however small, would encourage
the publication of books in our own country. It would render it, in some
measure, necessary that all books should be printed in America. The
English would never copy our orthography for their own use; and
consequently the same impressions of books would not answer for both
countries. The inhabitants of the present generation would read the
English impressions; but posterity, being taught a different
spelling, would prefer the American orthography./
4 The spelling of metre has changed from time to time in the USA.
Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson consistently used the spelling —
metre — from about 1780. I have not seen it, but I accept your statement
that Congress used Noah Webster's spelling — meter — in 1866. The USA
signed the /Treaty of the metre/ (note spelling) in 1875. In
1971, Chester H. Page of the National Bureau of Standards NBS (now
National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST) approved
a translation of the defining SI document (from 1960) that showed the
basic unit of length as the metre and it was understood that a
'gentlemen's agreement' had been made whereby the USA would accept the
-re in metre and litre as a trade-off for Britain's giving up the -me in
gramme and kilogramme. Chester H. Page is listed as an editor of the
(UK) National Physical Laboratory English language translation of Le
Système International d'Unités (SI), but his name does not appear on the
American version because he refused to allow it when the (USA)
Government Printing Office insisted on the Noah Webster notion that the
American spelling of metre should be meter. This spelling debate has
continued in the USA since then. (For a more detailed history and
discussion
see http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/Spelling_metre_or_meter.pdf )
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped
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