British vs American spelling

Is anyone aware what the Folio Society policy is concerning UK vs US spelling? I had taken for granted from Folio's being a British publisher that all their books would employ UK spelling as have all the Folio editions I have read to date. I was therefore surprised to see the chapter heading 'Newton's World of Color' in the new publication of Ten Great Experiments.

I'm British myself, and while I've grown up with a familiarity and preference for the colour of British/Australian/NZ spelling, I still enjoy reading Steinbeck or Twain, for example, with US spelling and appreciate the 'accent' it gives. However, reading about Newton in a book from a British publisher with US spelling feels odd! Perhaps this is FS deliberately courting the large North American market.

I did ask the staff in the Members' Room, but they were as surprised as me, and couldn't say they were aware of any policy to change to US spelling.

I couldn't bring myself to buy the book!

> 1

Oh no ! Sorry to our American friends - but I don't like American spelling either. But, the author, George Johnson, is an American. Is it the convention to retain the native spelling of the author when an American is published in the UK and vice versa?

>2 Quicksilver66: Ah, thanks, I hadn't realised that that would be the case but it seems a very plausible explanation. Just out of interest, do US fine edition publishing houses retain British spelling for their British authors?

Sorry for this off-topic but related comment, somewhat chauvinistic. One big advantage of Spanish is that even with idiomatic differences and pronunciation variations, it is spelled exactly the same way the world over.

Nooooooooooooooo! I've just ordered Ten Great Experiments as a renewal volume :-( I'm with you cronshaw, I wouldn't have ordered it if I'd known...

drasvola, I imagine that this is because Spanish generally has sensible orthography - i.e. a one-to-one correspondence between letters on the page and sounds (even if some of those sounds vary from place to place). English is burdened with spelling which is more related to the multi-lingual etymology of words than their actual sounds....

I don't see why it's a big deal. I like things spelt in the British way too but it hardly offends me when they are not, especially when they are written by an American?

Something I do notice is when publishers/editors have tried to localise a book but not got it all right. I've seen books quite frequently that change American spelling to British and change various phrases to their British counterparts here and there, but then leave in words/phrases like 'candy' and 'tennis shoes', which I would never say. I've also seen the same thing going the other way.

Really I think (translations notwithstanding) you should just leave books how they were originally written by the author.

It's just payback for when the FS book "The Best Of Dorothy Parker" changed the great American wit's words from "a colored person" to a "coloured person" in every story.

> 5..

I hope a few wayward "u"s don't take away from your enjoyment of the book. It's one of the renewal volumes I'm considering (with or without a "u" or two)

> 5

Regarding Spanish, yes and no. Phonetic versus written representation has to do mainly with b/v, c/s and j/g in front of certain vowels, which could have been modified differently along the way in different regions. There are also advantages and disavantages in its existence, but the fact that the Royal Spanish Academy sets the standards for 'correct' Spanish has had an influence. English speaking peoples claim that having no such institution for the language has allowed for the incredible richness that it has.

By the way, I prefer British usage over the American version.

>2 Quicksilver66:

Don't apologize! I'm American and I prefer British spelling, myself. :) I often use it, much to the consternation of MS Word. (Whose language setting I don't change because I don't use British spellings for everything, so no matter which setting it has, it's going to be unhappy with me!)

Also, it makes sense to me that FS would retain the spelling of the author. I wish all publishing houses would keep manuscripts as originally written.

> 5
"English is burdened with spelling which is more related to the multi-lingual etymology of words "

Not burdened, but blessed - it's the lifeblood of cryptic crosswords!

The one thing that DOES annoy me, is the regional changing of titles.

I shall be forever vexed that my Folio set of His Dark Materials includes a copy 'The Golden Compass' instead of 'Northern Lights'.

I'm re-reading the FS edition of Travels with Charley and they've very properly retained American spelling ('Labour Day' would have stood out like a sore pinkie), but I was thrown by the following in Jay Parini's introduction:

'Discreet scene gives way to discreet scene in the mode of picaresque fiction invented by Cervantes'

'Discrete' surely?

>6 LipstickAndAviators: I think you've a valid point to have things left as they were written by an author, and I wish FS would learn this and not omit footnotes or abridge without telling us! In defence of the delightful idiosyncrasies of English spelling (as infuriating as they are for learners of English), non-phonetic spelling does provide something of a rear-view mirror through which etymology can be appreciated, and odd spelling variations can be fun and visually expressive too (jail/gaol etc.). Specific national spelling differences do provide colour and character quite absent from, say, Spanish, and thinking more about American authors I have read, reading them in the original American spelling was all part of the flavour - I wouldn't have nearly so much enjoyed Maya Angelou's 'I know why the caged bird sings' in UK spelling.

(Somehow I still baulk at reading of Newton's World of Colors though!)

>13 cronshaw:

I think I balk at reading it just because the thought of needles anywhere near my eyes is sickening!

>6 LipstickAndAviators:
One of my friends is a fiction editor here in Edinburgh and every time they get a contract to produce a UK edition of an American book she calls me up as The Resident American to ask about brands of candy and makes of cars and how to translate them for British readers. I find it really distracting when those details are wrong - or wrongly changed to UK equivalents.

It can be quite fun but sometimes very taxing on my poor brain since sometimes the references pre-date me - one example was a Ford Pinto. I know what a Pinto is, of course, but we had to have a long conversation before we could think of anything remotely similar for a British equivalent (which I can't recall right now). And even then, with smaller cars and different styles and the British MOT system, there really isn't a car here that would bring to mind quite the image the author was going for.

>11 LipstickAndAviators:
I prefer 'The Golden Compass' due to the symmetry it gives the series (Golden Compass, Subtle Knife, Amber Spyglass). And to my mind, 'The Northern Lights' is a fairly dull title. But I'm pretty much the only person I know who thinks that!

>15 SpoonFed:

And this is why I don't like how they try to "translate" American/British books. I'm sorry, you're absolutely correct, there just isn't a British equivalent to a Ford Pinto! Just doesn't exist!

>11 LipstickAndAviators:, 15

You're not the only one; I prefer 'The Golden Compass' for the same reason. I don't think 'Northern Lights' is necessarily bad, but it just doesn't roll as nicely with the subsequent two titles. I sometimes wonder if this is less of an Americanization as an opportunity to "correct" something that had been bothering someone at the publishing house.

>15 SpoonFed:

I find both The Golden Compass and The Northern Lights to be equally dull titles. I think the issue I have with it is that it changed, surely you should just call it what the author wanted to call it - it's not like American audiences wouldn't understand 'The Northern lights'. Not to mention I associate 'The Golden Compass' with the rather boring film adaption.

I also feel this anger towards the first Harry Potter book's subtitle (despite not even slightly being a Harry Potter fan).

My partner is American so I tend to have long arguments about whose word/phrase for whatever is the 'stupider' one. The last one I got pulled up on was 'sultana' I think, then she started talking about 'craisins'...

To be fair you don't need to cross the Atlantic, you get this sort of thing driving a few hours up the road. I doubt any English speaker outside of Yorkshire knows what a 'snicket' is and there are plenty more words like that from my childhood that are rarely seen in books.

ETA:
>16 beatlemoon:

The Golden Compasses was the original title for the trilogy. The American publishers apparently were so in love with the title they decided to use it anyway, despite Pullman's wishes, thinking the compass part referred to the alethiometer when really it's another Milton quote (and mathematical not navigational compasses) which has little to no relevance to that first book.

>16 beatlemoon:
It's really quite an interesting debate and one that seems to be going on at many publishing houses constantly. I would have certainly just left the Pinto in and moved on, but the publisher's house style dictated that these things be changed.

>17 LipstickAndAviators:
Are you able to say which publishers it is?

It seems odd for one to go through so much trouble to re-edit a book just to have it come out that much further from the author's true intentions.

Seems to me most publishers are happy to shove out the same version that crossed the water (and most of us are happy enough reading that version).

I like doughnut over donut for whatever reason. But apart from that I couldn't be bothered. It does seem strange to go out of your way to change original spelling because it is always fairly obvious what the word is, with or without the u's.

A case in point is the 1890 American edition of Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. The editor changed most of the British spellings to American usage. Besides the usual 'ou' to 'o' and 'is' to 'iz', some examples were 'coverlid' to 'coverlet', 'feign' to 'fain', 'jessamine' to 'jasmine', 'Mahomet' to 'Mohammed', 'ribbands' to 'ribbons', 'Sybil' to 'Sibyl' and 'waggons' to 'wagons'.

>15 SpoonFed: - I can see your difficulty in finding a British car equivalent to a Ford Pinto. I don't think we've had a British car where the manufacturer decided to do a cost-benefit analysis that put company profit before consumer safety!

>22 appaloosaman:
Not an equivalent but...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliant_Robin ??

>17 LipstickAndAviators:
I shouldn't say exactly which one it was in that particular case, but I have friends and acquaintances at the major Edinburgh publishing houses (it's a small world!) and similar issues have come up from more than one of them. I suspect it's fairly common down in London as well because I notice the changes surprisingly often in my day-to-day reading; there's a lot of switching in 'biscuits' for 'cookies' or what have you. Most of it is pretty minor and the vast majority of people wouldn't notice.

It becomes a much more difficult decision once you've decided to swap 'colour' for 'color' and 'biscuit' for 'cookie' - not swapping the Pinto as well then doesn't fit. So it's all about deciding where that line is and determining what aids and what detracts from understanding; it's really a very complex and subjective task.

There's a lot less of changing stuff about in non-fiction, which is what I had meant to say in my original post. The publisher that produces Obama's works in the UK, for example, didn't change any of that text but I know they have made changes in at least some of the American fiction books they've bought.

<22
Ha! I remember the first time I saw a Reliant Robin. It was in Northumberland 13 years ago (I was so young!) and I watched it get slowly buffeted off the road and into the moors. The person inside just looked fed up, like it happened all the time.

Noah Webster has a lot to answer for . . . or has given us a tin to constantly kick down the road. And wasn't it GBS who followed simplified spelling to it's ludicrous conclusion?

I doggedly stick to British spelling especially with words like 'tyre' and 'cheque'. My sensibilities have been dulled over the years. In my innocence when I first saw 'mom' in print I wondered what America was like that they could blithely misspell a simple word.

As for publishing house styles I would prefer they keep original spelling. What I do object to is when idiom is tinkered with thinking readers might be mildly confused or amused. I will admit to reading some of JK Rowling's works as published by Scholastic here in the US and coming across the odd sentence at which I screamed , "No English child would say that." Now to my shame I cannot quote an example.

I have many old Penguin paperbacks with the advice, 'For copyright reasons this edition is not for sale in the USA'. I remember browsing a used bookstore and coming across a Laurie Lee book I hadn't heard of; it was 'Cider with Rosie' first published in the US with a different title.

I think trying to find a British equivalent of the Ford Pinto is pointless, surely context would give a hint and I have seen Pinto's in the UK . . .

ETA: There are plenty of British/American English dictionaries to consult for equivalents. I also relish referring to courgettes and aubergines ;-)

I have a preference for British/Australian/NZ/etc spelling too, but if it's just the spelling, I don't care much. I don't usually notice the spelling differences while I'm reading, unless I make a conscious effort to do so (which I don't!). But when it comes to 'Americanisms' (is this the right word?), it's more obvious and a little jarring, and I wouldn't appreciate reading a book that's been Americanised. (Obviously this doesn't apply to books written by Americans with American word usage.) For that matter, I don't like it when a British (or American) book has been 'translated' for English readers on the other side of the pond. I wouldn't buy a book if I knew that had happened... although if it's words like 'biscuit' and 'cookie' I doubt I'd even notice!

>11 LipstickAndAviators:
My FS set of His Dark Materials has Northern Lights, thank goodness! Wonder if there was a mixup when you received the US version.

>28 nadyaduck:

I knowingly received the US version, as at the time I joined the UK version was out of stock :(

In the general case, my personal preference is also for British spelling but, as some of you have also commented, I prefer to read an author in his/her native English, with the original voice and nuance that this provices. (As an aside, I would love to be able to read all authors untranslated for just that reason but, sadly, my foreign language skills only stretch to a small handful).

What I would love to see, though, is more information on this subject in book descriptions, particularly from Folio, who take great care to tell us about the paper and font type, binding and illustrator, but omit details about trans-Atlantic translation (or otherwise) of the text.

To translate or not is a publisher's choice, but if this information was provided we would better be able to choose (or not - I realise that not everyone cares!) whether to buy this or that edition of a given work.

A case in point: having moved westwards across The Pond three years ago, I've found myself on several ocassions buying a book from Amazon(UK) or the BookDepository, rather than from a US site, precisely because I wanted to read it in the original British voice and felt that there was a much lower chance of unwittingly purchasing a translated version that way.

Do people still harp over these old colonial disputes? I understand, perhaps, needing to explain to younger readers there are some importantances in slang between the pond: Americans should know what they mean by "smoking a fag" and Britons should not flip when they hear people "spaz out."

But other than that, the debate is silly if it comes to reading an author in their native English. After Shakespeare, there isn't any need to "translate" the language, unless (general) you is so petty you require the extra u.

But maybe this is just because I read a lot of 18th century American documents along with my British fiction to not only gloss over "gaol" but realize that even after Webster, American English is more conservative than British English.

I'll grant I still use "grey," "cheque," and the Oxford comma because I picked it up early, but when I read Dickens I expect BE and when I pick up Hawthorne I expect AE.

>29 LipstickAndAviators:
Lipstick, I'd happily swap my set for yours if you'd like. I probably wouldn't be able to send it to you for a couple of weeks (the books are still safely in boxes until I get the wall painted and shelves in place) but the set was still in its shrinkwrap when I packed it. Message me if you're interested; no worries if not!

Why on Earth do publishers even bother anglicising US novels? It's not as if US films and TV are dubbed into RP when they're shown in the UK.

> 31 "but when I read Dickens I expect BE and when I pick up Hawthorne I expect AE."

In fact, in his mss, Dickens seems to have preferred to spell words like colour without the u. His publishers, on the whole, had other ideas. The reason for the u is given succinctly(!) by the OED:

"Latin long ō passed in Old French into a very close sound intermediate between ō and ū, both of which letters, and subsequently the digraph ou, were used to express it; in an accented syllable the sound at length changed to ö written eu, whence mod.F. couleur. The OE. word was híw, hue. Colour, corresponding to the late Anglo French, has been the normal spelling in Eng. from 14th c.; but color has been used occasionally, chiefly under L. influence, from 15th c., and is now the prevalent spelling in U.S."

I'm an American. I read masses of British authors, and have done since my childhood. I don't intentionally have a preference for one spelling over the other, but Word often catches me in the "wrong" spelling.

However, every time I type/write the word "theatre" I have to correct it to "theater" so people don't think I've spelled it incorrectly! I also have to be careful of "grey," and those "ou" words as well.

Theatre is interesting. American usage will often use the BE when referring to the stage but theater when referring to a cinema.

Phocion, I've seen 'translations' of Shakespeare for high school student consumption; pretty dire stuff.

> The Northern Lights / The Golden Compass

I was also really annoyed that FS used the American title for this series. Could I bother one of you who did purchase the set to let us know if it uses the American text as well, or the British text? (The American text had a few sentences 'censored' here and there) I didn't buy the FS set for this reason (I have a nice set of anniversary edition HBs), but would be interested in looking for it second hand if it has the original text and they only changed the title (the etchings are gorgeous).

An easy way to tell is to look at chapter 33 'Marzipan' in The Amber Spyglass

US version:
"As Mary said that, Lyra felt something strange happen to her body. She felt as if she had been handed the key to a great house she hadn't known was there, a house that was somehow inside her, and as she turned the key, she felt the other doors opening deep in the darkness, and lights coming on. She sat trembling as Mary went on:"

UK version:
.....When she hears it, "Lyra felt something strange happen to her body. She felt a stirring at the roots of her hair: she found herself breathing faster. She had never been on a roller-coaster, or anything like one, but if she had, she would have recognized the sensations in her breast: they were exciting and frightening at the same time, and she had not the slightest idea why. The sensation continued, and deepened, and changed, as more parts of her body found themselves affected too. She felt as if she had been handed the key to a great house she hadn't known was there, a house that was somehow inside her, and as she turned the key, she felt the other doors opening deep in the darkness, and lights coming on."

Many thanks!

Ooh the UK version is much more exciting!
I have the FS set downstairs with the UK title, I'll check which passage it is tomorrow :)

35: Alan's right in that theatre has become commonly adopted into AE, as the stage, and theater as the cinema. I've noticed centre heading in that direction as well, being a physical location and center being the direction.

36. My (American and British) English teacher in high school told the students who complained about Shakespeare not speaking modern that if they ever needed their English translated, they had better be reading Chaucer or Beowulf.

>12 featherwate: discreet: careful to avoid social embarassment
discrete: separate or distinct in form or concept; consisting of distinct or separate parts

As I understand it, the usual reason for localising spellings and references is that the book would be "difficult" or confusing for young readers otherwise. I don't imagine that young readers are ever allowed to get their chocolate-covered fingers anywhere near Folio editions, so that wouldn't apply here. Printing two separate versions of the text must be expensive, so I don't suppose they'd do it without good reason. Maybe there's some sort of contractual limitation that would prevent Pullman's agents (for example) selling Folio the right to publish anything other than the US version of the text in America?

> 41

Now Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh would be an interesting experiment in translating into an equivalent local US vernacular.

>41 thorold: To tell you the truth, I don't really understand why? The point is that you read something about the UK and their culture and vice versa. I don't know what a Ford Pinto is I look it up. The same with children. They need to be exposed to literature in the true sense and not something dumbed down. You learn about the country and their cultures there is no point in changing the references. As I said before, if you don't know you look it up in a dictionary. And that is the best way to teach children: let them learn the differences between:

BE "theatre" and AE "theater" or
"aeroplane" and "airplane"
"anticlockwise" and "counterclockwise"
"aubergine" and "eggplant"

and the best of them all "chips" and "French Fries" You can check more here

I can tolerate the occasional "colour" and "color" but don't understand the changes to passages or references or to omit a whole paragrapg as >37 skullduggery: skullduggery pointed above. I was really chocked as they are trying to make this book more simplified and stupidfied

>21 drasvola: "The editor changed most of the British spellings to American usage. Besides the usual 'ou' to 'o' and 'is' to 'iz'..."

Point of order - "iz" is the English spelling, see the OED. It is hypercorrective to use -is, from people desperate to avoid an Americanism. -iz is etymologically correct, as it comes from the Greek nounal verb ending -izein. (Although "analyze" is so, so wrong it is almost painful. We don't talk about analyzis, do we?)

American spellings I can gloss over without problem, perhaps because English language spelling is such a concatenation of stochastic changes ("island" and "receipt" should not have their silent letters, for example, introduced by ignorant grammarians who regretted English wasn't Latin). Yet for some reason seeing a capital letter after a colon REALLY grates. Even though that's an older English convention.

>43 ironjaw:
I think you'd have to ask an educationalist. I can understand that that teachers might be bothered by knowing that kids are seeing "color" in some places and "colour" in others, but I don't remember ever finding it a problem. A lot of the books I read as a child spelled it "F-a-r-b-e" and were typeset in Fraktur, anyway...

The missing sentences in 37 look more like editorial prudery than localisation.

44 InVitrio Point of order - "iz" is the English spelling, see the OED.

Hear! Hear!

I remember being very disappointed with the OED when they started to include "organisation" as an equivalent spelling to "organization".

> 44

Thank you for your comment. Well, I guess Wilde was being hypercorrective. He wrote: apologise, moralise, realised, recognised, spiritualise, symbolise, sympathise and tyrannised, and J. M. Stoddart, the American editor, changed them all to end in 'ize'.

>40 overthemoon: Exactly! And I don't think taking care to avoid scenes of social embarrassment has ever been uppermost in the minds of writers of the picaresque. Looks as if it was a spell-check error or some over-zealous copy editing (if that old and honourable trade still exists).

The pedant in me says I should now write to the Society and suggest they might like to correct this in future editions....

#48 The pedant in me says I should now write to the Society and suggest they might like to correct this in future editions....

Go for it.

I once came across a grammatical error in one of my children's primary school reading books. Someone in the book said, "Give me a scissors!"
Aaaaarrrrgh!

I wrote a very polite letter to the publisher (Ironically called "The Educational Book Company") pointing out the error and received a very long, snotty letter in response saying that the book would follow common language usage and not use "circumlocutory constructions such as 'a pair of scissors'".

OK, so my back was up.

I wrote a letter to the Minister of Education, copied to the publisher.

I recieved a lovely letter from the Minister thanking me and letting me know they had written to the publisher insisting that they reprint the book. :-)

I subsequently received a very short letter from the publisher letting me know the book was being reprinted.

Wow, that was an amazing story. A letter to the Minister of Education, always works. I can attest to that.

"circumlocutory constructions such as 'a pair of scissors"
What a c**p response! "Circumlocutory constructions" is itself a circumlocutory construction for circumlocutions. And the alternative to the grammatically incorrect "a scissors" doesn't have to be "a pair of" - it can be some scissors, the scissors, those scissors...
Having said that, it wouldn't surprise me if "a scissors" doesn't end up as received speech within a few years - even without the help of The Educational Book Company. My 2003 Chambers Dictionary already notes it as a rare, rather than incorrect, usage and a Google search suggests it is already "common language usage" in some regions and particularly among those for whom English is a new language.
Now what would have been really heartening would have been the Minister's requiring them to put 'please' at the end of the corrected sentence....

> 43 "anticlockwise" or "counterclockwise"?

Avoid the difficulty with "widdershins".

>15 SpoonFed:

I'm from Sussex and I'm pretty sure that a snicket is what we call a twitten, i.e. a passage or alley between buildings in a town. But can you tell me whether it's any different from a ginnel?

#51 the Minister requiring them to put 'please' at the end of the corrected sentence....

Love it!

I believe part of the problem in Ireland is the fact that the Irish language does not have plural nouns, and given everyong in the Republic has to study Irish up to the age of 17 there could be a spill-over into their use of English.

Another pet hate of mine is the use of the singular form of verbs when it should be the plural; e.g. There's delays; There's nine of them; etc...

The problem now is that many younger people don't even recognise what they're saying is wrong. :-(

#43 ~~ As an American youngster (maybe 13 or so) reading British literature, I was very confused by the words "biscuit" and "chip."

I could tell from the context that a "biscuit" shouldn't be what I pictured in my American mind, and neither should a "chip." It was several years before I was able to find out what they were in English.

Things made much more sense after that. :-)

To this day, I prefer saying "aubergine;" it has a lovely soft sound.

Even more confusing is if you ask an American if you can bum a fag. Do NOT do this in Alabama.

#56 ~~ Too true. Unfortunately!

>53 TabbyTom:
See here for snicket/ginnel: http://www.languagehat.com/archives/000916.php

It's clearly something that varies very locally; my vague memory, FWIW, is that around Manchester people used ginnel for any sort of narrow passage; in York I heard ginnel used for a short (usually covered) passage leading through a row of houses to a back yard and snicket for something that leads between houses or gardens from one street to another.

> 56 But I understand they still light their fags in Alabama even if they don't touch the butt.

It isn't just children's literature that undergoes English-to-English translation on both sides of the pond. I was shocked to discover it happens with books for adults too, with copy editors changing not only spelling, but dating conventions, words, sometimes entire phrases. Even more bizarre, the translation isn't necessarily (or ever) 100% complete--some "Britishness" is preserved for "flavour" (i.e. flavor). But, apparently, simply keeping the text in the original would frustrate the readers.

#60 ~~ This seems applicable here. I recently read the entire Harry Potter series, which I purchased as a boxed set. I was very surprised to note that there was no British *accent* in the first 3 books, a slight *accent* in the 4th, and the last 3 books were *accented* as I would expect from books with a British author.

My neice and I discussed this, and from what I'm reading here, it seems that her reasoning might be correct. I'll have to share this discussion with her. She'll be pleased to know DonDon was wrong, and she was right. :-)

I think quite a bit has been written about the Americanisation of the Harry Potter books, at least I remember reading about it years ago. Googling just now for references, here's this:

Harry Potter British/American text comparison

"Soccer" replaced football, "jam" marmalade etc.

>58 thorold:

Thanks, thorold. So our Sussex twittens would be snickets in York, I think. We certainly have the equivalents of the York ginnel, but I don't think we've got a word for them other than “passage” or something like that.

Generally speaking, I don't find variations between British and American spelling disconcerting: indeed, I hardly notice them. If you have some acquaintance with English spelling before 1800 or thereabouts, minor variations don't cause heart attacks.

In some cases, however, I can see how a British spelling might jar in an American context, and vice versa. I remember Douglas Hofstadter in “Le Ton Beau de Marot” telling us how he was pulled up short, when reading a British version of “The Catcher in the Rye”, to come across a mention of a KERB in New York City. I sympathize with him. I have no idea how we Brits managed to come up with such a ridiculous spelling of the word. Although I'm British, I can't write “kerb” without feeling that I'm pretending to be an illiterate schoolboy.

After reading the above discussion I have come to the conclusion that the lot of you should all move to Canada and use both British and American useages to your heart's content!

I have not read Harry Potter. :-)

Just a thought in the UK you have trainers, in the US you have sneakers wheras in Canada we have runningt shoes can an Australian or New Zealander answer what they are called in the antipods?

> 66 Joggers

> 66

By the way, where I come (Glasgow) from we called them one of two things..

Sannees or Trainees

When Iwas a kid in Ireland we call them Guttees.

> 69

Aye, we called them guttees too, but I noticed it was much more common outside Glasgow ( Coatbridge for instance)

#69 & 70 Yea, growing up in Belfast it was guttees. However, when I moved to Dublin in the 1980s no-one I met had heard of the word.

#65 I have not read Harry Potter. :-)

Is that because the author is from Edinburgh? :-)

> 72

:-)

No. It is the bad Latin!

:-)

I feel expensively drawn to the new Folio five-volume complete collection of Greek Tragedies with tipped-in colour plates. I understand it is the University of Chicago translation. Does this necessarily mean it would be US spelling? Has anyone sinned with this already?

Reading volume 5 atm. Though like others i dont really see which english is used when reading.
I can check tonight when im home.

It has the US spelling cronshaw

> 66

When I was growing up (in Sydney) we called them "sandshoes". I've no idea if that's still used, though.

> 77 Many thanks!

I came across this old thread and figured I would resurrect it rather than start a new one.
I was reading a copy of the Folio Society Hemingway Short Stories that I picked up second-hand, and was a bit irked to see the text used British spellings. As a quintessentially American writer, it just seemed wrong, somehow. I'm generally of the opinion (as others have expressed), that it's best to just leave it as the author wrote it. American and British usage and spelling are really not quite so different as to cause difficulty.

I'm also now wondering what spellings were used in the paperback editions of Roald Dahl that I read as a child.

>80 statyk: When an author is an American who ordinarily uses American English spelling, it does seem unnatural to read him in British English spelling and lose the 'accent'.

80, 81

I concur. Thought experiment: Ring Lardner!

I'm an American, and I find this "American spelling" vs. "English spelling" utterly annoying. I don't recall what the rationale given by Webster, or whoever, was, but there is no intellectual justification for it. None! It doesn't matter how the word is pronounced -- there are vast differences in pronunciation in the British Isles alone. It keeps the typesetters in business (which, speaking as a part-time typesetter, is a good thing), but other than that, I cannot think of any other benefit having different spellings of words like colour, labour, etc., brings to the English-speaking (and writing) world.

>83 GiltEdge: Perhaps you're right, but then who gets to decide which spelling is to become the universal one?

I quite like the differences. When I read a book, it adds an 'accent' - I no more want to read Dickens in American spelling than I do Steinbeck with English spelling, just as I can't handle audiobooks with the 'wrong' transatlantic' accent (although I'm not good at anything more than broadbrush American regional accents).

85

I think you have it right.

OT,

In the case of Chinese character. the pronunciation and accent has hundred of possibilities, to the extent that communication is impossible , but the writing is always the same. since thousands of years ago.

>85 Willoyd: Spot on.

#87 Interesting point. That preserves the meaning of the text.

British author, British spelling; American author, American spelling - for me the question only arises in the case of translations. I suppose then it is up to the translator and publisher to decide. Hemingway with British spelling sounds wrong, as would Dickens with American spelling.

>85 Willoyd: I smiled when I saw your comment because when I initially wrote my message just above yours, I followed up with practically the same comment, about accents and British and American writers in respective spellings, but for some reason cut it all out. I'm the same way as you with audiobooks too and generally won't buy one when the accents are wrong. My first 'reading' of I Claudius was narrated by someone with an American accent, and it quite ruined the experience for me, but I've since gotten the FS edition and it shouldn't be a problem next time...

>85 Willoyd:
Certainly it makes a difference *now.* What I meant was, there was no reason for the divergence in the 18th Century and early 19th. Now we're stuck with Webster's (and others') poor decisions forever.

>87 kafkachen: Except of course that Chinese 'spelling' has changed: there are now two differing sets of Chinese characters, the original script using 'full' characters, as still used in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and the modern simplified characters now preferred in China and Singapore - a little analogous to British and American English spelling.

>92 GiltEdge: I think the divergence is simply a natural evolution of a once common language subsequently separated by distance. English in England developed significantly between the 14th and 16th century. it is unrealistic to expect that further evolution of language following the colonisation (or should I say colonization) of North America at the start of the 17th century would follow on the same track separated by thousands of miles. Indeed English spelling didn't really have any sort of stable and regular system until the mid 17th century anyway, long after the Pilgrim Fathers had arrived in Plymouth.

Interestingly American English has probably developed to a point where it is far more homogenous than British English, both in terms of spelling and regional language. Whether that is a good thing or not depends on your point of view!

>93 cronshaw:

OT-

Yea, the communist did that, to reduce time for learning and writing, if keyboard typing had been popular a decades earlier, it would not be necessary.

But even when you are looking at just the simplify set, over 12 billion people using different dialect are sharing an identical character set.

>94 Conte_Mosca:
Sorry if I'm not being specific enough in my messages here, but I was referring exclusively to spelling divergence, not language as a whole. That's a whole different topic.

Spelling was certainly in flux in the 17th Century, and if Webster's Dictionary had come out at that time, one would expect such wide divergences. But Webster's "A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language" appeared in 1806, by which time spelling had stabilized. So he couldn't use that excuse.

* I realize I may be unfairly placing too much blame at Webster's feet. The divergences had probably become accepted and standardized by the time he published his first dictionary.

I understood that a lot of British English spellings didn't come about "organically" but were the result of emigrant typesetters from the Low Countries applying their spelling rules to what was a non-standardised language - hence all the "-ough" endings and so on. There's a justification for Webster to tidy things up.

I think changes in technology and business will mean that American writers will be printed in American English in the UK - publishers are multi-national concerns and books no longer have to be type- or photoset, but can be printed from electronic files. Whether it works the other way, and British authors will be printed in the US in British English, would depend on those same publishers (i) making a decision based on the perceived insularity of the US readership; and/or (ii) making a decision based on the economics of preparing either one or two sets of files from which the books can be printed.

It may well be that such socioeconomic factors will work to make British English nothing more than a regional variant of (American) English. As one example, the British press has recently taken to referring to Territorials (members of the Territorial Army) as '"Reservists". Why? Presumably taking their lead from the Government, who - who knows? - just want to sound modern, or are using some off-the-shelf software package that's driving a change in nomenclature.

I listened to Stevenson's Black Arrow narrated by a nasally American.
(It was free)
(but still excruciating)

And Americans take no offence. My complaint is on the mismatch. I'm sure Anne Widdicombe, narrating Of Mice And Men would similarly stop time in its tracks.

I have noticed many American words and spellings creeping into English on this side of the Atlantic over the past few decades but am not aware of any moving the other way. A major part of this will be due to the predominance of American produced TV shows and films (or "movies" to be apropos for a moment) shown in Britain and Ireland.

One American word usage that has been very successful is "Billion". The original meaning of billion was one million million and this was the definition I learnt at school. Nowadays everyone seems to have adopted the American convention of calling one thousand million a billion. People have even stopped making the distinction between a British billion and an American billion. I do not know the origins of this particular divergence of meaning.

I have a number of author friends who live in Ireland and Britain who have to write their stories using American spellings as their major market is the US. This is an instruction they have been given by their agents. Even when their work is sold in Britain the books are published with American spellings as the publisher does not think it's worth the effort of converting to English spelling for the English speaking market.

One of the all-time great inappropriate accent moments is when the centurian present at the cruxifiction of Christ at the end of The Greatest Story Ever Told, played by John Wayne, says in a very broad, drawling American accent, "This truly was the son a' Gawd!" It is one movie moment that can cause outbursts of laughter in an audience on this side of the Atlantic, which I do not think was the intention of the film producers.

>99 pgmcc: Yes that's a very sensible adoption. I remember learning at primary school in the UK that a billion was a million million rather than a thousand million and thought later how much more sensible the American billion and trillion are.

But I don't care for the redundant double preposition which is creeping insidiously into the UK media: eg. 'he's standing outside of the window' - why the of? And yet I wouldn't necessarily like it removed from a novel as written by an American author!

>100 pgmcc: Given that the original centurion would probably be speaking Latin or a Middle Eastern language, I think the least of the issues is the accent!

>99 pgmcc: One of the Americanisms I really struggle with is the use of "gotten". I know it was probably originally English, and that the Americans are probably closer to older English than we are on this, but it still grates everytime I hear it when used in English, as opposed to American.

#102 You're right. John Wayne should have spoken Latin.

:-)

#101 'he's standing outside of the window' - why the of?

This seems to be very common in the US. I remember that during a radio broadcast warning people about the dangers of being on the beach as a hurrican was approaching the Governor of Florida told people to, "...get off of the beach!"

>98 LesMiserables:
Reservist goes back to 1854 in British use, according to the OED. One of the examples it cites is the late Field-Marshal Haig, writing in 1914. Territorial in that sense was only coined in 1907, when the Territorial Force was being set up. Lord Haig obviously didn't want to have anything to do with that sort of new-fangled jargon.

#102 Willoyd

"gotten" is a word I would have been taught in school as the correct term for a phrase such as, "He had gotten himself tangled up in the fishing nets." I would not consider it an Americanism at all.

ETA: The OED obviously disagrees with me. I will have to write a letter to The Times.

:-)

May I recommend Folio's published English Language by Burchfield? A fine read and a fascinating exploration of the divergence of English.

#107 Ordered.

The copy ordered has three authors including Burchfield. It is a Folio edition.

>106 pgmcc: "gotten" is a word I would have been taught in school as the correct term for a phrase such as, "He had gotten himself tangled up in the fishing nets." I would not consider it an Americanism at all.

Right or wrong, that's classic American in my eyes! (If I was going to use the word at all, and it's a no-no word in my class, I would write "He had got himself tangled...."

But then there's ill-gotten........!

I've gotten/got myself into a right pickle here.

:-)

I know I'm getting old, but now the OED and my colleagues on LT have my use of English dated in the Middle Ages. I didn't think I was that old.

>97 housefulofpaper: "I understood that a lot of British English spellings didn't come about "organically" but were the result of emigrant typesetters from the Low Countries applying their spelling rules to what was a non-standardised language - hence all the "-ough" endings and so on. There's a justification for Webster to tidy things up."

I suspect that some "American spellings" can be traced back to similar origins, i.e. journeymen typesetters who didn't know or care about the "correct" spelling.

> 111 - That is definitely true for many American spellings. But Noah Webster also deliberately changed the spelling of many words (like colour and musick) to variations that made more sense to him. Those variations were surely being used before he published his dictionary, but he knew that he had an opportunity to codify American spelling and he took full advantage of that opportunity.

On a related topic, NYRB has a fascinating book called Names on the Land, which describes the etymology of many of the odd-seeming place names in America. Typesetters were only one of the causes of the ever-changing spellings of towns, rivers, and the like. I'm sure there are many that are variations on British place names.

> 102, etc - Americans definitely overuse "got" and "gotten". Some uses seem just fine to me, such as the example pgmcc used. But too often, "have" should be used instead of "got". I have been trying to purge my own usage of "got" where possible, but when you spend decades with a word it can be difficult to do.

>111 GiltEdge:

Well, the deviations from the "original" are not always on the American side. In some cases the modern American spelling is the old British spelling.

For instance, the OED, under ax(e), says "The spelling ax is better on every ground - of etymology, phonology and analogy - than axe, which has of late become prevalent. For tire/tyre, the OED says that tyre was virtually obsolete by 1700 before being revived in the nineteenth century. As for the British kerb, I just can't imagine how we came to invent such a spelling.

What about gaol / jail? I nearly fell out of my chair one day when I was reading a contemporary UK article that used the spelling "gaol." It was only the context that made me realize that it was the English spelling of "jail."

>112 coynedj: "Names on the Land" sounds good. I've never heard of it.

>114 GiltEdge:

Actually, I don't think we write "gaol" very often these days. It used to be the official word, but it's gone out of official use. The establishment in which Oscar Wilde served part of his sentence is now officially "Her Majesty's Prison, Reading" (abbreviated to "HMP Reading"). The word is sometimes used colloquially, and I think most Britons today will probably spell it "jail".

Many Brits believe that "jail" is an American version of the original "gaol", but in fact they are different forms of the same word and both go back centuries in Britain. "Gaol" (which originally had the "hard" g sound of "gale") comes ultimately from the ancient speech of Normandy/Picardy, and "jail" from the speech of the Île-de-France (the region around Paris). Since William the Conqueror's followers came from a wide area, Middle English adopted words from various dialects of the "langue d'oïl", and sometimes borrowed two forms of the same word.

I would never dream of using the word "jail". I would only use "gaol", but then only in a historic context. If I were to refer to a modern institution it would be a prison. Gaol (and its slightly archaic feel) and prison conjure up completely different images for me, one ancient, one modern.

Yes, I agree that there is a complex etymology, with a number of variants that go back a long way. But in simple terms, gaol derives from the Latin "cavea", meaning a cage (in turn derived from "cavus" meaning hollow). In Late (Vulgar) Latin this became "gabiola", and in Old French, "gaole". In modern French it is "geôle".

I agree with Tom that even in the UK, few are likely to use "gaol" these days. It's a shame I think, as jail is an absolutely ghastly word.

#115 but in fact they are different forms of the same word

That is my understanding.

>116 Conte_Mosca: Quite agree with the different connotation of gaol and prison, and the preference for gaol over jail (The Ballad of Reading Jail - nooo!). Of course it's quite subjective, with emotional attachment entirely dependent on an individual's cultural context and preference. I derive a lot of pleasure from etymology as I do from history generally. It's a little like architecture changing over time, with old forms ever present, often oddly abutting the new, but always enjoyable.

I hope the word "prison" does not totally supplant jail/gaol otherwise Monopoly would never be the same again.

"Go to prison. Go directly to prison. Do not pass GO. Do not collect 200."

It just doesn't sound right.

>119 pgmcc: Maybe not, but perhaps us old-fashioned types could lobby for a retro edition.

"Goest thee to gaol. Goest thee directlie to gaol. Thou dost not passeth GO! Thou dost not collecteth 800 Crowns! Begone, you knave, you rascal, you eater of broken meats, you son and heir of a mongrel bitch, lest I beat you into clamorous whining..."

...oops, I started to go all King Lear there for a minute (well, Kent anyway), apologies. That's what good old fashioned language does to me!

#120 Conte_Mosca, remind me never to get into a verbal exchange with you.

By the way, do you write Blackadder's curses for him? ;-)

I wonder if 15 year old neds in Maine and Motherwell, Philadelphia and Portadown, share the same text-type language? cya

>100 pgmcc:

Re John Wayne, the story goes that he delivered the line: "Truly, this was the Son of Gaard", whereupon the director shouted, "Say that with awe!" To which Wayne responded, "Aw! Truly this was the Son of Gaard!"

#123 It is at times such as this that a, "like", button would be appropriate.
:-)

> 123 I'm pretty sure this is an apocryphal story, unless Wayne intended it as a practical joke on the director. He was a professional actor and knew perfectly well what a direction like "say it with awe" meant.

#125 Well it certainly came across in the finished product as "awe-full".

>118 cronshaw:
In the States and in Canada, a jail is for accused people awaiting trail, while a prison is for those convicted of a crime.
I assume, that gaol is a prison, i.e. for those convicted of some dastardly deed…is that correct?

>125 GiltEdge:

I'm quite sure it is apocryphal, but I'm with David Niven on this one. Why let the truth get in the way of a good story?!

>127 GoFurther:

In former times in England, imprisonment as a punishment for crime was not usual. Persons accused of crime would be held in a gaol (which might also be spelled jail in non-official circles). If they were found guilty at their trial, the punishment would probably be a fine or some form of corporal punishment (e.g. whipping, branding, the stocks or pillory).

The circuit judges who try the most serious criminal cases are still officially styled (with the old official spelling) “Her Majesty's Justices of Oyer and Terminer and General Gaol Delivery” because once upon a time their arrival in the assize town would be the occasion for remanded prisoners to be delivered from gaol and tried.

Today the words gaol/jail and prison are pretty well synonymous: a gaol in the old sense (like Brixton in London) is generally known as a “remand prison”. “Prison” is the official term, “jail” is still used informally, especially in newspaper headlines where it has thr advantage of brevity. Headline writers will certainly use the spelling “jail”: I have never seen a headline that screamed “Gaol for bombers” or “Killer gaoled”.

The gaol/jail debate is not a modern one. Dr Samuel Johnson defined "gaol" in his 1755 Dictionary as:

Gaol. n.s. gaol, Welsh; geole, French. A prison; a place of confinement. It is always pronounced and too often written jail, and sometimes goal.

So Dr Johnson is on my side! Shakespeare also never stooped to using jail:

"Then am I the prisoner, and his bed my gaol." - King Lear.

"Have I been ever free, and must my house
Be my retentive enemy, my gaol?" - Timon of Athens.

"If we mean to thrive and do good, break open the gaols, and let out the prisoners" - Henry VI. p. ii.

(Stage Direction) Enter POSTHUMUS and two Gaolers - Cymbeline

"only get the learned writer to set down our excommunication and meet me at the gaol." - Much Ado About Nothing

Not a "jail" in sight :-)

EDIT: Changed "doctionary" to "dictionary" Even as a variant spelling, it just didn't look right :-)

>130 Conte_Mosca:

On the other hand, under jail, Dr Johnson simply says “It is written either way, but commonly by latter writers jail.” By way of illustration he quotes “Away with the dotard! To the jail with him!” from “The Taming of the Shrew”. The First Folio prints Iaile here, as it does a few lines earlier (“Carrie this mad knave to the Iaile”). Modern editions may use gaol here, but Shakespeare seems to have been a little inconsistent in his preferences, as he was in the spelling of his own surname!

>131 TabbyTom: Alright, I admit he used "iaile", which is modernised as "jail",but he never used jail!

I think Shakespeare only used "iaile" three times though (four if you count the two consecutive instances in The Shrew) , fewer than his use of gaol (or it's cognates, e.g. gaoler), so whilst spelling was not standardised at that time, he had a preference (as did Dr Johnson who would probably have said "latter writers" with a sneer!). The other instances of "iaile" are in Sonnet 133:

"Thou canſt not then vſe rigor in my Iaile."

And Much Ado:

"Meet me at the iaile - Act 3, Sene 5

EDIT: Just to add, lest anyone accuse me of pedantry, I completely accept that the "jail" forms have a history going back hundreds of years ("iaiole" and "iayle" pre-date even Shakespeare by a couple of hundred years), I am just standing behind my preference, and selectively choosing my literary advocates - and where necessary, selectively choosing what to quote from my literary advocates, ignoring those bits which fail to advance my case :-)

EDIT 2: To confess a third use of "iaile" I had missed. Tom is quite right - the Much Ado quote I gave earlier is actually modernised (!) as gaol (as are the other instances of "iaile"), much as it pains me to admit.

>132 Conte_Mosca:

How did you get the long 's', Conte_Mosca? I've never been able to reproduce that electronically! That'd come in handy for me, I must admit!

EDIT: To add how this thread encapsulates how much I appreciate this group. Nowhere else on the internet have I come across conversations such as these! I always smile every time I log in to LT every morning at work. Whenever I need a respite from work-related madness, LT always beckons! :)

What's the earliest known instance of "iaile"?

Unless later editions of the Oxford English Dictionary have found earlier instances, the first recorded use of the J/I spelling is in the Cursor Mundi (circa 1300):

A sargant sent he to Iaiole

The earliest use of the G spelling comes in a poem called The Eleven Pains of Hell (circa 1275):

In helle is a deep gayhol.

The OED gives its definitions and quotations under the headword jail. The word gaol is simply defined as “a variant spelling of jail".

Generally, when we have preserved borrowings of the same word from both Norman and Francien dialects, we have differentiated the meaning. Thus the Norman catch and cattle have different meanings from the Francien chase and chattel, With gaol/jail, we have kept two forms of the same word with the same meaning, and somehow the pronunciation of jail has supplanted the original pronunciation of gaol.

I used to have faith in the OED until some years ago when it accepted "organisation" as a valid variant of "organization".

>136 pgmcc:
For me, it was when they added a type of hotdog popular in Chicago to the definition of 'pistol'.

However, I do trust the OED for finding the earliest uses and origins.

Os.

> 136, 137

"Descriptive not prescriptive" - ignoring the fact that most people go to a dictionary to find the correct meaning of a word, rather than how some nincompoops have begun using it.

Edited to add - they could continue to record such usage, but alongside "obsolete"; "offensive"; "slang"; etc, they could mark it as "wrong".

#138

"Descriptive not prescriptive" Yes, I only realised this a few years ago.

In relation to the rest of your comments, I agree totally.

#18
"In the States and in Canada, a jail is for accused people awaiting trail, while a prison is for those convicted of a crime."

Let’s really confuse things. If you get arrested here and don’t make bail you stay in the Winnipeg Remand Centre until your trial. If you are sentenced to more than two years after you’re found guilty you go to Stony Mountain Institution, a few miles north of the city. If you are sentenced to less than two years you end up in Headingley Correctional Centre, a few miles west of the city. And if you’re really bad and they don’t want to keep you in the province they send you to Kingston Penitentiary in Ontario. Want more confusion? While Headingley Correctional Centre has neither jail, prison nor penitentiary in its name it is located on Gaol Road.

Anyone who comes to live in Canada from a non-English speaking country and actually manages to learn English as a second language is a hero in my books and a freaking genius.

The the American mid-west (where I live) the jail is run by either the city or county. It holds those waiting for trial and those sentenced to serve a year or less. If someone is sentenced to serve for longer than a year they are remanded to the custody of the state run prison. The spelling "Gaol" is not used.

I am all for reading FS books by British authors with the British spelling and usage.

I find all of this very interesting, but I never understand the idea that there is an immutably "correct" way to use language. Language is fluid and malleable. It changes. Once everyone is using a word in a particular way, then its meaning changes. This is how language works. It doesn't matter what the dictionary says.

As for BE vs. AE, leave it how it was written. I can see some changes in children's books, but if you're looking at an adult audience, they ought to be able to figure it out.

Most US writers are published in the UK in their original US English. I don't think this was the case (say) 50 years ago.

Technology and economics are the main causes, especially now that the publisher supplies the "copy" to the printer as a pdf file.

That doesn't explain why British writers are "Americanised" for the US Market.

It will be interesting to see when a publisher tries to sell Americanised British texts in the UK market (I'm sure it's only a matter of time), and what level of consumer resistance they encounter.

A little while ago I came across an American edition of an Ian Rankin book: the (male, middle-aged, Scottish) detective was described as wearing suspenders with his suit. Difficult to take him seriously after that...

this thread has jumped up and as I had 15 minutes to spare, I've just read through it; a very entertaining quarter hour, which has also helped me to come to terms with my intense irritation on finding The Golden Compass instead of Northern Lights in the Folio Pullman set I purchased a few years ago.

#143 It will be interesting to see when a publisher tries to sell Americanised British texts in the UK market (I'm sure it's only a matter of time)

Charlie Stross is a British SF author who writes his novels in Americanised British and sanctions the publication of his novels on this side of the Atlantic (i.e. the East side) in that state. I discussed this with him saying I would have expected to have British spelling over here. His response was that his biggest market was the US and that neither he nor his publisher was going to go to the cost or effort of converting his works to English English. My comments about snubbing his nose at some of his customers was dismissed with a sneer.

and what level of consumer resistance they encounter.
I do not tend to buy Charlie's books.

Just as an aside, and with the context here that I am Irish, hence am in the English(*) Camp.

What do Americans(for I don't know) think of themselves as speaking? That is, is it....

American English
American
English

For example, if an American is in Korea, somebody speaks Korean to them and they then turn and say....."Sorry, I only speak *******" ??

It is interesting, just wondering what the current zeitgeist is. (apologies for speaking German, just there, lol).

I have occasionally heard in some movies ( Hollywood movies) a line where the protagonist would say.... "Hello there, do you speak American?".

(*).- The reason for the asterix in my first line is that I made a conscious decision to just say "English" and not use the British prefix.

As in the 4 Golf Majors. Many people call it "THE Open", not using the prefix the "British" Open. Pre-eminence 'n all that. If another Open comes along, all well and good, call it the "US" Open as a way of marking the difference. It must seem terribly stuffy and Old Empire'ish,lol, I know, but the organisers of the golf tournament are terribly keen to not add in the "British" prefix. You can imagine all the Old Admiral Nelson heads, with their large brandies chatting through the plumage of cigar smoke at St. Andrew's cantankerously lamenting over the concept of even a hint of having to delineate and exposit what "their" language is, because the Old Colonial's have morphed away from the Mother tongue, lol.

I don't mean to beshrew American English in any way, and realise I am dangerously skirting on pedantic ice....(to say nothing of my rambling)...but I just personally feel that if asked by an American( or any other nationality) what language I speak, I would most definitely answer without the prefix "British".

> 147 -

Americans say they speak English. When speaking to Englishmen we might call it American English, but only if attention is explicitly being paid to the differences between it and, for lack of a better term, English English. I have never heard anyone say he or she spoke American.

In this country we refer to the US Open and the British Open - neither is simply called "The Open".

>148 coynedj:
Thanks for the feedback. Appreciate it.

Interesting also about the golf, and the differences there as well.

I remember a few years ago, a proposal by someone to change the flagsticks to include the word "British". You wouldn't believe the reaction it got from some people on mainland UK, lol. Very much a case of them saying it was "The" Open.
Same with the official website for the annual golf tournament, even down to the smaller details like the Flagsticks.
http://www.theopen.com

If I read a book written by an American writer, I expect American English spelling. An English author should be using English spelling. That seems very logical to me. Being a "Yank", it really doesn't matter to me. I will sort it out as I read. Didn't Sir Winston say that England and America are one people divided by a common language, or something like that?
By the way, I posted two photos of my Folio Society Library a few minutes ago. They were all purchased second hand from dealers on ABE, and Ebay, and all in the last four months. Luckily they were all described and graded very well. No unwanted surprises.

>150 Railsplitter: Didn't Sir Winston say that England and America are one people divided by a common language, or something like that?

Perchance I watched the film, "Patton", last night. In it Patton attributes the quote to George Bernard Shaw. My Internet based research indicates that there appears to be no written record of Shaw having made this remark but there is record of a similar comment made by Oscar Wilde in 1887. Oscar Wilde's version was, "America and England have everything in common except a language".

>151 pgmcc:
Although this isn't Pedants' Corner, I was very tempted to challenge your use of "perchance" there. But I was saved in time by the OED, which reminds us that even Shakespeare sometimes used it to mean "by chance", e.g. from the beginning of Twelfth Night where he has it both ways: "Perchance he is not drowned ... It is perchance that you your self were saved".

>152 thorold: It is an honour to be saved by The Bard himself.
:-)