January 09, 2004
Corect Speling
I find it annoying that in order to get my Mac to check my spelling against an English dictionary instead of an American English dictionary, I must select from the following list:
That’s right. American English has been promoted to just “English”. Sure, I know this is an American program, but why not be consistent and label it “American English”?
For those who aren’t familiar with this particular bit of history: when Noah Webster was first compiling his American dictionary, he decided that it was a great opportunity to impose his theory of simplified spelling on the public. Some of his ideas stuck in future editions (such as the changing of most –our and –re words to end in –or and –er respectively), others he later relented on (such as spelling ‘determine’ without its final ‘e’, or replacing ‘crowd’ with ‘croud’).
As such, I find it rather offensive that on my computer, Noah Webster’s whim has become plain “English” whereas its parent, the English language, has been ghettoised into “British English”.
On a related note, when working on some code yesterday, I was forced into a spelling corner. The CSS standard spells ‘colour’ the American way: ‘color’. If I’m writing a method to customise CSS files, should I spell it the way that is natural to both me and my colleagues, or should I go with the way it’s spelled inside CSS?
After some internal debate, and a short rant to a cow-orker, I decided it was probably best to go with ‘color’ for the sake of external consistency. An hour later, of course, I was doing a global search-and-replace for everywhere my fingers had typed ‘colour’ for me without being asked.
Posted to nerd at January 9, 2004 08:13 AMNoah Webster Attacked Down Under:
From: Stray Blog at January 9, 2004 04:49 PMWell Apple is an American company you know.
It might be different on the UK version of OSX
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at January 9, 2004 08:25 AM (#link)I know Apple are American, but "American English" would have been more consistent, less presumptious, and no more confusing. It would even have put it at the top of the list, alphabetically!
Posted by: Charles Miller at January 9, 2004 08:46 AM (#link)Well then email Apple and let them know. I think it would be good if they listed it as
English (US)
English (UK)
English (AU)
English (CN)
but what about the Kiwis?
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at January 9, 2004 09:03 AM (#link)Oh, come on... Give it up. We won, you lost. Learn the new spelling and move on :-)
Posted by: Jason Carreira at January 9, 2004 09:09 AM (#link)Us Kiwis us British English, although many Maori words appear in our common useage.
Hell, we don't even have a proper Apple office anyway - just a reseller.
Posted by: Walter Rumsby at January 9, 2004 09:19 AM (#link)Jason what war are you talking about? The US and the UK have not had a war since 1812.
Oh that would be English (NZ)
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at January 9, 2004 09:45 AM (#link)[comment deleted in accordance with RealNamesPlease policy. If you're going to insult someone in my blog, have the guts put your damn name on it.]
Posted by: No one at January 9, 2004 10:09 AM (#link)
Come on, Charles, you aussies and sheep-shaggers (nz) are much more like us Americans than you are like those pasty brits ... except maybe in the sheep shagging category :))
Shut your yap hole and learn proper 'merican. ;-)
Posted by: Andy at January 9, 2004 11:41 AM (#link)Andy: You misspelled 'merkin', hope this helps.
Posted by: Charles Miller at January 9, 2004 11:46 AM (#link)Charles, perhaps a dumb question: was there a point when in non-US English the term was spelled "computer programme"?
Incidentally, the term "American" can likewise raise some hackles as a qualifier (e.g. American English.) Spanish speakers in Central and South America consider the term boorish when US citizens call themselves "americanos", on the theory that everyone in the western hemisphere is "American." The PC speaker of Spanish refers to Americans as "norteamericanos", or so as to be crystal clear he doesn't mean Canadians, "estadounidenses."
Posted by: mike at January 9, 2004 04:02 PM (#link)Are you really complaining about this? I thought we had the victim culture.
Posted by: Sam Pullara at January 9, 2004 06:37 PM (#link)The one which always makes me wince is Referer. Thanks to a typo in the HTTP spec there are millions of lines of code which have to be misspelled and the question of how to name things like methods and properties is far murkier than it has any right being - no matter which one you choose I guarantee you'll type the other at least once...
Posted by: Chris Adams at January 9, 2004 07:33 PM (#link)Sam: I'm afraid I can only answer you in song.
o/` It's my weblog and I'll whine if I want to
Whine if I want to, whine if I want to.
You would whine too if it happened to you! o/`
I consider myself a spelling nazi and am not particularly enamoured of US English, but as a policy I always use it for code. 98% of code (well a lot anyway) is written in it, its a formal language, so I don't care. I've had to use a framework/language previously that had been started using Aus. English, then started being used by US programmers so they added the US spellings, and the whole thing got rather messy.
Posted by: Jed Wesley-Smith at January 12, 2004 10:45 AM (#link)