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Comment by yesco | Hacker News Reader

Having grown up in the US with what I would consider a higher than average exposure to the early 2000s internet, at least compared to other peers my age, much of my ability to read and write actually came directly from social media, instant messengers and online games rather than books. This meant I often found myself struggling with spelling errors in English class which sadly resulted in deducted points from my essays.

I eventually came to realize many of my spelling "errors" were actually due to my exposure to the British spellings for many common words I would see online, like color/colour or behavior/behaviour for example. Unfortunately my teachers were a little unreasonable about this and would still deduct points when I pointed this out...

To this day I still inconsistently use all spelling variants, and curse Noah Webster for his half assed attempt at regional spelling reform. In practice my phone just auto corrects them without me noticing though.

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> Unfortunately my teachers were a little unreasonable about this and would still deduct points when I pointed this out...

I can see the teacher's perspective here. I don't think it's unreasonable for teachers to mark this down, though I don't think your request to get back the points was unreasonable either.

Communicating effectively with your particular audience (the local American audience one in this case) is arguably a skill they're trying to teach you. Using language constructs that are unnatural for your audience can distract them and disrupt their flow. You don't want your reader to see "enrol" and spend the next 5-10 seconds pondering if you're illiterate or unable to run a spellchecker instead of spending that time digesting your actual point. This friction gets in the way of your point, thus ultimately hurting your own cause in addition to wasting their time. So when you keep doing that on your assignments and exams, you're effectively showing that you haven't mastered this skill -- and so it's not unreasonable for your grade to reflect that.

its also entirely inconsequential after school, so do your job and follow the district mandates

but for the rest of us, the point of language is to convey a shared concept, and if the sender and receiver are doing that then mission accomplished

If you live in the US, I agree that you must use American English.

But even us people that live outside of the US/UK/related countries often got errors marked, because we used the wrong regional variant... In Europe, British English is used as a reference point, but I had a similar problem as GP.

> If you live in the US, I agree that you must use American English.

Why though? I think you missed my point with the rationale for this. See below.

> But even us people that live outside of the US/UK/related countries often got errors marked, because we used the wrong regional variant... In Europe, British English is used as a reference point, but I had a similar problem as GP.

That makes perfect sense though? The point wasn't "act American because you're in America", the point was "they're trying to teach you to communicate with {whatever audience they believe you will most often find yourself needing to cater to in the future}". Obviously in Europe they deem that to be British-English speakers. In America it'd obviously be American-English. etc.

As a computer science student in England we were told we should use ‘program’ rather than ‘programme’ since that was the convention in our subject.

If I remember correctly BBC Basic accepted COLOUR as well as COLOR keywords to be more approachable to primary school children who were native English speakers.

Dictionaries have also accepted the shorter spelling when talking about computer programs: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/program && https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...

Surely for the BBC Minor COLOUR was always the correct way.

It was a bad show that they allowed COLOR as well.

As each keyword was saved as a code - did COLOR and COLOUR really map to two different codes?

According to https://www.ncus.org.uk/dsbbcoms.htm, they both map to &FB

So it was always shown as COLOUR (or was there an American version>)

To me, a program is on a computer, a programme is broadcast on TV.

> If you live in the US, I agree that you must use American English.

Unless you are writing International Standards. ISO requires British English spellings in documents.

Also if you’re invited to tea with the Queen

I hear conversations with her are not as lively anymore

They absolutely are! She just looks a little different.

Unlikely, but not impossible.

My teachers only commented/deducted if I mixed spellings in a single essay. If a teacher can't teach someone who uses either variant they probably have a stark educational deficit themselves.

when i was an exchange student i was told that some students would have problems coming back because their english teachers would not accept the american english they would learn during the exchange year and that might reflect on their grades. fortunately i had an understanding teacher who didn't do that, but who was happy to see my english dramatically improved.

Which is why as European, I have my English dictionary set to UK English.

> In Europe, British English is used as a reference point

Anecdotal counterpoint, but… I’m a British English speaker, but many of my colleagues are Continental Europeans, for whom English is their second language. Part of my job involves copy editing and, almost without exception, their output is written in American English.

Is it because Microsoft Word default spellchecker settings?

No, it's due to the ovewhelming exposure to media from the U.S., mere spellcheckers oughtn't interfere with 'underground' vs 'subway', 'film' vs 'movie', 'flat' vs 'apartment', and so on and so forth.

> Communicating effectively with your particular audience (the local American audience one in this case) is arguably a skill they're trying to teach you

Please find me the numpty who can't distinguish colour from color.

> don't want your reader to see "enrol" and spend the next 5-10 seconds pondering if you're illiterate or unable to run a spellchecker instead of spending that time digesting your actual point

Fair point. At the very least, one should be aware of the different usages.

> Please find me the numpty who can't distinguish colour from color.

Not sure what you mean by "distinguish". But just because you understand something that doesn't mean it can't slow you down, distract you, or be detrimental some other way.

> just because you understand something that doesn't mean it can't slow you down, distract you, or be detrimental some other way

Sure. I'm just sceptical that errant signal isn't lost in the background of the American dialect's regional heterogeneity.

If I ask someone in San Francisco "what colour pop" they want, the friction won't come from the "u."

A better example for why regionality matters: what does "pants" refer to?

That's what a tired dog does.

No, they only pant. -----------------

OK, at this point I really need to explain what on earth is going on here:

"what does "pants" refer to?" - pants refers to trousers and pants refers to underpants and of course pants refers to pants as a noun. Pants also refers to heavy breathing as a verb.

I have absolutely no idea how we ended up with this situation, where pant(s) is a noun and a verb and really odd. I'm going to blame Britain, US and Italy (via Latin) and not necessarily in that order.

"A dog pants when they are hot but they only pant when they are hot."

Note how I end up slapping an extra s in for no apparent reason - actually, it is when I don't put a verb in front of that word. So: "a dog will pant" ... "a dog pants". The extra s on the word seems to make it a verballish thing.

On the bright side this is why phishing emails always look a bit wank.

"will pant" uses the infinitive, it's not conjugated at all. "He/she/it pants" is the third person singular conjugation.

> how we ended up with this situation, where pant(s) is a noun and a verb and really odd. I'm going to blame Britain, US and Italy (via Latin) and not necessarily in that order.

Because (in English) adding -s(/-es) makes plurals of (most regular) nouns, and also makes 3rd person singular declension of (most regular) verbs.

Other examples of noun+verb collocations: books, shows, scents, raises, views, votes, comments, dates, dogs, aims, bugs, ends, grades, hunts, launches, lifts, marks, moves, posts, rains, rates, records, rows, sets, signals, tracks... Examples with -es: searches, watches, punches

(This is going to be much more common in English than Italian/Spanish/Latin because English uses -s/-es for both nouns and verbs.)

Eats, shoots and leaves?

https://g.co/kgs/UzZtYRr

Also: https://www.amazon.com/Eats-Shites-Leaves-English-Shite/dp/1...

Guy from jerkcity.

Rubbish / nonsense / drivel / twaddle / claptrap etc. Virtually unknown outside the UK.

twaddle is word I haven't heard for a long time (I moved from the UK to Australia 27 years ago). It's a great word!

It is a lovely word, indeed, and it is undeservedly heavily underutilised, hands down.

I find myself using it nowadays rather sparingly and mostly in just one phrase (and its semantic derivatives): «all that twaddle […]».

I would say nonsense was quite common in the US. Otherwise agree (although I would get the meaning).

It is all pants to me (I was actually «translating» pants into Universal English).

Rubbish, nonsense, drivel, and claptrap all recognizable to me, a Yankee. Twaddle is a new one tho!

All of these are common in NZ ("twaddle" is a bit old-fashioned). I had no idea "nonsense" was supposedly regional, and four dictionaries I just checked make no mention of that (and include American sources of quotes).

For what it’s worth, although this is often considered an Americanism, a lot of regions of the UK (particularly in the North) have consistently used “pants” to mean trousers.

https://www.ourdialects.uk/maps/clothing/

Colour and realise I suspect most American readers would be able to understand just fine. But you start writing tyre, kerb, and gaol, and there will be real reading comprehension issues that start arising. We have standardized spellings for a reason and that's what schools are there to teach.

And this is just spelling, not even going into words that have different meanings in the US vs UK like pants and lemonade.

Interestingly, recently there is a push in the US to normalize African-American (for the lack of a better name) grammar and spelling, e.g. using "do" in place of "does". Wonder if this includes normalizing the usage of British spelling as well.

> normalize African-American (for the lack of a better name) grammar and spelling

The name is “Ebonics.” It’s had its own name since the seventies, although the push to “normalize” it peaked in the nineties.

> Wonder if this includes normalizing the usage of British spelling as well.

No.

Thanks, I haven't heard of Ebonics before. Looks like at this point in time its usage is becoming discouraged (the term, not the phenomenon it describes).

Like so many things that become objects of policy argument in the United States, the term describing it became overloaded to the point where it was rendered less useful. You don't hear the term so much now.

The term reached peak use around the time (I'm going from memory here as far as timeline) some educators began exploring the concept of teaching kids who spoke Ebonics at home with some of the same techniques they would use to teach English as a second language students. America reacted with the focus, intelligence, and empathy it always does when issues of education and race are brought up.

Yeah I am starting to notice that (not from the US originally) re: how America reacts to this topic. Also, it looks like even the term "ebony" itself in the context of African-American culture is considered archaic.

I love this example. I felt ick at realise but yeah, still understood it. Tyre I thought no way, that can't be tire. Kerb, wait, like curb?? And then gaol I think my tongue tied itself in knots and gave up trying to imagine what it might actually mean lol.

Archaic spelling of "jail". Read it with a soft g and a long a and it makes a little more sense. There's also the derivative "gaoler".

(American here, but that's one I've come across before.)

My goodness, I never would have guessed. Thank you for sharing.

Also, if gaol can have a soft g, then so can gif? :-)

Lots of soft Gs around, like gentleman… though Gif isn't one of them!! :)

Yes, but like a lot of minor regional spelling or pronunciation differences, some people say it with a hard g. It may be the improper pronunciation when compared to the origin, but that’s how words work, grating as it may be to our enlightened sensibilities.

I personally don't care much for small misspellings and they add zero friction to my reading, I'm more interested in the message and how it is delivered to some extent. What adds friction are some styles of writing which diverge too much away from the essential.

In Germany, I wouldn't get marked down for using the wrong spelling, because it just didn't matter. Behavior? Behaviour? Who gives a fuck, it's all the same. It's ridiculous that these regional variations are somehow significant that it warrants points being taken away.

I think native speakers of a language have a more visceral reaction to things being spelled wrong or the wrong word order. So in Germany, people may not care so much. I grew up in the US but near Canada so I have maybe more exposure to written British English than most in the US (center vs centre). And I lived in Tanzania where I myself became very confused on how to spell words (grey vs gray?).

But there are probably still some words that will make me think the person is not American, like organisation with an s. I read it and it viscerally feels off.

As a Brit, I resent the "authorized_keys" in my .ssh directory.

Due to the large number of U.S. internet residents, I don't tend to really notice many "Americanisms", though one thing that bugs me is when the U.S. doesn't seem to recognise that "America" is a a large continent and only one area is the U.S. However, even Canadians will refuse to admit that they are American, as in living within the american continent.

I'm not sure if you did it intentionally but I saw "recognise" and felt a slight electric shock :-)

Perhaps the solution is to just unite all of the states of America, because I at least think the original idea was that the USA was a supranational government uniting little nation-states (precursor to the EU?), but maybe these more established nation-states won't want to join the union and become a "state" (even though I think political science would already refer to them as states).

German spelling is ridiculously easy, whereas English spelling is quite hard. I guess the equivalent inverse would be comma use in German.

Don't blame Webster. For a lot of the well-known differences, he actually preserved the original.

In particular, the British added the "u" when French was in fashion, and likewise for "-ise" (in fact, "-ize" dates all the way back to Ancient Greek!)

One thing that Americans do get wrong is misspelling "-lyse" which comes from a different Greek root, so should not follow the same pattern as "-ize". But even then, Webster didn't invent the error.

To me it's about consistency. I don't really care what is or isn't "correct", I care that the spelling can sometimes be different depending on the region. It would be one thing if there was some unified body for English, like the French have, but we don't, so it's just another competing standard.

Ultimately I think changes like this should be more grassroots than top down whims of private dictionary publishers. Not to mention that all this focus on the phonetics fundamentally misunderstands that the phonetics of English spelling are closer to a mnemonic than a rule. I suspect this will become gradually more obvious as languages world wide evolve to be more keyboard friendly in the coming century.

But this all just my take on the situation.

I can never remember if I should use grey or gray

I prefer #666

The first vowel tells you from which country it comes.

Grey is UK English, so think "e" for England. Gray is American English, so think "a" for America.

Somewhat oddly, "grey" has ended up pretty normalized in the US so either works. There are a few other examples; theatre comes to mind. In a way that lots of other British spellings really have not.

> I can never remember if I should use grey or gray

Become a web/CSS developer and it won't matter anymore.

I find it fascinating that anyone in the US has this issue, as a Brit this was an issue for anyone with early internet exposure, but I hadn't considered the volume of British/Canadian/Aussie English to have an impact the other way round!

I remember in the 1980s entering a computer program into my BBC Micro after watching The Computer Programme[1] and finding out that it had dual spellings of key words like COLOUR/COLOR in its BASIC.

So even before the internet was widely used people in the UK we’re aware of the problem.

1. See how I slipped that one in there?

> as a Brit this was an issue for anyone with early internet exposure

Same here as a Swedish person who grew up with American media + eventually getting into Internet communities. English exams felt great when I took them, I knew all the answers after all.

But then getting the results back was always disappointing, as Swedish schools teach "British English", not "American English", so you better use the British spelling and pronunciation, otherwise it's completely wrong obviously and you deserve punishment.

Companies, for example, have very detailed style guides about usage to enforce consistency. Obviously we don't "punish" people for doing things differently but we do correct them and, by implication, ask them to do it differently next time.

> I eventually came to realize ...

At least you use the "ize" suffix, so all else should have been forgiven!

I prefer the "u" in colour/behaviour as I find it more aesthetically pleasing. But I absolutely despise the "ise" spelling of realize (realise) and am not entirely sure why. Though, I vaguely remember spelling all words with "ise" and getting some wrong some right and not understanding why (I'd learn later I'm dyslexic so I chalked it up to that and called it a day)

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