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Comment by dreamcompiler | Hacker News Reader

So apparently the tool is slanted toward American English where the non-word practise is properly treated as a spelling error like colour.

If you use these words in writing for Americans and you are not a citizen of the British Commonwealth, you instantly mark yourself as arrogant.

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> and you are not a citizen of the British Commonwealth

What do you regard as the British Commonwealth, and what variant of English spelling to you expect people to use who are not part of this grouping?

Just so that you know, in case you don't, "US English" is used just about exclusively in the US, and UK English is used in most of the rest of the world, despite the fact that most of our devices incorrectly default to US English.

I work at an international organisation, and can confirm. My understanding is that is that at the international level, only the US-based international organisations use US English.

To be sure, I don‘t have any dog in this fight, just highlighting a fact from my experience that many here might not know.

This is my approach/experience as well, hence my comment and question to the previous poster.

That sounds surprising. As an European, I thought that UK only thinks their English is the dominant one, because it's the one officially taught everywhere. Meanwhile, the reality is, people learn English primarily from Hollywood and MTV; music, video, television and computer games are both the primary exposure and the main reason for people to pick English up, and they're almost all in US English. Secondarily, computers - the OS, software, SaaS - all of that is either in US English or localized to wherever the users live, and even then the US English version is usually better.

Nobody actually uses UK English here, except for English teachers. Computers don't. TV doesn't. Corporate jobs don't. And so regular people don't either.

Where is "here"?

"Here" is Poland, but in my trips to other places in Europe (and around the world), I never saw anything that would suggest this is an unique experience. On the contrary, it's pretty much self-evident, and having it be otherwise would require the last 200 years of world history to be dramatically different from what they were.

I believe at least in all of Eastern Europe (including those guys who call themselves Central :wink:) US English dominates in pop culture, and business. I also used to work with a few Italians, and Portuguese and they all wrote US En too, so I suspect it's the same for them too.

Those who call themselves Central Europe are a part of the European Union, and so lean towards the UK English since school education and relevant English certifications are geared towards it. Perhaps those who would like to ignore the fact that Central Europe is a region distinct geographically and culturally from the Eastern Europe, nowadays more than ever, should not project their views unto others and speak for them?

The kind of organization that identifies as an "international organization" is disproportionately likely to be hyperaware of its working language choice and standardize on a particular English dialect by policy and pick en-gb.

Without such a conscious choice, yes, Americanisms do seem a fair bit more globally pervasive and easy to fall into "by accident".

I'm assuming we're talking NGOs here, because if we expand "organization" to include for-profit entities, then I'd argue vast majority of them will not just be US-English speaking, but US-originating and US-headquatered.

> Without such a conscious choice, yes, Americanisms do seem a fair bit more globally pervasive and easy to fall into "by accident".

You'd need choice and enforcement - unless such organization is testing for Received Pronunciation during interviews and filtering out people who cannot into Queen's English[0], I'd wager most of the members in such org, who don't come from UK (or a few related countries), will be speaking "British English" with distinctly US pronunciation. Because while an organization can make a conscious choice here, for most people, learning a second language is a long-term endeavor that largely happens "in the background", and it's very easy to learn a blend, with UK English being present in schools, and US English everywhere else.

[0] - Or is it King's English now?

Coming from the horse's mouth, my expectation is that GP works at some kind of (non-military?) treaty organization? ime while outsiders might include NGOs under the umbrella, the kind of people who work at the "international level" tend to uhhh, care about their taxonomy. Multinational corporations are almost never lumped together with these (and generally don't really care about international cooperation as a goal, except instrumentally), outside the barest sense of "yeah, I guess they're organizations and they work internationally".

Majority counting by combined headcount of the organisation type maybe, but almost all multinationals are very big companies so by the law of "you get fewer number of pieces if each piece is large" there just aren't very many of them.

Not sure what is international level? If it's a kind of supranational organizations which mandate a particular version of English, I'm ready to believe that in EU it's UK En. But for commercial companies my experience is exactly opposite: it's mostly US En unless you're communicating with Brits, or someone from a country which inherited British education.

My experience with a large multi-thousand Eng department where the majority are in the US or UK: US-based or influenced employees will write usually with American English spellings and continue to do so even if based in the UK. UK-based or influenced employees will write with British English spellings and continue to do so if based in the US. No one conforms to the other and everyone can understand each other perfectly fine because the spelling of these words does not matter for comprehension. This applies to writing as well as words in code or API names.

This feels wrong, I work in China in a European multinational with low number of Americans, yet we all spell in a mixture with no expectation of consistency: half the sentence can be in British, the rest in American and it will be an Australian reading the email and they will feel absolutely nothing: multi national corporations full of non-native speakers are completely used to the confusion. I'm French myself, I write color as often as I write colour, and practice and practise are completely identical to me.

Plenty of European companies and organizations use American spellings. In general I’d say it’s pretty much random and 50/50.

I'm interested in this - I am from the Commonwealth and I do use those words, including when I forget with American colleagues.

It never occurred to me that this could ever be perceived as arrogant (even if only when referring to someone with a different background.) And I wouldn't have thought it would mean anything more than a certain language cosmopolitanism, lah ;) (Hope that joke comes through! It's been decades since I had much exposure to Malaysian English.) Can you explain why this might be, please?

Speaking for myself (an American), when I read published work that uses British spellings and I know the author is American, it feels to me that the author thinks American spellings are somehow vulgar or improper and he/she is trying to rise above our shameful misspellings.

British Commonwealth authors (well, really any author I know to be not from the USA) get a pass because these are the spellings they were taught. Nothing wrong with that.

This is a phenomenon I've only noticed in the last two decades or so. I don't know if American students are now being (wrongly) taught British spellings in school or they merely think their writing will carry more weight if it has a British "accent" but it just seems arrogant to me.

The OED is a useful resource but it is not our dictionary of final arbitration. Americans should use the American Heritage Dictionary.

I do not think you should ever feel that way. If any English-speaking listener has an issue with another speaking the dialect of English they were raised with, the listener has an issue with themselves they need to work through.

As an American English speaker, I have in the past used UK spellings when communicating at work with a group that I know only contains British English recipients. There is nothing wrong with that -- anything that makes communication more fluid should be welcome.

I believe the arrogance angle exists in a situation where an American English speaker with no British English education is using British spellings when communicating with other _American English_ speakers to purposefully create an air of superiority. If you do this, even if no one says anything, they definitely notice.

For other English dialects, my personal take is that most Americans (at least the ones who travel or interact with foreigners personally or at work) will assume they either are or are heavily influenced by British English due to history.

I have always been "aware" of the concept that they can be perceived as arrogant, but really only "colour" - it sounds kind of deliberate and like some attempt to sound "fancy," like enunciating "theater" as "thee-AY-tour" But even so, I usually see it as a humorous thing. The person is purposely trying to sound over the top arrogant/refined as a joke. I've never actually read "british" spellings and gone "what an ass." I usually assume that's how they write or it's a joke.

Huge quantities of english speakers, who are not from the Commonwealth, learn British English.

We learn both, tbh... And then get confused all our life, it's not like we choose one style in school, school teaches us that English actually has two dominant spellings and here is the American, here is the British and deal with it.

Non-native English speakers don't learn English exactly the same way as natives learning from their parents.

Americans finding anyone else arrogant is quite rich.

That's a mighty broad brush you're painting with

I guess it's more of a shit throwing contest than an artistic practice.

In the real world, it boils down to a game of "count the nuclear-powered aircraft carriers".

As a Frenchman, I enjoy writing colour and being arrogant.

Come on, write couleur and let them eat cake ;)

Quelle que soit la facon dont ils ecrivent, ce sera toujours une faute d'orthographe, puisque la seule vraie facon d'ecrire serait couleur. L'anglais, americain ou britannique, n'est qu'une geante faute d'orthographe du francais.

Interesting - I'd heard of American Gen Zs using theatre to mean the art form, to distinguish it from just meaning a building, but I hadn't heard of British English being considered a more prestigious register than American English. Is this a new phenomenon?

I don't think OP meant "arrogant" in terms of more prestigious, but in the sense of any native US-English speaker using British English spellings as a way to seem fancier or more formal.

Non-native US-English speakers are not viewed in the same light (in my opinion).

I find there are a few specific Britishisms (like theatre) that don't really raise an eyebrow in the US and maybe can seem a bit more upper-class. Grey vs. gray are essentially interchangeable. Toward vs. towards is another.

> you instantly mark yourself as arrogant.

That is simply not true. Maybe that's how you feel about it, but it is generally not the case (or even considered, really).

I learned colour at school in France.

I learned that both exist in school in France. It doesn't matter, I write both interchangeably and nobody ever cared nor corrected me.

Yes, we also had lessons about the differences between BE and AE so we are aware of both, it is just that when Brian was in the kitchen, he was asking about the colour of something.

The reference to Brian being in the kitchen is understandable only for Gen X in France. (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_is_Brian%3F, only in French unfortunately but you also have https://youtu.be/11jG7lkwDwU?si=gQoVL_AmBfQMrZbX&t=57)

Not "only" come on, I'm a little bit younger and I know it too ahah You even linked a youtube video, which I assume is the sketch in question (at work, no youtube): we can look at things from the past and learn them too !

Actually I posted my comment about who can understand it before adding the Wikipedia link, where I learned that Gad Elmaleh did a sketch about that (where a lot of people post GenX presumably learned about the expression).

It gives off arrogant vibes to have one accuse Americans of being arrogant for using alternative spellings.

That's very colorful[sic] thinking.

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