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Comment by jandrewrogers | Hacker News Reader

Much ado about nothing.

Due to my somewhat international career, I had to learn to code-switch between American and British English. My default is American but can do British as needed. Spelling, vocabulary, dialect to some extent, etc.

For a global audience, I find American is the best default. Nonetheless, actual Americans barely notice if you use British English-isms in American contexts. They may notice but no one cares. Everyone knows what you mean. Using British dialect may confuse them occasionally but even then no one cares. Canadians should do what is natural for Canadians.

It boggles my mind that someone from a Commonwealth country using British spelling would even warrant a news article. Why is anyone talking about this?

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Where I grew up in the US, in grade school, our neighborhood school in the small city had teachers from both Quebec and Ireland. So we learned non-US spelling first. That caused a pain when I and my friends ended up in high school and had to use US spelling.

But to me, who cares, there was a time ages ago people spelt a word the way they wanted and no one cared. Just look at old documents from the 18th century in the US.

Even decades later, once in a great while, I end up using colour instead of color :)

I never grew up in a British family, or had any sort of close proximity to British things. But I still somehow ended up using "grey", "colour", and "behaviour". They just look more correct.

Grey is an English spelling? I had no idea it was.

Both the spelling and the dominant colour of the sky.

Pfft. Spelling differences is minor league stuff. Try code-switching on silence.

Pointed out to me by a Kiwi, that Americans take silence after a statement to mean general agreement, but in Britain silence implicitly asks, "Are you _really sure_ you want to be doing that?"

>Why is anyone talking about this?

A "news" article was written, doesn't mean any real people actually care.

It usually means rich people care about stirring up pointless outrage and/or getting clicks from people making a stir about the frivolity of it.

Or the writer needed to fill their quota for the day

No, the parent was right. A huge amount of "news" is meant to keep people distracted from anything meaningful that actually affects them. This is because the people with power have long understood how to keep the rest fighting amongst ourselves.

> Nonetheless, actual Americans barely notice if you use British English-isms in American contexts.

Try this in rural communities with people who dropped out of college.

Saying "note" instead of "bill" will be noticed.

Same with "petrol" instead of "gas".

Probably a whole list of others.

"Pants" (clothing) is a good one, means something different depending on location.

It's all pants to me.

– not understood outside the UK even across the Commonwealth.

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