| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
jacl
Joined: 31 Oct 2005
|
 Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 6:19 am Post subject: |
 |
|
| I think "flavour/flavor" should be "flaiva". That's what I teach my students. I have my own personalized spelling for some things that I pass on to the students because I'm too lazy to look it up in the dictionary or just because I think that my way is better. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Big Mac
Joined: 17 Sep 2005
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 8:06 am Post subject: |
|
|
| AbbeFaria wrote: |
Some of you people are unbelievably bitter and hostile. As much as you may not like it, American culture does saturate the market, as the other person said. I'm not saying it's a good thing or a bad thing, it just is. It's only natural that the kids here are going to come across more American spellings than any other kind in their day-to-day activities. The US has been here for 50+ years.
And, just out of curiosity, what makes the British or Canadian spelling right? In the case of Brits who are this militant, is it just because you had it first? The only language that doesn't change is a dead one. You make it sound like dropping the "u" in color means you'll be annexed to the U.S., have to start calling football soccer, dismantle the parliment and exile the queen mum. All it is is something different. Everyone around here is so accepting of other cultures, no matter what crazy crap they do, except when it comes to the U.S. Then it's just "fuc# you guys, you all suck, take your Zee and shove it up your a$$."
Christ. Before I left the U.S. I held the rest of the world in awe. I couldn't wait to get out and look around. I had no animosity for any culture (except muslims) and it never entered my mind that I should be bothered by such a small and pathetic thing as a "u" or "s". It was a little weird for me when I'd see it, kind of quirky, but it sure as hell wasn't worth name-calling and personal attacks. For someone who has practically no hands-on experience with other cultures, some of you folks are horrible representatives for your respective countries.
��S�� |
I guess since I'm the one who originally brought up the "u" issue in this thread, I should respond to you.
Whenever my students use the American spelling I never, ever tell them it is wrong. I do, however, let them know that in the English-speaking world outside the U-S, these words are spelled differently. I also intentionally spell everything with a "u" on the board so that they ask me (which they always do) and so I can educate.
You implied that I wasn't respective of other cultures. But this is what gets most of us Canadians. Americans rarely have any knowledge of their neighbours up north. They don't care or respect us...they just think of us as the 51st state, which we clearly are not.
If you did know anything about us, you would know the struggles that Canadians constantly have to go through to keep ourselves from being Americanized. Not dropping the "u" is just one small manifestation of this.
I guess what I don't like is being bullied (as we often are) into doing everything the American way. I see Koreans buying into this willingly by insisting on spelling everything the American way. So I like to take the opportunity to remind them that there is more to the English speaking world than just the United States. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
keithinkorea
Joined: 17 Mar 2004
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 8:27 am Post subject: |
|
|
| AbbeFaria wrote: |
| Dodgy Al wrote: |
| AbbeFaria wrote: |
| Some of you people are unbelievably bitter and hostile. ���� |
look.mirror. |
I'm not bitter at all, I'm disgusted. It doesn't matter to me how it's spelled. As far as I'm concerned both of them are right. One isn't better than the other. I learned this way, other's learned that way. If my director said to me one day that I need to use a british version, I'd explain to her that I'll probably screw it up since I have 26 years of training the other way, but I wouldn't have a racial hatred of it.
��S�� |
Sensible along with 'Peel tomatoes easily by standing in boiling water." It is by far the easiest way of getting rid of those pesky skins. I teach both standard and US spelling. For the reciprocal respect to kick in please capitalise British! If you don't, I'll get angry and always make a point of writing usa rather than USA.
'Racial hatred' is hilarious, since when was the US a 'race'. Maybe in 10000 years, but I doubt we'll see a US race in a long time.
Calling it a 'race' issue is as daft as you can get. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Big Mac
Joined: 17 Sep 2005
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 8:52 am Post subject: Re: British English? |
|
|
| mindmetoo wrote: |
| I haven't checked a style book since CP style dictated the American spellings, however, I do believe Canadians retain the "god loves me more"/"patriotic" U spellings and the RE vs ER (theatre/theater) endings. But Canadians almost universally use Z over S. Hence: Can you recogniZe this coloUr? And let's not even get into the mutated Canadian use of " for quotes (we use the American double for speech) and where we place of the period in quotes, aka inside or outside the quotes. |
Your mention of the Canadian Press style book made me remember how in first year journalism school all of us moaned and groaned over CP's ridiculous insistence on using American spellings. For something like 50 years, most newspapers in Canada used American spellings because CP said they had to. It's the only time in my life I've actually broken down and spelled it the American way...otherwise I would have got an "F" on my assignments.
I think it was about half way through journalism school that CP got wise and changed it back to Canadian spellings. We were so happy. Apparently CP was being bombarded with complaints from people who couldn't understand why every newspaper in the country was so unpatriotic!
As for the "s" rather than "z" spellings, I don't know why we never retained the "s" in Canada. It's probably because it does sound much more like a "z" than an "s" and to me the "s" looks a little silly. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 4:24 pm Post subject: Re: British English? |
|
|
| Big Mac wrote: |
| mindmetoo wrote: |
| I haven't checked a style book since CP style dictated the American spellings, however, I do believe Canadians retain the "god loves me more"/"patriotic" U spellings and the RE vs ER (theatre/theater) endings. But Canadians almost universally use Z over S. Hence: Can you recogniZe this coloUr? And let's not even get into the mutated Canadian use of " for quotes (we use the American double for speech) and where we place of the period in quotes, aka inside or outside the quotes. |
Your mention of the Canadian Press style book made me remember how in first year journalism school all of us moaned and groaned over CP's ridiculous insistence on using American spellings. For something like 50 years, most newspapers in Canada used American spellings because CP said they had to. It's the only time in my life I've actually broken down and spelled it the American way...otherwise I would have got an "F" on my assignments.
I think it was about half way through journalism school that CP got wise and changed it back to Canadian spellings. We were so happy. Apparently CP was being bombarded with complaints from people who couldn't understand why every newspaper in the country was so unpatriotic!
As for the "s" rather than "z" spellings, I don't know why we never retained the "s" in Canada. It's probably because it does sound much more like a "z" than an "s" and to me the "s" looks a little silly. |
The CP argument, a valid one, was since most copy came off of the American news wire, there was a huge amount of re-writing required to conform to Canadian style. As well, Canadian news picked up by American media was more palpable if it didn't require re-writing. Computers these days can handle the re-write. It's trivial to write a script to make the conversions.
In the Canadian software industry, since most of our product is sold south of the border, we go with American English. And this is why I think it's silly to hold to some spelling system which has more to do with emotion and a sense of patriotism/god loves me more. Our main trading partner, the destination of 98% of our media products, is the USA. Using American spellings doesn't make me feel like I've got a 3" go chu. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
dogbert
Joined: 29 Jan 2003
Location: Killbox 90210
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 4:33 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Heh..Canadians can either spell the American way or they can spell the British way -- there is no "Canadian way". You're followers one way or the other.
By the way, the superfluous "u" many of you treasure so is naught more than an influence of French that supplanted what would have been a more Germanic orthography, which befits English. The "-re" inversion results from the same influence. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
icnelly
Joined: 25 Jan 2006
Location: Bucheon
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 5:01 pm Post subject: |
|
|
"You implied that I wasn't respective of other cultures. But this is what gets most of us Canadians. Americans rarely have any knowledge of their neighbours up north. They don't care or respect us...they just think of us as the 51st state, which we clearly are not."
OKAY! Here's the main point right here. And I'm sure the brits are whining about the same thing. BOO HOOO! This is not an issue of bullying, top down conspiracy by the usa, or the ownership or english.
How do you know what knowledge americans do have, or don't have? It seems you might want to hang them up and quarter them before you would want to talk to them and FIND out what they know.
You make it sound like the usa (who cares about capitalization) has some secret society of linguist agents out to coerce the world. IT COMES DOWN TO MONEY!!! How many printing agencies are there in canada, britain versus the us? How many educational presses can you name from your respective country? These choices come down to what is available in their nation's market at that specific time. Korea is the second largest import country for the usa. If the usa lets Korea bring their goods in, gues what Korea lets the usa do? So if you're upset, then go fight it out with your prime minister and their trade advisors.
Tell your children about both spellings, but it doesn't have to be an issue of everyone vs americans. That's just silly. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
xtchr
Joined: 23 Nov 2004
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 5:11 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| I'm really bored, but I just want to say that the Queen Mum can't be exiled because she is currently dead. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Big Mac
Joined: 17 Sep 2005
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 6:18 pm Post subject: |
|
|
[quote="icnelly]How do you know what knowledge americans do have, or don't have? It seems you might want to hang them up and quarter them before you would want to talk to them and FIND out what they know. [/quote]
He he he. You need look no further to answer that question than a very famous Canadian named Rick Mercer. He had a show on CBC television about this very subject. Go to this website:
http://home.comcast.net/~wwwstephen/americans/ |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 9:18 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| dogbert wrote: |
| Heh..Canadians can either spell the American way or they can spell the British way -- there is no "Canadian way". You're followers one way or the other. |
Actually one foot in American and one foot in the UK is the Canadian way. It's Canadian English. We may say motorcycle over motorbike but then we'll say "in hospital" over "in the hospital". |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
AbbeFaria
Joined: 17 May 2005
Location: Gangnam
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 2:33 am Post subject: |
|
|
| SPINOZA wrote: |
| I think that's going a bit far there, Abbefaria, but your basic point ("You make it sound like dropping the "u" in color means you'll be annexed to the U.S.") I agree with. |
It was mostly aimed at the person who said I speak a bastard language. I was a little peeved.
And as for the whoever it was that said holding on the the "u" was their way of staying seperate from the States, that's a little sad. I'm not saying you should change it, I don't care one way or the other, as I said, they're both right. However, if you're culture isn't strong enough to survive a change in spelling, or if that's all the straws you have to grasp at, what's that say about Canada?
��S�� |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kimchieluver
Joined: 02 Mar 2005
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 3:07 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Spinoza.. you need to get a life. Why the heck would something so trivial bother you so much. Go get help. The rest of you are pathetic for responding to this trolling (except a few). I'm Canadian, I write the way I like. I have lived in the states for 6 years. Using American English does not make us any more American. Nobody ever bullied me into using a Z over an S. When I see words that I don't know.. like 'lorry' .. I simply have the students cross it out and write truck. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
weatherman
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: Korea
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 7:31 am Post subject: |
|
|
| The misunderstanding of America by Commonwealthers isn��t surprising. The arrogance isn��t surprising either. The giving a piss about it is. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Dodgy Al
Joined: 15 May 2004
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 10:00 pm Post subject: |
|
|
the only time i use 'lorry' is when i'm teaching phonetics. 'red lorry, yellow lorry' gets their little heads spinning!  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
|
| Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 6:23 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Dodgy Al wrote: |
| the only time i use 'lorry' is when i'm teaching phonetics. 'red lorry, yellow lorry' gets their little heads spinning! |
Or obscure British alt bands from the '80s. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
