|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
jajdude
Joined: 18 Jan 2003
|
 Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 9:42 am Post subject: Canadian spelling? |
 |
|
I go with American spelling. Some Canadians go with British spelling.
I'm not sure why.
Just trying to keep it colorful in the neighbourhood? |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 9:57 am Post subject: |
|
|
That would be "colourful", if you want that sentence to be consistent.
I don't know why Canadians have kept the British spelling, but if somebody could explain why Americans dropped it, that might help.
So... I guess you read that "Why is it so boring here" thread? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
jajdude
Joined: 18 Jan 2003
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 11:43 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Bulsajo wrote: |
That would be "colourful", if you want that sentence to be consistent.
|
Or it might be "neighborhood" ...
the inconsistent spelling was intended. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 1:24 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| visitor q wrote: |
| So is it a serviette or a napkin for you (sorry - forgot your county's name)? |
Mouth-wipin' paper. I've got a whole case in the carhole. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 2:09 pm Post subject: Re: Canadian spelling? |
|
|
| jajdude wrote: |
I go with American spelling. Some Canadians go with British spelling.
I'm not sure why.
Just trying to keep it colorful in the neighbourhood? |
Canadian daily newspapers go with CANADIAN english (except for - pardon my candour - a few yank-happy wacky Albertan ones), as set out by the policy of the Canadian Press news service (like the Associated Press in the U.S. and Reuters in England). Canadian English has many British idioms and many Americanisms and some different uses.
Canadians write cheques for their colour TVs. They turn off the tap, eat porridge, put jam on their toast, back bacon beside their eggs and gas in their trucks, and munch potato chips, chocolate bars and butter tarts as they relax in their housecoats on their couches with pop, homo milk, Bloody Caesar, a two-four, mickey or forty pounder, and get pissed. And not just the anglophones and those on the rez.
There are 6 Americanisms, 6 British uses and 13 Canadianisms in the above paragraph. Can you identify which ones are which? Most of us Canadians can't. It's just Canadian to us, regardless of their origin. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Wangja
Joined: 17 May 2004
Location: Seoul, Yongsan
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 2:56 pm Post subject: Re: Canadian spelling? |
|
|
| VanIslander wrote: |
| jajdude wrote: |
I go with American spelling. Some Canadians go with British spelling.
I'm not sure why.
Just trying to keep it colorful in the neighbourhood? |
Canadian daily newspapers go with CANADIAN english (except for - pardon my candour - a few yank-happy wacky Albertan ones), as set out by the policy of the Canadian Press news service (like the Associated Press in the U.S. and Reuters in England). Canadian English has many British idioms and many Americanisms and some different uses.
Canadians write cheques for their colour TVs. They turn off the tap, eat porridge, put jam on their toast, back bacon beside their eggs and gas in their trucks, and munch potato chips, chocolate bars and butter tarts as they relax in their housecoats on their couches with pop, homo milk, Bloody Caesar, a two-four, mickey or forty pounder, and get pissed. And not just the anglophones and those on the rez.
There are 6 Americanisms, 6 British uses and 13 Canadianisms in the above paragraph. Can you identify which ones are which? Most of us Canadians can't. It's just Canadian to us, regardless of their origin. |
I like that. Puts it all in perspective.
Thread closed. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 3:37 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
if somebody could explain why Americans dropped it, that might help.
|
Glad to be of service. It's all in a name: Noah Webster.
From Wikipedia:
He graduated from Yale in 1778. Unable to afford law school, he taught school in Glastonbury, Hartford, and West Hartford.
As a teacher, he had come to dislike American elementary schools. They could be overcrowded, with up to seventy children of all ages crammed into one-room schoolhouses, poorly staffed with untrained teachers, and poorly equipped with no desks and unsatisfactory textbooks which came from England. Webster thought that Americans should learn from American books, so he began writing a three volume compendium, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. The work consisted of a speller (published in 1783), a grammar (published in 1784), and a reader (published in 1785). His goal was to provide a uniquely American, Christ-centered approach to training children. [Nothing new under the sun, is there?]
In the 1780's Noah Webster was also an outspoken Antifederalist, with his writings influential in the origin of the Bill of Rights[[1]].
The speller was originally entitled The First Part of the Grammatical Institute of the English Language. The title was changed in 1786 to The American Spelling Book, and again in 1829 to The Elementary Spelling Book. Most people called it the "Blue-Backed Speller" because of its blue cover, and for the next one hundred years, Webster's book taught children how to read, spell, and pronounce words. It was the most popular American book of its time; by 1861, it was selling a million copies per year, and its royalty of less than one cent per copy was enough to sustain Webster in his other endeavors. Even Ben Franklin used Webster's book to teach his granddaughter how to read. Some consider it to be the first dictionary created in the United States, and it helped create the popular contests known as spelling bees...
Webster completed his dictionary during his year abroad in 1825 in Paris, France and at the University of Cambridge. His book contained 70,000 words, of which 12,000 had never appeared in any earlier published dictionary. As a spelling reformer, Webster believed that English spelling rules were unnecessarily complex, so his dictionary introduced American English spellings like "color" instead of "colour," "music" instead " of "musick," "wagon" instead of "waggon," "center" instead of "centre," and "honor" instead of "honour." He also added American words that were not in British dictionaries like "skunk" and "squash." At the age of seventy, Webster published his dictionary in 1828.
[From the spelling reform section in Wikipedia]
Functional illiteracy has been reported as high as 20% (Bell: p115) in the UK compared with 10% in Germany and 8% in Sweden. Professor Seymour referring to the findings of the EU project "Learning Disorders as a barrier to human development" children need 2 and a half to 3 years to gain the same level of literacy that children acquire in a year learning most other languages. (Masha Bell: Understanding English Spelling p 115). This difference is attributed to the exceptional level of irregularities in English spelling.
Successes in spelling simplification
Noah Webster, when developing his dictionary in the early 19th century, advocated spelling reform and used many simplified spellings in his dictionary. The most commonly seen, which separate American English from British English in this area, are, from the 1821 edition:
musick became music (musick spelling is no longer in use today)
publick became public (publick spelling is no longer in use today)
cheque became check
colour became color
plough became plow
favour became favor
phantasy became fantasy (phantasy is now only used as an old-fashioned affectation)
The 1806 edition uses some alternate spellings which did not gain acceptance:
isle became ile
examine became examin
feather became fether
definite became definit
thread became thred
thumb became thum
Spelling reform managed to make some progress in the early 20th century. Most notably, beginning in 1934, the Chicago Tribune adopted many simplified spellings for words, which they did not entirely abandon until 1975. Some simplified spellings of the 20th century have become widely accepted:
hiccough became hiccup (hiccough is still sometimes used). "Hiccup" is in fact the older form; "hiccough" was inspired by false etymology with "cough".
interne became intern
mediaeval (or medi��val) became medieval
gramme became gram
Others were only accepted in certain regions:
sulphur became sulfur (dominant spelling in American English, IUPAC-adopted spelling)
tyre became tire (tire is used in the U.S. and Canada, tyre in other English-speaking areas)
programme became program (dominant spelling in American English and in the field of software)
catalogue became catalog (dominant spelling in American English, uncommon elsewhere)
analogue became analog (dominant spelling in American English, uncommon elsewhere)
cancelled became canceled (single-L common in American English; double-L common in International English)
Others survive as variant spellings:
aghast became agast
prologue became prolog
hearken became harken
proceed became procede
socks became sox (remembered in the names of the Red Sox and White Sox Major League Baseball clubs)
through became thru (informal or archaic, as in "drive-thru")
night became nite (informal or archaic — "late nite")
clue became clew (archaicism)
telephone became telefone (archaicism)
Finally, some never gained acceptance:
hockey became hocky
cigarette became cigaret
thorough became thoro
definitely became definitly
traffic became trafic
tongue became tung
subpoena (or subp��na) became subpena
drought became drouth
[Aren't you sorry you asked?] |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 3:48 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Not at all, thanks for that.
But wen wil Amerikan Inglish start to look lyk dis?
Webster's plan seems to be takin a long tym... |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Hollywoodaction
Joined: 02 Jul 2004
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 4:19 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| It's only natural that irregularities are found in English orthography. Regardless of all attempts to standardise language, its conventions are determined by the speakers. How many of the words in Websters original dictionary have changed in spelling and usage? Probably quite a few. And look at the French language with its Academie Francaise. Despite all attempts to standardise French expressions, English loan words are commonly used by Francophones. Even Korean, despite its phonetic writing system, has words which are sometimes spelt differently (����� and �Ұ���, for example). So, when does a 'mistake' become an alternate spelling? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 6:18 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
But wen wil Amerikan Inglish start to look lyk dis?
|
Along about the time Zack in Korea and somebody.mayo gain control. They are 'thuh' ones who spell 'sum' words funny.
| Quote: |
| children need 2 and a half to 3 years to gain the same level of literacy that children acquire in a year learning most other languages |
That was a frightening comment. I knew it was more difficult for kids to learn to spell, and therefore read, English, but I didn't know it was as severe as all that. That kind of thing makes spelling reform seem attractive. (It reminds me of that post by the guy saying English is used in Korea to freeze the status quo.) On the other hand, any spelling reform would have to be an international effort. Everyone would want their pronunciation to be the standard and I can't see anyone accepting a reform system that would fix their local accent as non-standard. If each country established its own system, we'd have chaos and English would not be able to maintain its position as an international language. So it looks to me as if we're stuck with 15th Century London speech as the basis for our spelling. Arg! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
RACETRAITOR
Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul, South Korea
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 9:31 pm Post subject: Re: Canadian spelling? |
|
|
A few years ago a grade five student of mine told me that his Korean teacher claimed that the pronunciation of Z is "zee," and "zed" is absolutely 100% wrong. Rather thatn teach that one is right over the other, I try to teach the difference.
From what I understand, American English mostly came from the first Webster's Dictionary. No idea why they decided to make those changes though. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
