Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 14:54:51 -0600 (CST) From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: "Erik Rothwell" <erothwell@callgtn.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: OT: Britishisms (Was: Pronunciations) Message-ID: <14889.24987.995695.443566@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <124406241@toto.iv>
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Erik Rothwell <erothwell@callgtn.com> types: > What a lot of Americans seem to miss is that American English is a minority= > language compared to the vast wealth of nations and peoples who speak prop= > er Standard English (what Americans like to call British English.) > > Colour, valour, labour are the Standard spellings... similarly, Standard En= > glish drops its final -rs and such. When you learn to speak English anywher= > e but America or Canada, you learn with Standard English pronunciation. Cra= > zily enough, Standard English has many more vowels than American English...= > I believe it's 26 or 28 to just 12. > > Furthermore, the -ise / -ize difference comes from word origin: if the word= > origin is Latin you use -ise, if it is Greek you use -ize. My favorite britishism is technic, which in american english is spelled technique. I quite happily adopted the british spelling of that one. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Unix/FreeBSD consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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