Re: USAGE: -i/yse vs -i/yze in England (and what the heck, NZ too).
| From: | Tristan Alexander McLeay <anstouh@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, December 15, 2001, 1:17 |
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On Fri, 14 Dec 2001, Aquamarine Demon wrote:
> >According to the third edition of the _Macquarie Dictionary_, `... the
> >most distinctive Australian spelling practice is the preference for -ise
> >spellings. While ... British practice remains divided, Australians
> >regularly write _authorise_, _energise_ ...'.
> >
> > Any (semi-)official publication will *definitely* use the -ise
> > spellings. Is this the case in England? and how about in New Zealand?
> > and South Africa, and all those other (ex-)colonies?
>
> Which I find funny, since they're "z" sounds, anyway...
> But hey, I'm an American; I find most British/Australian spellings
> illogical (though I do like the -re of centre... makes more sense than
> center [centred; centered... one less "e"!])
Yeah, but most /z/s in English are spelt with <s>, so why change? And,
imho, <z> is just about the ugliest letter in the world! (Although I've
modified my console font to make it look a bit better) Any excuse to be
rid of the creature is a good one! (I once created a revised spelling
system that used <s> for /z/ (and <c> for /s/)...)
Me? I find the British spellings illogical, the American revisions
illogical (why get rid of the <u> in <colour>, when it's presence doesn't
do anything (it being an unstressed syllable), but leave the <u> in <four>
intact, even though that's the one that's going to make it rhyme with
`hour'?). (Apart from the use of -ise, Aussie spellings differ from
British ones in that we prefer -m to -mme in such words as `program' and
`gram', on -s- in words like `focusing' and `jail'.
On the other hand, our spelling is imho vastly better in every way except
comma-in-lists than the American, especially with regards to punctuation.
Why use dbl quotes for a single quote? Why put punctuation marks within a
quote when they don't belong there?
Tristan
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