We went out tonight with Walton, as a belated birthday celebration for him. (I will post up some pictures when I get round to emptying the memory card again, hopefully tomorrow). One topic of conversation was the difference between UK English spelling, and how the Americans can not spell properly. OK, to be fair, I am pretty sure he defended his nation well, explaining that they know how to spell, it is just that UK English has too many un-necessary letters.
Seriously, I discovered tonight that I did not know the UK English spelling of some words, and that in fact he occasionally spells some words in UK English. For example, he would write arguement, where as the American spelling is in fact argument. It looks as though all these years of not bothering to change the default language of my spell checker has effected me, as I did not realise I had been spelling it in American English myself. In fact FireFox’s spell checker is set to UK English, and even it does not like arguement! Sometimes though, different words entirely are used, for example, in Britain, estate agents ‘help’ (sometimes) with the process of buying and selling houses, whereas in America the same job is performed by a person called a realtor. (Assuming they belong to the official realtor association).
OK, well I need to help organize my neighbor’s aluminum gray colored jewelry in the center of his apartment.
Or if you prefer to spell that as an English person…
I need to help organise my neighbour’s aluminium grey coloured jewellery in the centre of his flat.
Sep 07 2007
September 25th, 2007 8:07 pm
I try to use English spelling since recently, but it seems like I effectively write in some International Anglian language instead. 🙂
Jewellery? Arguement? Never heard about these. Nor did Firefox spell checker.
Gone ashamed.
October 19th, 2007 11:17 pm
No need to hang your head in shame, your command of language is impressive, even more so in the real world…
April 25th, 2010 12:25 pm
[…] to a new environment. But for English language learners, you can check out his most recent post Language Differences about differences in American and British spelling. He also has articles on interesting news items, […]