British American English confrontation?

Is there a lot of conflict between correct English use, between British and American English? I see often people become very annoyed if someone says their form is not correct.

For example, the thread on 'math(s)'. Also recently I saw a flame war because someone corrected someone for writing 'realise' and changed it for 'realize'.

There are many differences, and you can see all of them on this Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences

You might also want to browse the other pages that are shown in the box at the right side of that page, as they cover other things such as pronounciation differences.

The most obvious orthography differences are as follows:

-British English will normally use "ise" as opposed to "ize", as in "colonise", "realise" and so on. This extends to words like "colonisation" or "verbalisation".

-British English uses "re", rather than "er" in words such as "theatre". The American spelling of that same word is "theater".

-British English heavily favours the use of "our" in many words. If you couldn't get the hint by looking at that sentence, British English (henceforth spelt B.E.) has many words ending in "our" instead of "or", as in colour, honour, favour, and so forth. HOWEVER, don't overgeneralise that, since many words will still end in "or", such as "factor".

-B.E. leans towards the irregular form of verbs, in some cases. For example, it has "learnt" and "spelt" instead of "learned" and "spelled".

-The contraction "shan't" simply does not exist in B.E., at least to my knowledge.

-B.E. gives the "maths" abbreviation for "Mathematics".

-B.E. makes a distinction between "practise" and "practice", the former being a verb and the latter being a noun. The same happens with "advice" and "advise", and probably some other word pairs which I am not aware of.

-Several words are written with "ae" in B.E., including archaeology, paedophilia and encyclopaedia. These words would be written with a single "E" in American English.


Personally, I'll always use B.E. and ignore all complaints. There isn't a better or worse variation of any language. I could use "tae" for "to" whenever I well pleased, but that would be rather unorthodox and awkward outside of a Scottish environment. However, it is definitely not awkward to write using B.E..

"Is there a lot of conflict between correct English use, between British and American English? I see often people become very annoyed if someone says their form is not correct."

There is not. Most argument seems concentrated amongst either language pedants or language "nationalists."*

Neither group holds any particular significance or should concern anyone in the real world where people simply get on with speaking their own English dialect.

* Sush as the kind of people who seem to think British English is somehow the "best" English (and I'm not picking on Brits in particular here, just providing an example).

language is to be enjoyed as a communication tool, it's not supposed to be a nationalistic symbol (british and canadian english tend to find nationalistic component of the language very important)

The differences in British and American English result from the fact that the English language was not standardized until the late 19th century. (First undertaken by Oxford when compiling the Oxford English Dictionary) By that time the United States had been an independent nation for nearly a century. I imagine that if the language had been standardized before the American Revolution or the United States had not sought its independence, there would be fewer differences between the two. I don’t think much hostility arises because of these differences in day-to-day interactions. However, as an editor in the United States, I have had Canadian and British writers get upset when I’ve changed their spelling to fit the American standard set by my publishing house.

"language is to be enjoyed as a communication tool, it's not supposed to be a nationalistic symbol (british and canadian english tend to find nationalistic component of the language very important)"

Language is much more than a mere communications tool; you make it sound like a mere mobile phone. Language also communicates signals about your ethnicity, opinions, social class and origins.

I think Americans can be every bit as "nationalistic" about English as any other English-speaking group.

"The differences in British and American English result from the fact that the English language was not standardized until the late 19th century."

Nope.

The diferences between these two Englishes are a result of the very same thing that makes the Latin American Spanishes different from Spanish Spanish, Canadian French different from French French and Brazilian Portuguese different from Portuguese Portuguese:

Dialectical evolutions separated by an ocean.

<Language also communicates signals about your ethnicity, opinions, social class and origins<
This is exactly what "a communication tool" means. lol

Ther best part is when you find someone who is really pedantic about spelling from their own nation.
As forms of language are acceptable within their own boundaries they cannot be ruled as incorrect, whilst the same language with different nationlised (-zed?!?) usage seems odd or queer.
No amount of correcting will ever convince the user that their form is incorrect, but provides great opputunities for banter and wind ups.

A Chicago Bulls fan will forever argue that his team are the best while a Nicks fan will say the same about his team. Will either be convinced otherwise or will they continue to support their own team? This is because people 'believe' that they have arrived at the correct decision in the same way that a B.E. speaker may believe their English is the best and a N.A.E. speaker will believe the same of his language.

We Brits see a lot of N.A.E. spelling as simplified and spelt more using phonetics that traditional usage. Some of the fantastic things about the English language are that it is extremely adaptable, more descriptive than many other languages and (thanks to MTV etc) is broadcast around the global village in a way no other language is.

Let's be honest though guys, B.E. is better!

Naw, Scots is class, mahn. XP

It's all a matter of preference. I won't automatically dislike someone because they use N.A.E.. I look at how people are, not how they write.

<<-B.E. leans towards the irregular form of verbs, in some cases. For example, it has "learnt" and "spelt" instead of "learned" and "spelled". >>

Except in the South; I've used "learnt', "spelt", "ruint", etc., all my life.

It's mainly an internet thing. There is a tendency for Americans to act as though they own English on the internet, and like American English is the standard. In America they are free to spell in their own way, I'm completely in favour of that, but the internet is an international medium of communication.

The author of the Canadian Oxford dictionary (who was born in England) imposed the British forms, like-our spelling or rounded pronunciation of the short O /Q/ (which is not frequent in the speech of CBC newscasters at all, /A/ is preferred) that were going out of fashion in Canada. Why is that Canadians could not find a Canadian person to write/compile a nonBriticizing Canadian dictionary?
US spelling is still preferred, in some publications (like Elsevier Canada, academic publisher that uses the US spelling in their publications/books)...

http://www.nelsonbc.ca/color_your_world.html

"Some of the fantastic things about the English language are that it is extremely adaptable, more descriptive than many other languages and (thanks to MTV etc) is broadcast around the global village in a way no other language is."

These are entirely subjective statements, of course.

The reason English is "broadcast around the global village in a way no other language is" has absolutely nothing to do with its inherent characteristics. It's simply because English is a global language - a position it achieved by virtue of being the language of the latest two world superpowers back-to-back.

"Let's be honest though guys, B.E. is better!"

QED:

"Most argument seems concentrated amongst either language pedants or language 'nationalists.' Such as the kind of people who seem to think British English is somehow the 'best' English..."

>>It's mainly an internet thing. There is a tendency for Americans to act as though they own English on the internet, and like American English is the standard. In America they are free to spell in their own way, I'm completely in favour of that, but the internet is an international medium of communication.<<

You thus imply that somehow Received Pronunciation and literary British English are *the* standard, and that Genera American and literary American English are non-standard, or at least that for some reason the former are "more standard" or "more international" than the latter... So on just what grounds do you base such, aside from the stupid "it was invented in England" line? And even for the idea that literary British English is "more international" than literary American English is because there are multiple successor states to the (post-American War of Independence) British Empire which are scattered about the globe whereas the US is a single federal state whose core land area is contiguous today and because literary British English has simply been heavily marketed as such in the past.