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I gather then that you share my dismay that Canada has adopted about half of the American spellings, and retained about half the British ones, in a sort of "half-pregnant" choice that is so typical of this country.
Also, that even though Canadian spelling (and Canadian English in general) tends to be an American-British hybrid, it's slowly but surely switching over to more American spelling and when many Canadians write it's very common to see them use "color" and "center" as opposed to the official Canadian spelling - which for these words at least would be the British-inspired ones.
Which Canadians? I took a look at some emails I have received, none used the US spelling. I checked online, although not extensively, and it seems Canadian media used " colour " etc...although I'm sure there might be some that don't. I personally don't see it growing. How are you measuring this growth?
I'm not saying that some don't use US spelling, but that has always been the case. You can find it in newspapers in the early 1900's, or on old Motel signs advertising C O L O R television...back in the day. Just don't see it changing much, if at all.
Ok, I stand corrected on the dictionary thing but...
^^^This. And this is common to many languages.
A lot of the silent letters in English used to be pronounced in earlier times. For instance the word knight was pronounced more like knicht which was like the German nicht with the k added on. There is an argument to keep the silent letters to show historical continuity and evolution of the language.
Its interesting how the English language is so powerful both because of Hollywood and the great British empire, however, the English Imperial system as a measurement system is not popular outside of the UK and the US and some former British colonies. I be curious why, while Britain Empire wins in colonization and language domination of the world the French dominate in making their measurement system a universal language.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by citizensadvocate
Its interesting how the English language is so powerful both because of Hollywood and the great British empire, however, the English Imperial system as a measurement system is not popular outside of the UK and the US and some former British colonies. I be curious why, while Britain Empire wins in colonization and language domination of the world the French dominate in making their measurement system a universal language.
The metric system, originally taken from observable features of nature was seen as less complicated.
There also needed to be an international standard, so metric was adopted over Imperial which was seen as antiquated, as indeed was
It also should be noted that Britain didn't even adopt decimal currency until 1971 and before that there were 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings, or 240 pence, in a pound. The penny was subdivided into 4 farthings and there was numerous notes and coins, such as the tanner (half shilling), shilling (bob), florin, half crown, crown, half sovereign, sovereign, guinea etc etc.
The term 'decimal currency' describes any currency that is based on one basic unit with a sub-unit which is a power of 10, most commonly 100, and comes from the Latin word decem, meaning ten.
In 1971 Britain replaced the 240 pence in the pound to 100 pence, and reduced the number of coins, to half penny, penny, two pence, five pence, ten penny and fifty pence, and pound note, five pound note, ten pound note, twenty pound note and fifty pound note. The twenty pence piece was later introduced along with the pound coin, whilst the half penny was later withdrawn.
France and the United States had gone decimal in the 1790s. Britain first thought about doing the same in the 1820s but the idea did not gather momentum and it took until 1971 for the antiaueted and comlicated money system to change. Commonwealth countries also took the opportunity to adopt decimal currencies and changed the names of their currency, and the same occurred in relation to imperial and metric in many countries.
Today the UK uses Imperial for some meaurements such as pints, miles, acres etc and metric for others.
The US was going to change to metric, but it was never popular with the US public and it was quietly abadoned.
Quote:
The metric system was designed to have properties that make it easy to use and widely applicable, including units based on the natural world, decimal ratios, prefixes for multiples and sub-multiples, and a structure of base and derived units.
It is also a coherent system, which means that its units do not introduce conversion factors not already present in equations relating quantities.
It has a property called rationalisation that eliminates certain constants of proportionality in equations of physics.
The units of the metric system, originally taken from observable features of nature, are now defined by phenomena such as the microwave frequency of a caesium atomic clock which accurately measures seconds.
No, in linguistics syntax means the "grammar" to construct phrases and sentences.
No, in linguistics, syntax means word order. Grammar means relationships among phonemes, morphemes, words, and other sounds and symbols to convey meaning. Syntax is an element of grammar.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bettafish
Ease/difficulty can have a strong effect. In China many people choose to learn Japanese when they are required to learn a foreign language (i.e. not for interest or need). There is a similarity in vocabulary between Chinese and Japanese, so it is easier.
By the same token there is similarity in vocabulary between Spanish and Portuguese. Yet for the life of them, some Spanish speakers can't figure out Portuguese.
Either way, so what?
You are reinforcing the point that relative ease or difficulty depends on individual spectrum of approach.
English is a weird and difficult language, except maybe for some Frisians and Germans, or linguistically gifted people whose native language is not of the Germanic family.
So what?
There is no evidence that relative ease or difficulty determines whether a language becomes dominant over a large geographical area for a long time.
Except for a few curious, no one would learn English if there weren't an obviously gainful reason to do so.
The metric system, originally taken from observable features of nature was seen as less complicated.
There also needed to be an international standard, so metric was adopted over Imperial which was seen as antiquated, as indeed was
It also should be noted that Britain didn't even adopt decimal currency until 1971 and before that there were 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings, or 240 pence, in a pound. The penny was subdivided into 4 farthings and there was numerous notes and coins, such as the tanner (half shilling), shilling (bob), florin, half crown, crown, half sovereign, sovereign, guinea etc etc.
The term 'decimal currency' describes any currency that is based on one basic unit with a sub-unit which is a power of 10, most commonly 100, and comes from the Latin word decem, meaning ten.
In 1971 Britain replaced the 240 pence in the pound to 100 pence, and reduced the number of coins, to half penny, penny, two pence, five pence, ten penny and fifty pence, and pound note, five pound note, ten pound note, twenty pound note and fifty pound note. The twenty pence piece was later introduced along with the pound coin, whilst the half penny was later withdrawn.
France and the United States had gone decimal in the 1790s. Britain first thought about doing the same in the 1820s but the idea did not gather momentum and it took until 1971 for the antiaueted and comlicated money system to change. Commonwealth countries also took the opportunity to adopt decimal currencies and changed the names of their currency, and the same occurred in relation to imperial and metric in many countries.
Today the UK uses Imperial for some meaurements such as pints, miles, acres etc and metric for others.
The US was going to change to metric, but it was never popular with the US public and it was quietly abadoned.
I was going to say, that though Hong Kong is a former UK colony and yes, they use the metric system mostly, in informal usage people will often weigh themselves in pounds and talk about their apartments in terms of square feet, not square meters.
English is a weird and difficult language, except maybe for some Frisians and Germans, or linguistically gifted people whose native language is not of the Germanic family.
English IS very difficult when it comes to spelling. In other languages like Spanish and Italian, you can sound out words. In English, you just have to memorize how words are spelled, because the spelling is very inconsistent. In that regard, it's hardly any better than memorizing Chinese characters. Heck, even Chinese characters do have phonetic clues (声旁）.
English grammar is easier than Spanish or German grammar, though.
English IS very difficult when it comes to spelling. In other languages like Spanish and Italian, you can sound out words. In English, you just have to memorize how words are spelled, because the spelling is very inconsistent. In that regard, it's hardly any better than memorizing Chinese characters. Heck, even Chinese characters do have phonetic clues (声旁）.
English grammar is easier than Spanish or German grammar, though.
I’d make the opposite approach. As a non-native user of English, I became familiar with the written language first, and later with the spoken language. So I’d rather say that English pronunciation is hard because the spelling doesn’t have very solid rules. For instance, orthographic errors like “should of” are more usual among native speakers, who trust in the spoken language first. When learning the basics of the language, it took me a while to realize why some people would write that, as we are usually thought the full sounds, and /hæv/ sounds nothing like /ov/*.
Anyway, the overall issue is the same: poor correlation between spelling and pronunciation, what is indeed a feature that adds difficulty to the language. The spelling by itself was never something I found either easy or hard. I do think that Chinese characters are a whole different beast, though.
Its interesting how the English language is so powerful both because of Hollywood and the great British empire, however, the English Imperial system as a measurement system is not popular outside of the UK and the US and some former British colonies. I be curious why, while Britain Empire wins in colonization and language domination of the world the French dominate in making their measurement system a universal language.
Metric is not used for common usage in the US, but it is used for science, and those are 2 litre bottles of Coke in US stores, which is interesting.
Also interesting is that the US was one of the first nations to adopt decimal currency, 100 pennies to a dollar. Pretty metric.
In 1895 Utah mandated that metric be taught in schools. Not sure about today.
There is a lot of metric history all over the US, even very recent history.
I’d make the opposite approach. As a non-native user of English, I became familiar with the written language first, and later with the spoken language. So I’d rather say that English pronunciation is hard because the spelling doesn’t have very solid rules. For instance, orthographic errors like “should of” are more usual among native speakers, who trust in the spoken language first. When learning the basics of the language, it took me a while to realize why some people would write that, as we are usually thought the full sounds, and /hæv/ sounds nothing like /ov/*.
Anyway, the overall issue is the same: poor correlation between spelling and pronunciation, what is indeed a feature that adds difficulty to the language. The spelling by itself was never something I found either easy or hard. I do think that Chinese characters are a whole different beast, though.
A well-known linguist and author, Mario Pei, whose native language was Italian, said that when he learned English as a child, he also memorized the way English words would be pronounced if they were Italian words, and quickly became the best speller in the class.
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