why is this not one way or the other?
addendum: wow, thanks everyone. I truly never knew it was a British vs. American spelling thing.
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- 16 days
I like mixing American and British spells to piss assholes off who have nothing better to do then attack people for their spelling choices.
Its very fun.
- 16 days
Than*
It’s not British or American to just use the wildly-wrong word… That’s just misusing words.
15 daysMaybe they actually mean “then.” As in after they mix American and British spellings to piss people off with nothing better to do, they attack people for their spelling choice.
- 16 days
Split infinitive? To boldly go or to go boldly? If it’s intelligible I’d let it slide - second languages and all that.
- 16 days
E is the European version, A is the American version. This sounds trite, but is true, and makes it simple to know which one to use
- 16 days
Are you being like pedantic or just trying to make it more simple?
(Otherwise North America and specially the United States has the majority of English speakers in the world, so there is a realistic distinction between U.K. / European English and American English and both are equally correct evolutions of their English roots )
Edit: downvote all you want, but I was just asking for clarity
- 15 days
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted either.
To answer your question it’s neither and both. I can appreciate it might seem pedantic from an American point of view, but not from ours. It’s our language, created here and named after us, it doesn’t require the British/European prefix. It is simply English.
American, Canadian and Australian English should have suffixes as simplified variations of the default.
- 16 days
. . . Unless you’re in the majority of the English speaking world, which includes India, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Of course, grey is the appropriate spelling for all of those but Canada, which uses both.
- Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish15 days
Fun fact: southern Americans speak English more traditionally than anyone else. The British have fucked up the pronunciation so hard at this point. Their spelling is typically more traditional though, yeah.
- 15 days
No, it’s evolved unlike American that had to be simplified for the general population.
- Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish15 days
That doesn’t actually say that it isn’t the closest to a classical British accent. It only says it’s diverged from the modern one. Yeah, it isn’t the same as the classical British accent, but I believe it preserves more of the characteristics than other English accents have. They’ve all diverged, but some less than others.
IIRC, there’s an island that’s very isolated in the US who’s accent is as close as possible to a classic British accent, but it’s a population of maybe a few dozen people, if that even at this point.
- jenesaisquoi@feddit.orgEnglish16 days
It is spelled grey in correct English. In the USA, they like spelling it gray.
- jenesaisquoi@feddit.orgEnglish16 days
Standardisation of language is not pointless. Shared standards serve concrete functions:
- When 8 billion people write “colour” the same way, you don’t pause to decode variants
- Technical manuals, legal documents, medical instructions need precision: ambiguity costs lives
- Cross-generational understanding: Shakespeare’s English is already hard without adding modern variation to the mix
- Standardized spelling keeps homophones distinct (their/there/they’re)
Standardisation of language isn’t about one version being inherently right. It’s about shared agreement that enables function at scale.
- 16 days
And it’s agreed that both Grey and Gray are acceptable variants, and they will be right up until they aren’t for one arbitrary reason or another.
- 15 days
Here to give you a boost away from the downvotes.
Lawsuits are won and lost over grammar and spellings. Constitutional crisis happen over the question: is the text to be understood in the time period of writing or reading (because the meaning of words shifts over time)
Buddy we got the spelling from you before you decided to deep throat the French and copy their phonics and corrupt your own spellings.
- jenesaisquoi@feddit.orgEnglish15 days
I’m not British.
Also, grey in French is gris so I’m not sure how that is relevant
