Flavor vs. Flavour

An anonymous reader writes "A recent flamewar ensued on the Linux kernel mailing list, this time debating the proper spelling of 'flavor', or is it 'flavour'? Even Linux creator Linus Torvalds joined the fray with some rather humorous comments. For the most part, it sounds like spellings will stay as they are, but it makes for an entertaining read."

Flavor, flavour...

[Empiric]

I suggest we all, in a show of universal brotherhood and cultural tolerance, join hands and announce to the world:

Linux: It gots much flavah!

Flavor/Flavour

[dpu]

If I'm not mistaken (and I'm drawing on Grade 2 or 3 here), "flavour" is the proper English spelling (UK and Canada and Australia), whereas "flavor" is the common spelling (US). There are lots of words like that, including colour (color), centre (center), and idiot (ijit).

Slow news day?

[telstar]

Next week will we be covering Linus's trip to the bathroom?

So let me get this straight...

[Faust7]

It's an article about Torvalds' offhand comments about a flame war about the spelling of a non-critical word in the kernel tree.

Man, if I'd only subscribed I could have seen this way early!

I don't want to start a flamewar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even Linux creator Linus Torvalds joined the fray with some rather humorous comments.

...shouldn't that be humourous?

The answer is simple!

[kfx]

Here's the real question: how many instances of the word are in the code/texts--and by extension, how many bytes will using the US spelling shave off the final size?

The Microsoft equivalent

[Faust7]

"A recent flamewar ensued on the Microsoft executive mailing list, this time debating the proper spelling of 'Linux'. Is it 'Linux,' 'GNU/Linux', 'cancer,' 'our biggest threat', or 'our second-biggest threat'?"

Re:Flavor, flavour...

[kurosawdust]

I'll see your +5 Funny and raise you a -1 Troll...

Marklar: It gots much marklar!

now everyone can be happy (until it gets to the HOWTOs: "plug the marklar into the marklar, but whatever you do, DO NOT plug it into the marklar.")

You know...

[Impotent_Emperor]

In the fourth grade, I read War of the Worlds, in which theater was spelled "theatre". A few days after having finished it, I had to take a spelling test. One of the words was "theater", only I spelled it the other way, so it was marked wrong and I did not get a one hundred on the test. To this day, I hold that one test as a grudge against the British.

I got it!

[MoeMoe]

How about we settle on "it tastes good"...
Honestly, a debate like this cannot be resolved in a flamewar, a spelling bee on the other hand....

It's "flavor"

[Stanley Feinbaum]

Flavor

eg. "These FREEDOM FRIES have a great flavor!"

Re:depends where you're from

[I don't want to spen]

Its because of aluminium poisoning. Sorry, aluminum.

FFS

[Majin Viper]

in america, canada, britain, etc etc we all speak mostly English there is no such language as american just lazy people who stole english and changed a few words because they were too dumb to learn to spell. use correct english for f*cks sake. or it will soon be: "Linucks kernal" and "pee aych pee" and "piethon" now give us some real news and change it back to correct english "flavour"

Re:Flavor/Flavour

[TedCheshireAcad]

Actually, this patch was done strategically.

Apparently, there are a high volume of European developers at SCO, and they evidently own the copyright on the spelling of words with -ou insted of the American English -o.

This is just keeping Linux safe from yet another threat.

Re:Chant with me!

[NetFusion]

I don't see how CowboyNeal would be any better then flavor or flavour.

Next in your sound card config

[Stonent1]

Hello, this is Leenoos Toorvahlds and I spell flavor, f-l-a-v-o-u-r.

Fork it and Forget it.

[Sir Rhosys]

This sort of disagreement can only be resolved with a fork.

signed,
BSD

Re:Slow news day?

[Alien Being]

I'm submiiting a patch to replace all occurances of "bathroom" with "lavatory".

SO let me get this straight.....

[Lord_Dweomer]

This is a story.......debating the spelling of the word......posted on Slashdot? Boy are you preaching to the wrong crowd! Typical spellings of the word in question from Slashdotters would most likely include the following:

1.Flavore
2.Flevor
3.Flirst Porst
4.PROFIT!!!

This *IS* irony...

[jpetts]

In the original post...

It changes all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor' in the complete tree;
I've just comiled all affected files (that is, the config resulting from
make allyesconfig minus already broken stuff) succesfully on i386.

Re:Flavor/Flavour

[Cyno01]

yeah, that'd be a lot of weed

Non-standard? Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

The American spellings were implemented by Teddy Roosevelt when he was Secretary of Commerce, IIRC. The official reason was to save printing ink, but the real reason was to be "not British". It's not the original English spelling, but neither is what the Brits use either.

You have to love a creative country where an actor was President and the Terminator might become a Governor. At least they don't take politics as seriously as some have spelling.

Re:Flavor/Flavour

[glwtta]

Like Microsoft's implementation of Java, perhaps

No wonder I freeze up all the time when trying to talk to people!

Hmm

[Faust7]

...shouldn't that be humourous?

I fail to see how this relates to eyeball juices.

BSD?

[Poeir]

Isn't this more or less how the different BSDs got started?

Re:Flavor/Flavour

[Sri Lumpa]

Actually, SCO is a US firm so I think that it is in fact a horrible conspiracy destined to give SCO more footing in its lawsuit by saying that if Linux, a kernel developed by an European didn't copy SCO's copyrighted code they wouldn't have the US spelling. Thus, by changing the spelling to US they can claim ownership of more code in 2.6.

We need to stop this conspiracy immediately and translate the whole kernel sources to finnish to put to the ground any allegation of copying!

Re:Flavor/Flavour

[Xoro]

Wasn't that in response to calling "french fries" "freedom fries"?

You know, given the politics surrounding that war, the righteous thing for Americans to do would have been to start referring to french fries as "chips"... ;)

Re:So let me get this straight...

[thelandp]

Yes, but it was Linus. When god speaks, you listen. And when he makes a joke, the whole world should stop and listen. Anything he says has "(Score: 6, Linus)" after it.

Seriously, is this an example of hero-worship gone too far?

Re:Oh no!

[gfody]

while(homies.down)
{
bustcap;
punk(whitey);
bustcap;
bustcap;
}

Re:Flavor/Flavour

[hawkeyeMI]

Wow, along that line of logic next you're going to tell me that the rest of the world doesn't use the English system of measurements! And I suppose we should switch to metric instead!?

What about creat()

[bangzilla]

YUou want to talk about spelling? Go ask Dennis Richie about the spelling of creat.........

Re:Lets use another language...

[BrainInAJar]

No, it's called "English" as opposed to "American".

They speak English in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, etc. and in America, they speak American. Also they pronounce the letter z wrong. it's Zed, not Zee. And they think Kraft dinner is Kraft mac & cheese (and food, for that matter), and the beer tastes like watered down piss. etc.

Differences in countries are stupid to debate about, because there's no right answer, just differences.

Re:"Standard language is just a dialect with an ar

[ant_slayer]

Ok, gotta' quote this:

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
by Mark Twain

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Grep and see the horror!

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

Or should that be horrour?

Don't you mean....

[Beek]

Scru th UK, les letrs = betr. Making a wrd ovrly long 4 no reson is ! a gud thing. Ill tek Armor, Flavor, Color any day ovr th our countrparts. Ad 2 th fact, th our versions sound funy wen u se them.

Re:Common?

[yomegaman]

The only time I see it spelled "flavour" is in British recipe books. As in, "boil until all flavour and texture has vanished". :-)

Zee Zed Zeta

[forgotmypassword]

On that note

Isn't odd to be named "Catherine Zeta Jones"

How can you be named after a greek letter? What kind of a name is that?

What the hell is that "Zeta" short for? And if it is short for something, then why can't we call you "Catherine Zee Jones"?

Re:Flavor/Flavour

[BJH]

Don't feel bad. Everybody else laughs when they hear "American".

Re:It's that way with nuclear too....

[forgotmypassword]

You think that's funny, but the second I discover the 5th fundamental force, I shall name it the nucular force!

I shall set physics back decades.

Re:Flavor, flavour...

[rabs]

well, as a member of the asian contingent, i say we should go with 'frava.'

- rabs

Re:I don't want to start a flamewar...

[Anonymous Coward]

No,
HUMOUR
HUMOROUS
but not
HUMOUROUS

There are weird rules regarding the use of U next to O in the OU form in proper English.

The HUMOUROUS is an accepted mispelling in Canada though...

Re:Flavor/Flavour

[dersen]

We could argue for years over when dictionary-writing became serious, but most people would probably cite Samuel Johnson's dictionary, published in 1755, about 75 years before Websters. Note that it included only spellings, not definitions.

You mention Samuel Johnson... I just have to quote from Blackadder:

Dr. Johnson:
This book, sir, contains every word in our beloved language.

Edmund:
Every word, sir?

Dr. Johnson:
Every word, sir.

Edmund:
Well, in that case, sir, I hope you will not object if I also offer the doctor my most enthusiastic contrafibularities.

Dr. Johnson:
What??

Edmund:
Contrafibularities, sir. It is a common word down our way.

Dr. Johnson:
Damn!

Edmund:
Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I'm anaspeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericumbobulation.

Re:Google says...

[iapetus]

Google says:

Eminem - 2,230,000
Mozart - 1,970,000

Burger - 1,670,000
Caviar - 575,000

Piss - 2,750,000
Chardonnay - 742,000

Your point?

Re:Not quite

[Mad Marlin]

(Though I normally spell Metre as Meter, since I work in an industry that is dominated by the U.S.)

Then why don't you spell it as "about a yard"?

Re:That's no flamewar

[AvantLegion]

> It's a light flamewar, they are just less explicit about it... (Eg. "Fucking" vs. "Having Sex")

Please be quiet or I will assault you and have sex with your posterior.

Re:U.S. spelling has the original forms

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, he was 27 different people all with similar names.

William Shaxper, William Shakespere and old Bill Shakspear all got together and said " wow guys, we've all got names that are a bit, you know, alike. we should form some kind of writing syndicate, we'll be famous!" (or should that be 'famos'?)

The obvious pun...

[Shillo]

What follows is the patch to change all the occurences of the word flamewar with flamewaur. ;)

--

Re:Common?

[Anonymous Coward]

As apposed to "Deep fry until rubbery, oily consistency has been achieved. Place between two halves of a bun. Serve."?

Re:Oh no!

[AssFace]

In my first job straight out of college, it was my first time working in a group of programmers with source control and the like.
I was running into issues that variable names that I was deciding on for my code were occasionally conflicting with reserved words or other people's variables and such (obviously later fixed with a better coding standard that we all had to follow... as I recall, the group in India at the time still ignored it).

As a result, I wrote pretty much all of my code using swears.
My coworkers found it hilarious when I had to give demonstrations of it to groups, or show women in the office how it works.
eg: "fuckMeInTheGoatAss gets passed two variables, here you can see it is taking iShitEater and sCockSmoker - it will return a string, which will then get passed on to easySlut...."

After I left the company, I heard the fellow that took over my code found it both amusing and annoying.
Anytime I can annoy someone, then I consider my life just that much more fufilling.

Re:Flavor, flavour...

[haroldhunt]

Malcovich, Malcovich Malcovich.

Malcovich?!?

Malcovich!

Re:Flavor/Flavour

[mikiN]

All your colour are belong to us !

-
mv ~/.sig ~/For\ great\ justice\ \!

Grill vs. Grille

[dmaxwell]

At Pete's Bar and Grill, you'll pay about 10 bucks for a beer, burger and fries. At Petro's Cocktail Grille, you'll pay about a hundred bucks for a tiny glass of white wine and a plate with a single sprig of parsely in some artistically swirled sauce combination.

There are also false "grilles" which still serve beer, burgers, and fries but are cleaner and with better decor to throw you off. You'll find a lot of guys in ties in them.

A sad, sad look at myself

[hesiod]

After almost every post on this thread, I find my self shaking my head, saying "who cares." Then I realized that I have read four pages of "stuff I don't care about." /. has killed my brain by making me smarter (if not more inquisitive).

Thru Vs Through

[huckamania]

As Eddy Izzard pointed out, one is phonically correct the other is cheating at scrabble.

"T..H..R..O"
"0?"
"Yes! and a U"
"U?"
"To prop up the O. And a G"
"G?"
"To give it a 'guh'"
"And an H in case the G falls off"

Having spent some formative years in England, I am allowed to use both. Especially if the extra letters lands me on a double word score.

Cheers!

The correct spelling

[StikyPad]

is, of course, flavxx0rs. But you knew that.