Flavor vs. Flavour 925
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."
That's no flamewar (Score:5, Insightful)
OH NO! HNNGG! BURRRN! TAKE THAT! These guys are obviously flame-war masters, with the powers to bring forth Derek Smart [werewolves.org] levels of binary cacophony.
Goodbye Karma... (Score:3, Insightful)
Jasper Spaans is a loose Cannon (Score:1, Insightful)
God knows what bugs have been introduced by this change, did he test everything that was effected by the change??? Time is wasted because of this - due to retesting etc.
If anyone behaved like this in a company, they'd be instantly roasted.
Changing Flavour to Flavor just because *he* favours the other spelling is totally out of control, and really, quite arrogant and very unprofessional.
Loose Cannon.
Re:Flavor/Flavour (Score:5, Insightful)
International English follows the British spelling. We Americans should just grin and bear it, and accept the fact that our "English" is nonstandard. (Like Microsoft's implementation of Java, perhaps) In any case, if your target audience is wider than the US (and maybe Japan as the English they use there tends toward American), it is best to use the international spellings - colour, flavour - than our utterly made up spellings. (Damn you Noah Webster! It's all your fault! No, seriously.) I think people gravitate to the US spelling because they are simpler, but they are not more correct. But no one else here in the US is likely to agree with me; I'm probably going to get modded (-1, Flamebait) for this one. Heh.
In short, we should just accept that our English is nonstandard, and use the English every other English-speaking country uses.
-uso.
Easy to resolve. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a resolution to it. The 'recognised' standard for American English is Websters - and it allows both flavor and flavour (and color and colour). The recognised standard for British English is the Oxford English dictionary - and it recognises ONLY flavour and colour.
Hence, the most compatible choice is Flavour and Colour since those should be recognisable on both sides of the atlantic where Flavor and Color are most definitely mis-spellings of British English.
Case solved!
Mark Twain had it right: (Score:5, Insightful)
This age old fight really bothers me. (Score:3, Insightful)
But this really bothers me, I am american so I naturally leave off the u, but it doesn't matter to me when people add a "u" or reverse an "er" or switch a "z" and an "s" or say lorry.
Why do so many americans act like some foriegner is destroying their language whenever this happens? And why do so many British English speakers smuggly act like their spelling or phrasing is clearly more intelligent, refined or whatever? Do you all act the same way to non-english words? you have to assume that spelling will either homogenize, or that multiple spellings will become universally accepted, with the internet bringing all these english speakers together and whatnot. I recently heard a piece on the radio about South Africa which made the claim that it was becoming much more common for youths to intermix various words from the various languages in the country, because since the end of apartheid people are being brought together much more.
Of course recently I've been listening to the BBC World Service at night and it did take a few days to get used to the reporters fondness for the word "row" as in "argument" which I had never heard before, not to mention a use of the term "washing-up liquid" that I found quite humorous
Not a 'country' (Score:3, Insightful)
Common? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Modern British English is non standard too (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone got into the habit of spelling beere as beer. Before you know it over time it became known as beer.
My point is that english is always changing and both the American and English versions today are correct. A century and a half of isolation is what caused the American drift in standard english. Today because of television, education, and the internet, Britian and the US are knitted back together.
Infact English is still changing thanks to the internet. The way we use nouns as adjuctives for technical slang is changing it some more.
Re:U.S. spelling has the original forms (Score:3, Insightful)
This doesn't make either "standard" per se, but, since the study of language is the study of trends, it's safe to say the trend in English is toward a British style of spelling and not an American one.
(I mean, not all of those countries follow exactly the British. Canada, for instance, is about half/half American/British--words like "fetus" & "maneuver" in the American style, with words like "centre" and "colour" and "theatre" in the British).
Re:U.S. spelling has the original forms (Score:3, Insightful)
The Real Grudge (Score:3, Insightful)
If I were in your place, I'd hold a grudge against tests.
Re:Webster was a tool. (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason most USian words are around earlier is because they're from pre-Norman Britain. We modified our language to be more pallatable to the Gallic nobles running the country, e.g. adopting the prefix -our over -or, -re over -er, -ise over -ize, and so on.
Let's use "centre" as an example. The French pronounce and spell it -re ("son-tre" for centre). The US prounounce and spell it -er ("sen-ter" for center). We Brits pronounce it -er and spell it -re.
In case you're wondering, center/centre is from the Latin centrum, so the French were right.
Re:Common? (Score:4, Insightful)
Google samples the Internet, which is still massively dominated by the US. For instance, "USA" has twice the number of hits as "China". You can't extrapolate much in the real world from that.
The UK is fairly well wired, but other countries, like India, where English is a major language, are not.
Re:Webster was a tool. (Score:3, Insightful)
In contrast, the French language institute is so uptight about preserving the 'integrity' of the French language that it comes up with 'correct' terminology e.g. 'courriel' for 'e-mail'.
Damned postmodernism! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, but if you go down that route, where do you stop? There are two main schools of thought in linguistics - those who believe in a prescriptive role for the study of language (i.e. grammar books dictate what is correct and what is not) and those who believe it should have a more descriptive role (i.e. it describes what is actually in use). Now, if we take the descriptive model to then dictate what is and isn't correct, at what point does one stop subdividing the language into dialects, argots, slang forms, idiolects and so on? What is incorrect in formal business American English in New York may be perfectly fine in the dialect of the Hispanic American living in L.A. - and what is correct in formal business American English may be unspeakable incorrect in formal British English as spoken by the Queen. The only way you can hope to say definitively what is right and what is wrong is by specifying exactly who the speaker/writer is, what their social and cultural background is, and also *when* they spoke or wrote what they did - as language changes dynamically all the time, and cross-pollinates from one area to another.
Re:Flavor/Flavour (Score:2, Insightful)
Samuel Johnson's dictionary had some very odd spellings, however he did at least try to document the normal spellings in use, unlike Webster who changed them to what he thought was sensible - unfortunatley making life much more complicated for all of us English speakers who now have to contend with American spelling (and pronunciation in many cases - aluminium for instance is a simple word to pronounce).
As for feet, quarts and pounds, you may use them, but most of the rest of the world went metric quite some time ago - not because we like change for the sake of it but because it's better in many ways - it's decimal and the various masses, distances, volumes and forces all fit together nicely. For instance a cube with edges 10cm long will contain a litre of water (10x10x10 == 1000ml of water). This water will have a mass of exactly one kilogram. We use celcius temperatures and generally use SI derived measurements throughout. Here in England (and the rest of Europe I believe) almost everything is sold as metric. Infact the only things I can think of that are sold in imperial measurements are milk (sometimes), beer when draught and cannabis... Out of interest how many space missions have been damaged or destroyed due to the incorrect converions between SI and Imperial units?
Also as an Englishman I have absoultley no problem with Americans spelling things incorrectly and claiming to be doing so in English, however I do have a problem being corrected by someone who can't spell English correctly. Especially because of all of the trouble I used to get into for using Amaricanised spellings (yup that's an 's' in the English form of the postfix 'ised' not a 'z'...)
To be fair though the main need is for consistancy and I can live with the dreaded color if needs be so long as everyone uses it everywhere. However I think that if there is to be a standard, especially for something on a global scale then the simplest answer is to use English as that is the language that most English speakers read and write - the commonwealth is huge remember...
Also you state that the "quintessential dictionary of the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary" was writted after Websters dictonary. It doesn't stop it from being "quintessential". We don't use Johnsons's dictionary and that was written before Websters because it's unsuitable, so why don't you just accept the spellings from the oxford dictionary and be done?
So actually this is an example of the Americans creating their own not-quite-compliant standards and then trying to enforce them around the world. Sounds familiar - doesn't everyone dislike Microsoft for such things - isn't it an abuse of it's powers as industry leader. Why isn't it any different with the USA abusing it's position as world leader?
As a complete aside perhaps if the American government stopped using what would be called unfair practices if they were a buisines then perhaps the world would be a better place. Also it might be a good example to set to Corporate America which appears to have grown into such a litigatious (think I made up a word - it's my right as an Englishman don't you know
BTW. you should take up drinking tea too, it's far far better than coffee;-)
Why bother with standardized spelling? (Score:2, Insightful)