Should English spelling be standardized?

No. I think there would just be a huge fight about which spelling is correct. Colour/color. Standardise/Standardize. I don’t find it so hard to adapt when I need to use US spelling.

@Bellatrix

When would you need to use the US spelling?

I think everyone should include the extra vowel here and there according to their country’s spelling. No-one is forcing the other either way so I don’t see a problem.

Yes. And the standard should be British English.

Why would all English speaking countries who spell mostly as is done in the UK, Canada and Australia want to adopt the non-standard US spelling? Having the most weapons can’t be a good reason?

The US could benefit by rejoining the club of English literacy. You’ve had recent presidents and vice-presidents proud of their own illiteracy. Remember VP Quayle and his spelling of potatoe?

Poor G.W. Bush and his Nucular weapons? It can’t make Americans proud, can it?

@Brian1946 if I was writing for a publication that was targeting a US audience. It depends where I’m submitting work.

I don’t see it happening. English is constantly evolving, even if you standardize it, it will be difficult to keep up with. Plus, English has all sorts of unusual spellings that one would never guess right anyway, except that they were taught how to spell it or read the word previously so just add it to the confusion. America would never go to adding the u’s and e’s and a second consonant at times. If anything we are moving towards textspeak and more shorthands. It would make more sense probably to go towards American English, not that I am pushing for it or anything. My instinct is to write honour and harbour and judgement (however colour looks wrong to me) etc. But, I correct it in correspondance with Americans and in formal writings. Although judgement seems to be ok in American English now, that is confusing to me, and I am no authority on language. We do in America sometimes use the u’s and other British spellings and it is completely accetable, depends on the circumstance. Almost always when an American uses a z and others use an s, the z makes more sense to me, because usually the word is pronounced like z. So, if we go towards one English or another, are we just going to pick one way, or work on picking what seems to make the most phonetic sense when their are two choices?

Plus, scrabble is much more difficult. Online even my Canadian friends choose American English for the game.

I agree with @Dr_Lawrence…the American English is different than the rest of the English world. I asked my best American friend this question. She loves her country but said “Most Americans are too stubborn, lazy and dumb to learn and use proper English.” It’s funny because she spells everything the American way. We always bug each other about America vs the World.
As others said, I can’t see a standardisation happening…at least not in my life time.

@Plucky So you are saying American English spelling is the improper way?

@JLeslie Not exactly. It is a different way. I do agree that it seems like lazy English though. My American friend said it was improper.

In Germany they teach American English separately from British English in University. It’s called “Amerikanistik.” It is a distinct and separate dialect with it’s own rules of syntax. It’s not improper it’s just different.

Is your “best American friend” and expat? They say stuff like that all the time. There’s a reason why they are expats. I’m not saying this spitefully – I have several expat family members. But they usually have a much more dismissive view of American culture than people who choose to stay in the US.

As a writer, I have to say that spelling (as well as punctuation and grammar) are important standards. At the same time, let’s not forget that our ability to communicate—for one person to understand what another person is writing or saying—is the ultimate purpose of language. If I write “pyjama” and you write “pajama” (referring to another thread) and we both understand we’re talking about sleeping togs, doesn’t matter what the spelling is. Well, it matters, but not so much that it’s worth, er, losing sleep over.

Many of the discrepancies between US and British spellings resulted from efforts to rationalize spelling. As it stands, English has these two complications: the spellings are often at variance with the pronunciation, and spellings change from region to region. The second problem arose from trying to address the first, because the reformed spellings were adopted some places, but not others.

French (and other romance languages) don’t suffer from the same complications because their pronunciations are extremely consistent with their spellings. French spellings are loaded with silent letters, which can be very confusing to learners, but you quickly learn that they’re used in predictable ways, so there aren’t a whole lot of exceptions to memorize.

But English is a mine field of exceptions. Some people find that charming, but it drives others mad. There have been some serious movements to reform English spellings but—unlike French—there’s no single entity charged with setting English standards. That means that any reforms are bound to be inconsistently adopted.

I think that British English and American English are almost two different languages. They would not benefit from standardization. Also, wouldn’t that end the colour and life of it? I play a word game that allows both British and American spellings so the us have been creeping into my vocabulary too.

Which dialect do you choose to base the spelling on? And once you’ve reformed the spelling, how do you force every English writer around the world to use it? These are two problems which I think would make English spelling reform very difficult.

@JLeslie ALL languages are constantly changing. I have heard that some countries try to update their spellings to accommodate change.

Who owns English?

The people from Ebgland?
The people from the UK?
The Canadians?
The people in the US?
The New Zealanders?
The people in India?
The ones in Fiji?
The Australians?
The Dutch?

Let’s agree to settle on the Dutch…

@morphail It’s my understanding some languages try to keep their language pretty consistent, although they use words from other languages.

@JLeslie Yes, some countries try to prevent their language from changing by setting up a language authority whose job it is to regulate the language. But it doesn’t work; the language changes anyway. Simply saying “these are the words and grammar you must use, use no other” won’t stop people from using whatever words and grammar come naturally.

Yes, let’s standardiz(s)e.

Let’s also add more letters so that we do not have to use two instead of one.

And “C” – pick a sound and stick with it; you are not special.

@rojo Just C? Not also G? What about how we pronounce vowels? Other languages don’t have that mess of vowel sounds changing so much. Add an e to the end of the word, totally different sound. Many other situations where vowels change.

Also how americans pronounce the letter z is completely confusing. Is it a C or a Z? Just pronounce it “Zed”.

No, @JLeslie I agree. That’s why we need more letters. That and that C has been a lot more snooty about it. I can’t decide whether it has ADD or a superiority complex. Either way, it needs to be knocked down a peg or two.

@ragingloli I completely agree. But, we have more than just C and Z that get misunderstood. F and S, M and N, B and V, there are more.

@rojo even languages like Spanish that are almost perfect for spelling still have weird things like B and V being almost interchangeable.

Yes, because this solves a problem global companies headquartered outside of English-speaking countries are facing. How to standardize their internal documentation? Mixed spelling looks awful. A lot of German companies like Siemens or Bayer chose American English, because this pisses off the least people. But customer facing documentation still has to be translated from English to English, for example to avoid pissing off British customers who want to buy a washing machine.

German spelling is standardized, but there’s regional vocabulary. It should be the same for English.

@mattbrowne Interesting that comanies choose American English because it pisses off fewer people. That’s ridiculous. So much ego bullshit in America if that is indeed true, and I don’t doubt what you are saying. Spelling, since both are correct, should not be a big deal in my opinion for documents, the real trick is when other countries use different words for different things, or when a word actually means something different depending on what English speaking country you are in. My husband used to translate documents for his company from English to Spanish, and he had some troubles when he was in Colombia since he is Mexican. It isn’t just the English speaking world.

I understand why Europe would us British English when teaching English in schools for proximity reasons, but I do wonder if you total up all the populations of the countries that speak English as a primary language, and by primary it does not have to be their first language, but used in government and taught in a compulsory way in schools, what the total population is that uses British English vs. American? Broken down further we can look at the more prosperous nations that are significant in the world market, business, research, etc. Seems logical that those countries would be catered to in terms of what English to use, since they are the consumers and the producers.

For me, I could care less which English is used when I buy a product and the directions are translated, as long as it is easily understood. I don’t expect anyone to adjust their spelling when conversing with me in writing, but for official documents, legal documents, probably they should be written in the proper dialect of the nation it is being used by.

Nah. Nay. I mean, no.

Standardizing spelling would be unnecessarily intrusive in peoples lives. Next, they would standardize accents, making everyone talk like the people on Television.

That would be like asking people not to use run-on sentences or non-parallel construction or tautology. Ain’t gonna happen. Deciding what comes naturally leads to some pretty convoluted and confusing screeds.

Can languages really try to keep their languages pretty consistent?

@keobooks No she is not an expat. In fact, she’s never set foot out of the US.

There is no such thing as objectively “proper” language. Standardization is useful for purposes of education and communication, but taken ad nauseam it gets absurd. “Proper” language is a ultimately a petty classist concept, and imposing the idea that others who don’t sound like you are wrong is another type of priggish subgrouping. The only thing you’re doing is trying to stamp out one of the tapestries of human diversity that make life interesting. (Conveniently, your local colloquialisms are always “correct.” Just like having white skin is a conveniently correct inborn trait.)

For those Americans/British who don’t understand British/American linguistic nuances, the cure is some travel and intercultural study, at least maybe watching some foreign films or even (in severe cases) trying Rosetta Stone. As for me, I rarely had any significant difficulty with either – and a few minutes of listening almost never left me with much difficulty even in extreme cases, like Newfies and bizarre rural swamp hicks in the American south.

Maybe parts of northern England strain my ear a bit more, but c’est la vie. (Oops.)

Viva la difference!
Just don’t let textspeak make its way into formal language.

I have reconsidered my position.
Let Americans spell anyway they like, even to the extent of spelling words the way it sounds to their ears based on the region in which they live.
Any effort to encourage them to participate in any effort to standardize English spelling will meet with total resistance.
Spelling in English makes little sense anyway and living languages continue to evolve.

There is an upside to having many regional dialects and local spellings. In a period where employment is a challenge, anyone who is a cunning linguist can obtain work as a translator.

I would love to see written cajun English and written Mississippi dialect and so on.

Outside the USA, we can be as standardized as it may suit us.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Two awl yoo Amairicuns woo faver spelling the way it sownds, I appruv intirelee.
Pardun me for beeing a langwage peyurist. I wuz beeing unreezonuble.
Amairca iz sow big, thay can do just whut thay lyke.

American standard spelling was an act of cultural independence from the tyranny of the English crown. Those who wish to kneel before the Court of St James may do so, but not this American liberal.

American spelling works well as it is.

Is it wrong to point out the irony that @Dr_Lawrence betrays a less than “proper” command of British English? He doesn’t seem to quite have singular/plural forms mastered either.

Perhap he’s some species of subversive for’nner. Perhaps the Amerikan/British speschul relationship can be employed to occupy his country and teach the people proper democracy or table manners or something. Rule Britannia and God Bless America! Baroness Thatcher and Prez Ronnie shall waltz in Heaven to the whole thing! Hurrrrr!

@zenvelo: as I understand it, while politics played a role, it was mainly a convenient simplification. Indeed, most of the spelling reforms make sense and bring the pronunciation closer to the pronunciation on either side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, I think some British conventions regarding phrase and syntax make more sense than American ones. Still, most of the “formal” differences border on petty irrelevancies, which do nothing to inhibit intercultural communication, to begin with.

Nope lets just leave English the way it is, at least it will give us “Dutch” speaking writers a good excuse if we use a wrong word like a I do on a regular basis.

Let’s do away with al the double leters. They sound the same whether single or in pairs so why waste ink?

@rojo the double letters affect the vowels. I get into this conversation with my husband because in his first language, Spanish, there are no double consonants except double LL that creates a completely different sound than L. Lena is lee-nah. Lenna is len-nah. Pal is not pall; two totally different words pronounced differently. Sizzler the vowel i is different than sizer. The double consonant counts in English. In Spanish i is always the same. It is always like eh, never like eye.

Spanish should learn to pronounce things like English speakers do. We cannot tolerate diffrunce.

Who the hell cares????? I can read it all, I don’t need an interpreter. I can read what the pommies write, I can read what the aussies write and I can even decipher what the bloody yanks write. It’s those damnedable cannucks, I can understand what they write, it’s the crazy way they talk that bothers me, why do they say hey after everything? Does it have something to do with the Trailer Park Boys?
Seriously in Australia, it took years before the states and territories could come to an agreement as to what gauge the railroad tracks should be and that is pretty important. Until the decision was made, trains could only go to the state line, then offload to the train on the other side. My point being, there is no way or as far as I can see, any real reason for agreement on spelling of a couple of words. The majority are spelled the same, it’s only those little devils where they want to stick in an extra u or an i in aluminum or reverse the letters in center. No one pronounces that word cen-tray, everyone says cen-ter so why would you want to spell it that way???
@plucky, I don’t know where you live but you have a grammatical error in your statement about the stupidity and unwillingness of Americans learning to use proper english. Funny that, hey!

Rite, oh, I mean write, no, that’s not it – right (what a weird word that one is).

@rooeytoo I’m Canadian. I’m sure I have grammatical errors often. I don’t claim to be grammatically correct at all times. Again, I’m not the one who said Americans are stupid and unwilling to learn. I was repeating what my friend said. She lives in Illinois. If I remember correctly, she is from St. Louis. I have no idea if that means anything.
By the way, it’s eh…not hey. :P

@Plucky – ohhhh I thought you were dissing the yanks. They are allowed to take pot shots at themselves. We just become righteously indignant when others do. It sure sounds like they are saying hey, or maybe I am getting mixed up with Queenslanders. Now that I am living in Vic, I am honor (no u) bound (u included) to diss the banana benders of QLD.

Learning new words by sounding them out doesn’t work, either. My 5 year old grandson is learning to read by the sound it out method and pronounced this word me-ring-u-e.

@YARNLADY The sound-it-out method really sucks for English. In other languages, once you have a few letter patterns down, like the French “eau” and not pronouncing the plural ‘s’, it’s pretty straightforward.
I can’t even help my niece sound stuff out without giving it away.

As for standardizing spelling, I think that would be a good idea. I like British spelling better. It just looks more normal to me, and I’m American. When I go on international websites, sometimes they differentiate between American and British English, and I just think that’s weird. You never see French French and then Belgian French or Spain Spanish and Mexican Spanish, although they have nuances in those languages.