Thread: English and American langs

Originally Posted by Jeff

Originally Posted by DDT

Originally Posted by Jeff

In the contemporary world, the Americans lead and the English follow,

I can't wait till our UK members of MR get a load of you. wOOHoo!

Well, in diplomacy, it's usually true, for better or worse.
In language, you should be able to see that the formal written standards of Australia and Canada have moved closer to that of the USA and that the specialized vocabulary of computing and communications technology was coined almost exclusively in the USA.

True about Canada, not exactly about Australia. Australian spelling rules are a mixture of British and American, more British than American. It's organise, not organize, etc. It's much closer to British but a few American spelling rules were adopted as standard, e. g. program, not programme.

Anyway, no one will be punished for spelling in American way, in other words it's a personal choice.

In New Zealand schools they now allow both British and American spellings - a recent change.

On pronunciation. Standard Australian pronunciation (used by TV/Radio commentators) is pretty much like British. In "Park" R makes the vowel longer but is not pronounced, etc.

Some words like "schedule" can be pronounced both as "skejule" or "shedyule" by different people in Australia, the first being the American way. Route is pronounced "root", not "rowt" but router is usually pronounced "rowter" as in the US.