American and British English spelling and pronunciations

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨scheep@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

What are some words you feel sound more right in both the American and British English?

I use a mix of the two depending on the word.

For example, I stand by pronouncing words like “Amazon” with an “ehn” sound at the end ovet an “ohn” sound, prefer spelling colour and flavour with a u, and also like using double Ls for words like travelling. Also, it is “grey”. (British English)

However, I pronounce Z as “zee”and call them fries rather than chips.

There are also spellings where I sort of alternate between depending on my mood, such as “meter” vs “metre”and“airplane” vs “aeroplane”

Are there any words that you think sound better in British and American spellings/pronunciations?

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Comments

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DrainKikoLake@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

I use a mix of the two depending on the word.

Hello, may I introduce you to Canadian English?

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- otp@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Yup. I use whatever feels best, which is usually American words, British spelling (except for the -ze instead of -se for words that end in a “z” sound).
  
  Also, there are our own Canadianisms, like “washroom”.
  
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  - MajorMajormajormajor@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Wait, everyone else doesn’t call in a washroom? Heathens!
    
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- clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Eh?
  
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- JacksonLamb@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Do you by any chance know where I could read a good introduction to Canadian English?
  
  I can write fluently in UK and US English but Canadian sometimes has me stumped.
  
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  - DrainKikoLake@lemmy.ca ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I’m not sure about online sources, but this is a solid reference book: editors.ca/…/editing-canadian-english/
    
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sours@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Wait? Do you guys not say your aed bed ceds?

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Corno@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Either is right for me and it entirely depends on whatever I’m vibing with at the time!

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Atin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I prefer Traditional English over Simplified.

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AcesFullOfKings@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Being British, I obviously almost entirely use British spelling. However I’ll concede a couple of points in specific circumstances:

spelt, and other past tenses which end in -t instead of -ed, are silly. I prefer spelled.

Capitalising the word after a colon: Sometimes does feel right somehow, but sometimes doesn’t.

The Z’s are silly.

Losing the argument on “aluminum” and agreeing to call it aluminimum but then calling it aluminum anyway, is silly.

Dropping the U’s from words such as “colour” - I get the simplification argument and I’d take or leave them, but I’m pro-U.
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- JacksonLamb@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Depends on the tense.
  
  I burn the toast.
  
  I have burned the toast
  
  I burrnt the toast
  
  I had burnt the toast
  
  Using burned in all of them sounds like a hillbilly.
  
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  - AcesFullOfKings@feddit.uk ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    “I had spelled it wrong” sounds like a hillbilly.
    
    I wouldn’t say that. I’d say “I spelled it wrong”.
    
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- Wahots@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  Dropping the U’s from words such as “colour” - I get the simplification argument and I’d take or leave them, but I’m pro-U.
  
  The pronunciation seems slightly different too, Color (Kolor) vs colour (coul-err). Or at least I pronounce them slightly differently depending on which word I read.
  
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Nemo@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
It’s “grey” not “gray”. I don’t know which side prefers which, I just know what I prefer.

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- surewhynotlem@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  They’re different words. Grey is more of a dark white, while gray is more of a light black.
  
  But for real, to me grey is a name and a feeling, and gray is a color. And I have no idea why.
  
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OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
A big shout out to Oxford spelling which mixes American and English spelling and is incredibly hard to find a spell check for. It gives you all the extra u’s and z’s you could ask for.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling

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- JacksonLamb@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Oxford spelling, Oxford comma: what’s not to like?
  
  Anything with a United Nations style spellcheck will sort it for you.
  
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- Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Somehow even as a kid in America I always had a preference for the OED at my library. It just exuded this sense of supreme rightness to me.
  
  Never occurred to me that normal grade school kids don’t all have a favourite dictionary. Ah well.
  
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hihi24522@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
When I am talking about fibrous material, like individual strands of carbon in a composite, I naturally type “fibre” but when I talk about nutrition or the internet it’s “fiber”

I also tend to spell armor armour and color colour despite being American.

Oh and I write grey instead of gray.

I also catch myself writing units like metre and litre instead of meter and liter sometimes.

It really all depends on if there’s a spellchecker turned on that will tell me I’m spelling things wrong.

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- Forester@pawb.social ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Strong chance op is a millennial who grew up reading Harry Potter.
  
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  - hihi24522@lemm.ee ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Nope, gen z, and I haven’t actually read any of the Harry Potter books myself.
    
    But you’re on the right track; I think it was reading The Hobbit that did me in lol
    
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- Contemporarium@lemm.ee ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Colour and armour is insane especially if you’re American lol
  
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Fleppensteijn@feddit.nl ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I prefer one L in traveling. There’s an unstressed shwa sound and it makes no sense to double the consonant after. It almost implies the stress falls on the vell part.

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Lemmist@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Just fix that fucking alphabet/spelling mess and close the theme altogether! Any sane language needs a massive reform every 100-200 years.

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- null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I think you’ll find everyone agrees that it should be fixed but no one wants to compromise on changing how they spell things.
  
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  - Lemmist@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    
    no one wants to compromise
    
    I doubt that. Appetite comes during the meal as they say in my culture. Just start and you’ll be amazed how people would welcome ADEQUATE changes.
    
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scheep@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
like I spell it as “centre” and it seems perfectly fine even though phonetically it doesn’t make much sense

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- saltesc@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Thanks to coding, I see center as a position and centre as an object. But for the most part, I find US spelling to be lazy spelling for poor pronunciation. Like people just started saying the word wrong and rather than fixing that, just started spelling it wrong too.
  
  Aluminium is prob the weirdest. Like everything on the periodic table ending with -ium; the Latin morpheme in chemistry. But the US just-…like, how?!
  
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  - PyroVK@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I would like to point you to Platinum, and inform you that Aluminum came first.
    
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JayGray91@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
_H_erbs, because there’s a frikking h in it.

Thanks Eddie Izzard for her skit, that still stuck with me.

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- sanguinepar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Is that the one about the monkey in the tree? I remember absolutely cracking up at that.
  
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  - JayGray91@lemmy.zip ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Possible. It’s been years since I watched the show on YouTube.
    
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- thebigslime@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Great Britain is a stone’s throw from France but their use of French loan words is attrocious.
  
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hades@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
The most noticeable for me are privacy /ˈpɹɪv.ə.si/ and urinal /juːˈɹaɪnəl/. I can’t say I feel any of them are right or wrong, though, it’s just a bit of colour in the language.

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Squirrelsdrivemenuts@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I will spell out aluminium, but when I have to pronounce it I go with aluminum.

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- fubo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  It was found in alum, so it should really have been alumium all along.
  
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SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Advertisment sounds better in British pronunciation. Adver-tis-ment (/ədˈvɜː.tɪs.mənt/)as opposed to the American Adver-tize-ment (/ˌæd.vɚˈtaɪz.mənt/).

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- Diddlydee@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I’m British and have never said the first one you mentioned and don’t think I can recall hearing it. Nearly everyone one will use the second version - adver-tize-ment.
  
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  - lovely_reader@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    That’s weird, because it was definitely pronounced ad-VER-tiz-mint on a lot of the '70s UK TV shows we imported to the US in the '80s. Britain is a big place, though, in terms of dialects, so you and your great granny don’t necessarily rule it out for everyone.
    
    Out of curiosity, do you both say u-RINE and u-RINE-ull, though? Is that fairly consistent?
    
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  - sanguinepar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Think it depends where you put the stress.
    
    I’d say “Ad VER tis ment”
    
    But if I was stressing the tis part, a “tize” sound would feel more natural.
    
    That’s how I would say advertising, for example, “adver TIZE ing”
    
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Berttheduck@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I work in healthcare and it’s an append-i-cectomy not an appen-dectomy. It should have the i pronounced. The Americanised version is just lazy.

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null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
There’s often words that trip me up and I can’t remember which is the Australian English spelling.

It doesn’t help that devices are often misconfigured to use American English spell checkers.

I don’t “feel” as though different spellings are more correct in these cases.

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Whelks_chance@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Schedule, I have to say the correct pronunciation every time I hear it said differently.

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- GiveOver@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Glad you agree on the correct pronunciation of schedule. Fuck the people that say schedule.
  
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  - Whelks_chance@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Damned right
    
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- JacksonLamb@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Me too. It’s the one word that triggers something in my brain.
  
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- sanguinepar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  As Miss Jean Brodie tells us, either way is correct :-)
  
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