On another note, I think it's an interesting choice of words that you wrote "created."
Languages and spellings weren't created at some point in the past. They evolved gradually and are still evolving. There's no principle stating that American and British spellings are forbidden to converge in the future.
My girlfriend, who is from Britain, also tend to go on about how "british english" is the only correct english because "we invented the language". Not 100% serious of course, but subconsciously I think she believes it. She also dislikes it when swedish (us being in Sweden) borrows english words and changes the spelling or meaning. I think this attitude is a bit lazy or ignorant - people don't think about what a language is or how languages develop when they say something like this. All languages are thieving slaves of fashion that cut, copy and paste with abandon, continuously.
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
--James D. Nicoll
Ah, but which English? I rather suspect it was the American variety that did the most of that. Because, you know, American tradition of rendering unconscious and emptying pockets, and all. It's a thing, here.
On the topic of "words" "found in" pockets, they didn't harvest every single password I'd created for a handful of years because they didn't care about the USB drive-- just the bit of cash. I also had someone's CC# on a sticky note in my wallet, and they left it all on the ground. Amateurs.
Very true that languages evolve and you're right, "created" was poor choice on my part. In the case of the US however, even they spoke British English at one time, and then some guy called Webster decided to write yet another English dictionary, one with significant differences, in an attempt to standardise the language. This xkcd comes to mind:
Comments
That's a good perspective to be reminded of.
On another note, I think it's an interesting choice of words that you wrote "created."
Languages and spellings weren't created at some point in the past. They evolved gradually and are still evolving. There's no principle stating that American and British spellings are forbidden to converge in the future.
My girlfriend, who is from Britain, also tend to go on about how "british english" is the only correct english because "we invented the language". Not 100% serious of course, but subconsciously I think she believes it. She also dislikes it when swedish (us being in Sweden) borrows english words and changes the spelling or meaning. I think this attitude is a bit lazy or ignorant - people don't think about what a language is or how languages develop when they say something like this. All languages are thieving slaves of fashion that cut, copy and paste with abandon, continuously.
Time to whip out:
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." --James D. Nicoll
Ah, but which English? I rather suspect it was the American variety that did the most of that. Because, you know, American tradition of rendering unconscious and emptying pockets, and all. It's a thing, here.
On the topic of "words" "found in" pockets, they didn't harvest every single password I'd created for a handful of years because they didn't care about the USB drive-- just the bit of cash. I also had someone's CC# on a sticky note in my wallet, and they left it all on the ground. Amateurs.
Very true that languages evolve and you're right, "created" was poor choice on my part. In the case of the US however, even they spoke British English at one time, and then some guy called Webster decided to write yet another English dictionary, one with significant differences, in an attempt to standardise the language. This xkcd comes to mind:
https://xkcd.com/927/