[Spliff]

[FONT="Georgia"]Look at the list below. Can someone tell me why, in American spelling, excel and propel don't lose the second "l" when similar words do?


counsel --> counseling (US) or counselling (UK)
equal --> equaling (US) or equalling (UK)
model --> modeling (US) or modelling (UK)
quarrel --> quarreling (US) or quarrelling (UK)
signal --> signaling (US) or signalling (UK)
travel --> traveling (US) or travelling (UK)
channel --> channeling (US) or channelling (UK)
excel --> excelling (US) or excelling (UK)
propel --> propelling (US) or propelling (UK)[/FONT]

[Dark Helmet]

English is a pretty stupid language with all sorts of exceptions and contradictions.

[itai195]

How about this to really throw you a curve:

enrol --> enrollment (US) or enrolment (UK)
skillful --> skillful (US) or skilful (UK)

[Spliff]

Originally Posted by Dark Helmet

English is a pretty stupid language with all sorts of exceptions and contradictions.

Yes, clearly, but I want to know how--and if possible, why--that variation exists.

[itai195]

In your example, the only difference I can find is that the words where Ls are doubled in American spelling have the stress on the second syllable.

[Spliff]

Originally Posted by itai195

How about this to really throw you a curve:

enrol --> enrollment (US) or enrolment (UK)
skillful --> skillful (US) or skilful (UK)

Bloody hell. Now you're just trying to piss me off.

[Spliff]

Originally Posted by itai195

In your example, the only difference I can find is that the words where Ls are doubled in American spelling have the stress on the second syllable.

Ah, yes. That makes sense. I'll accept that.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by itai195

In your example, the only difference I can find is that the words where Ls are doubled in American spelling have the stress on the second syllable.

It seems strange, but that could be. There's also rappel -> rappelling and extol -> extolling. I can't think of any counterexamples.

[brassplayersrock²]

Originally Posted by Spliff

Bloody hell. Now you're just trying to piss me off.

most of the english people that i talk to online say AND spell that out, keep the h off hell.... Bloody 'ell

[Monique]

I would say they are both correct. Here in Canada, because most Canadians HATE the Americans they spell words the British way. Webster dislike so much the British that he worked very hard to spell words quite differently.

[Chuckit]

Americans spell words the British way? I find Canadians are more likely to write "colour" than Americans.

[cwosigns]

My favorite is Aluminium(UK) vs. Aluminum (US)

I get moist every time I hear Jonathon Ive talk about Aluminium.

[SirCastor]

Spelling is something that came about quite a while after written language. You can find loads of spelling variations well into the 19th century. It's only after the coming of the dictionary that words became more solidfied. Even then, the separation of countries speaking the relative same language developed different spellings for them (along sometimes with different ennunciations.) The issue is magnified by the fact that English is a mutt of a language having strong latin and germanic influences, It doesn't have many rules that it consistantly follows.

I think my favorite example is the Aluminum->Aluminium.

There's also the abundance of (what we Americans would say) extra vowels in British English.

[Dakar]

Wow, two references to aluminium within a minute.

[Kerrigan]

We had a thread earlier about Aluminum/Aluminium, and one of our resident linguists (Oisin maybe?) explained how the British variant was altered to make it sound more "classical" and that the American way is actually the "correct" spelling.

Like Monique said, Webster did not like the British, so when creating his dictionary, he would actually make slight alterations to the spelling of words, ie, taking out u's, adding or removing l's, and more notably, forming new spellings as in cheque->check.

[Oisín]

English is a mutt of a language having strong latin and germanic influences

Or, to be more precise: English is a mutt of a mixture—a Germanic language with strong Romance (especially Norman French) influences.


And yes, the reason the words in Spliff’s example don’t lose their ls is indeed that they are stressed on the last syllable.

[Kerrigan]

Perfect timing Oisin!

Now tell me, how do I get that i with the accent mark on my Wintel?

[Oisín]

As long as you’re on MacNN (which is most likely to be the only place you’ll write my name... I, er, presume), you can just do the í thing. Or set your keyboard to some other language than standard English.

(Hang on... &iacute; <-- testing)

Okay, I guess you can’t, then... well, change your keyboard layout, then, or do the Alt+0237 thing

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Monique

I would say they are both correct. Here in Canada, because most Canadians HATE the Americans they spell words the British way. Webster dislike so much the British that he worked very hard to spell words quite differently.

We love you too, Monique.

The fact that Canada was governed by Britain for quite some time after America won its independence, and lacked Daniel Webster's firey rhetoric against British spellings that were either "too French" or "odd" may have had something to do with it too. While Webster did seriously dislike the British, at least his reasons were sound; if we pronounce a word "color" why do we need the extra 'u' in it? I don't think any native English speaker acutally pronounces the 'u' in "colour". Cheque/check are a different issue; who cares where the word came from when in our usage we pronounce it "check." In Canada though, this makes sense, as the spelling is French and Canadian French is (as far as I know) consistent with French French in spelling.

[mitchell_pgh]

It's not unique to english. In fact, "American English" has words that can be spelled a few different ways. Any living language will have variations.

I'm constantly battling punctuation...

QUESTION Do Canadians really say titbit vs. tidbit (US)?

[Monique]

Originally Posted by ghporter

We love you too, Monique.

The fact that Canada was governed by Britain for quite some time after America won its independence, and lacked Daniel Webster's firey rhetoric against British spellings that were either "too French" or "odd" may have had something to do with it too. While Webster did seriously dislike the British, at least his reasons were sound; if we pronounce a word "color" why do we need the extra 'u' in it? I don't think any native English speaker acutally pronounces the 'u' in "colour". Cheque/check are a different issue; who cares where the word came from when in our usage we pronounce it "check." In Canada though, this makes sense, as the spelling is French and Canadian French is (as far as I know) consistent with French French in spelling.

I love the Americans as much as chocolate.

I do not think there is much influence from the French population to the spelling of some words. Many English people try desperatly to separate themselves from the French population. Anyway cheque in French is spell chèque.

If you love history it is interesting to know where languages come from and why some population retain one way more than another.

[bradoesch]

Originally Posted by mitchell_pgh

QUESTION Do Canadians really say titbit vs. tidbit (US)?

lol I have never heard that word before but I'm going to start using it.

[CleoW]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan

Like Monique said, Webster did not like the British, so when creating his dictionary, he would actually make slight alterations to the spelling of words, ie, taking out u's, adding or removing l's, and more notably, forming new spellings as in cheque->check.

It wasn't actually about 'not liking' the British, but he attended to the wish of newly liberated Americans who wanted to differentiate their language from the British English.

[Kerrigan]

Originally Posted by CleoW

It wasn't actually about 'not liking' the British, but he attended to the wish of newly liberated Americans who wanted to differentiate their language from the British English.

...Because he disliked their society and their language.

His most important improvement, he claimed, was to rescue of "our native tongue" from "the clamor of pedantry" that surrounded English grammar and pronunciation. He complained that the English language had been corrupted by the British aristocracy, which set its own standard for proper spelling and pronunciation
Noah Webster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He disliked much of European society in general, with the exception of the more radical movements.

[itai195]

It continues to this day. How long until 'nukuler' makes its way into the dictionary...

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by ghporter

The fact that Canada was governed by Britain for quite some time after America won its independence, and lacked Daniel Webster's firey rhetoric

Noah Webster, not Daniel Webster.

[CleoW]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan

...Because he disliked their society and their language.

His most important improvement, he claimed, was to rescue of "our native tongue" from "the clamor of pedantry" that surrounded English grammar and pronunciation. He complained that the English language had been corrupted by the British aristocracy, which set its own standard for proper spelling and pronunciation
Noah Webster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
He disliked much of European society in general, with the exception of the more radical movements.

I'm aware of the history; I don't need Wikipedia. Perhaps I should be clearer. His dislike of English society and politics was related to the Revolutionary struggle and the qualitesthe new nation symbolized to him as opposed to the old Country. I may have misunderstood you, but your post implied to me a subjective distaste for the orthographic structure of British English (much like ice cream flavor preference), instead of what it symbolized for him, which I feel isn't really accurate.

[Kerrigan]

Whatevah, dat Noah Webster, him was like well important, innit?

[CleoW]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan

Whatevah, dat Noah Webster, him was like well important, innit?

I guess my humor-meter is broken tonight.

[Kerrigan]

You ever watch Ali G?

YouTube - Ali G and Andy Rooney

[CleoW]

Oh, no, I don't watch T.V. I want to be brainwashed by people I trust.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by CharlesS

Noah Webster, not Daniel Webster.

Quite right. I frequently get them confused. They were contemporaries and were both quite notable.

Webster's dislike was less for British society than for the "pedantic" quality of the enforcers of "the King's English." Spellings were the way they were, and if a student could not manage a particularly unintuitive spelling of a particularly arcane word, their professors were wont to apply the rod instead of actually providing guidance-actual teaching was beneath most "teachers" of subjects that people of letters "should read." Brutalizing and terrorizing children was ever so much more fun.

We ain't talking about today's grammar school here, folks.

[PER3]

Originally Posted by Oisín

As long as you’re on MacNN (which is most likely to be the only place you’ll write my name... I, er, presume), you can just do the &iacute; thing. Or set your keyboard to some other language than standard English.

(Hang on... &iacute; <-- testing)

Okay, I guess you can’t, then... well, change your keyboard layout, then, or do the Alt+0237 thing

Why is it that when I type "alt-e i" to get í, OmniDictionary says:

"From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

error: The request is not a valid UTF-8 string"

?

Does one have to go to the Character Palette to get the real thing?

[Chuckit]

Sounds like a bug with OmniDictionary not converting strings to UTF-8 as the Collaborative International Dictionary of English as it expects, maybe.

[itai195]

Originally Posted by PER3

Why is it that when I type "alt-e i" to get í, OmniDictionary says:

Ahh you have discovered the 'joys' of character encoding!

Does one have to go to the Character Palette to get the real thing?

I suspect that's probably the most reliable way.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by PER3

Why is it that when I type "alt-e i" to get í, OmniDictionary says: *snip* ?

Does one have to go to the Character Palette to get the real thing?

I don’t know about OmniDictionary (having never used it), but in the built-in OS X dictionary, typing in entries with diacritics doesn’t work. You have to type in the ‘plain’ versions of words.

Example: typing “déjà” (with acute and grave) yields, «"déjà" could not be found», while typing “deja” (without accents) brings up ‘déjà•vu’ (with acute and grave) as the result.

I suspect the search field uses a different encoding than the dictionary database itself or something similar. Probably a similar issue in OmniDictionary.


By the way—were you searching for my name in the dictionary? I doubt you’d find it, unless you happen to have an Irish mythological dictionary installed

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan

Whatevah, dat Noah Webster, him was like well important, innit?

Are you trying to speak Pittsburgh?

[Oisín]

Looks/sounds more like Estuary.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Oisín

I suspect the search field uses a different encoding than the dictionary database itself or something similar. Probably a similar issue in OmniDictionary.

Yeah, that'd be my guess. There shouldn't be any difference between getting the character via the Option key and via the Character Palette.

[Kerrigan]

Originally Posted by mitchell_pgh

Are you trying to speak Pittsburgh?

You ever watch Ali G?

YouTube - Ali G and Andy Rooney

[rambo47]

I always figured the Brits are correct. They invented the language after all. But we in the U.S. spell things our own way just to piss them off. We have a history of doing that.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by rambo47

I always figured the Brits are correct. They invented the language after all. But we in the U.S. spell things our own way just to piss them off. We have a history of doing that.

Well, "correct" is subjective, but American English often preserves older versions of words that have since evolved in Britain (like "aluminium").

[Kerrigan]

Well, each dialect of English evolves in its own way. English has always been in a constant state of flux. Like Matthew Parris says in the introduction to King's English, English has always been in a state of civil war, and there will never be uniform standards, as there are in metropolitan French, or German.

[faragbre967]

I was under the impression that a lot of the weird things in English, like spelling night, not nite, was so that there would be a bigger difference between noble and common people.

[Kerrigan]

I think the main reason why English is so inconsistent is that it's a hybrid language. Obviously you have other divisions like upper-class versus lower-class, American versus British, Romance versus Saxon, etc. The whole thing is a mess, but that's what makes English so interesting.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by faragbre967

I was under the impression that a lot of the weird things in English, like spelling night, not nite, was so that there would be a bigger difference between noble and common people.

"Night" is spelled the way it is because there used to be a sound where the gh is. You can still hear it in the German "nacht."

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by SirCastor

I think my favorite example is the Aluminum->Aluminium.

Even though I'm an American, I still thinks it's Aluminium. Look at the rest of the Periodic chart.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by olePigeon

Even though I'm an American, I still thinks it's Aluminium. Look at the rest of the Periodic chart.

You mean like Molybdenum, Lanthanum, Tantalum, and Platinum?

[Troll]

Originally Posted by Spliff

[FONT="Georgia"]Look at the list below. Can someone tell me why, in American spelling, excel and propel don't lose the second "l" when similar words do?


counsel --> counseling (US) or counselling (UK)
equal --> equaling (US) or equalling (UK)
model --> modeling (US) or modelling (UK)
quarrel --> quarreling (US) or quarrelling (UK)
signal --> signaling (US) or signalling (UK)
travel --> traveling (US) or travelling (UK)
channel --> channeling (US) or channelling (UK)
excel --> excelling (US) or excelling (UK)
propel --> propelling (US) or propelling (UK)[/FONT]

Not sure I have the answer for you but in Standard English, the doubling happens so that the "l"sound is doubled. Without two l's, under our rules, counseling would be pronounced as counsealing.