Olde English, appropriate?
Olde English, appropriate?
(OP)
(Opinion)
I can't stand it when people use antiquated english, like "colour", "favourite", etc.. I believe they do it on purpose to antagonize the rest of the planet. It is so aggravating to find a drawing by a certain somebody at my company and it is rife with extra 'u's in it. ARRGHH!! Am i alone in my griping?? I feel like slapping him sometimes! Plus he is an ego maniac.
- Fortune favors the bold adventurer
I can't stand it when people use antiquated english, like "colour", "favourite", etc.. I believe they do it on purpose to antagonize the rest of the planet. It is so aggravating to find a drawing by a certain somebody at my company and it is rife with extra 'u's in it. ARRGHH!! Am i alone in my griping?? I feel like slapping him sometimes! Plus he is an ego maniac.
- Fortune favors the bold adventurer





RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Vita sine litteris mors est.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
- Fortune favours the bold adventurer
corus
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Yep.
As stated above, it's perfectly fine English. It's just not typical American.
As an American who worked for a British company and later with a Brit, I've found the "u" creeping into my writing. I don't generally make the effort to remove it.
For that matter, when printing, I cross my sevens and Zs, a habit I picked up as a kid in Europe and Africa, where it's common place.
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RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Unfortunately realising we were actually getting the upper hand at even one stupid little thing our American friends started cheating by replacing the letter s with the letter z in words like realise, ensuring we take our rightful place at the bottom of the pile.
On a slightly more serious note, which is the odd one out, how is colour/color spelt in other English speaking nations?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Maybe you should be asking, "what is it about 'me' that I cant get along with this guy and why am I looking for other reasons to dislike him".
He is what he is. You are who you are. Both of you are hired to a job and you should do it as professionals.
Next chance you get buy him a pint.
Get over it or move on.
MHO
and speaking from experience
pennpoint
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
The correct way to spell donut is "doughnut", but alas, even Tim Horton's has succumbed to the lazy spelling or our neighbours (ha! another one).
"I believe they do it on purpose to antagonize the rest of the planet."
Hmmm. The same thing can be said about a certain country's refusal to adopt the metric system. And who is the egomaniac?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
But elsewhere around the world other english speaking countries just laugh at the American way of spelling. To hear Americans actually complain about it makes it even funnier.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
I rather like "colour" and "favourite". I cross my 7s, but not my Zs.
Doughnut is actually a contraction of "dough knot".
I favour the British placement of the period outside of the quotation marks.
That's enough personal revalations for one post.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
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RE: Olde English, appropriate?
JHG
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
MintJulep, when you pronounce the extra letters, are you consistent? So, you do say "Old-ee English Villag-ee Shopp-ee"? If not, why pick & choose between which silent letters you're going to pronounce?
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RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
They've gone back to the real way now. I don't know exactly why, but maybe the TxDOT engineers got tired of people thinking they were illiterate.
Then again the US as a whole has taken to spelling "gauge" as "gage". I was shocked the first time I saw that printed in a textbook. Does anyone know how long that's been going on?
Hg
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RE: Olde English, appropriate?
You're reference to Gauge/gage reminded me of an event far in the past at work. A very young lady was doing some typing for me, she came accross my use of "gauge", I heard her ask another gal in the room if this was the correct spelling for such a device. I heard the reply "Look it up".
I was smiling for at least a minute. No change in the spelling when it came back to me. Did she look it up? Or was that too much trouble, I don't know.
I do use "gauge" for a device that measures pressure, however when I am specifing the thickness of sheet metal I tend to use "gage" am I wrong. Yeah maybe.
I can live with it or I can change.
Regards
pennpoint
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
I like "gauge", though I keep wanting to spell it "guage", kinda like "guard".
Hg
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RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
I believe thats "feriners"
pennpoint
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
rmw
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
I always thought that a doughnut was something made from dough. So what exactly is a donut made from? Do? If so, from which animal ("doggy-do" perhaps)?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Dough would be the better word to describe what bagels are made from, which makes things so much more confusing...
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Don't answer.
corus
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
30 some-odd years later it's still the 'norm'.
Sometimes (where confusion is possible) I'll 'stroke' a zero (like a diameter symbol) to differentiate it from the letter 'O'.
regards,
Hydroformer
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
I find it mildly annoying when I see Canadians spell things the American way. I learned in school to spell things the proper english way; colour, favour, gauge. I try not to get too hot and bothered by it, but still, I cringe inside when I see things spelled wrong (from a Canadian standpoint).
(With all due respect to the Americans reading this!)
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
did arto mean the headdress, beveled joint or measurement? metre or meter or mitre?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
btw, pennpoint., i wasn't asking for pyschoanalysis, only to spur debate and conversation.
sure are a lot of brits in here... guess i should know thy audience.. Extra u's may be technically correct, but do they make you look like a dictious dinosaur (in US)? When advertisers want to imply something is old, expensive, or 'distinctively euro' they throw in extra u's. This guy @ work that uses them incessantly. I asked him what the story was and he admitted it was mostly to piss people off.
for what it's worth, i cross 7's, slash zeros if it may be confusing, never use extra u's, cross z's, use the most widely used spellings, and use metric 80% of the time. I follow the slashing conventions to avoid confusion, purely rational basis. My boss can't stand it. He says "Dammit! Use the normal way." Utilizing slashing practically eliminate the murphy factor in translating handwritten doc's. Has anybody ever had a boss mandate a slashings convention or not?
Does anybody know how the rest of Euro spells color, humor, favorite? Do they use archaic British or the original american english?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
THAT is the funniest thing I have read/heard today!
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
thank you for your time and exceptional commentary.. Good point about the fact that we don't adopt metric. I personally use metric almost exclusively and on a daily basis. If you can see how it can be irratating to see measurements in inches and feets, then you may also be possible of comprehending how it is irritating to see 'olde english' words in modern america. It is a mute point anyway because the internet will get everbody speaking american in two or three generations.
in response to your other questions, I don't appreciate your commentaries intentions tho, so, in closing, may i remind you that canada was a hair's breadth from being conquered by early americans. you can thank the french (!!) for saving canada from american rap, clothes, taxes, and spelling. American's aren't all lazy anyways, we just have MTV polluting our brains. Dont make us start shooting stuff.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
I see no reason why anyone should remain silent on the matter.
Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
The Internet may be American (or at least have American ancestors), but the World Wide Web was invented in Switzerland by a Brit.
Most Americans think that the Web IS the internet though, so it probably willbe one day. Like the Enigma machine and other bits of hijacked British history.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
If I am writing a paper for a US journal I use US spellings. If I am writing a paper for a journal from any other part of the world I use British spellings. It's really not that hard!
I suspect that because people from the USA tend to see only the US spellings, the British spellings look odd. The rest of the world sees both forms all the time and so it doesn't seem to bother or suprise them.
M
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Dr Michael F Platten
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
But I have given up on 'colour' and all those extra 'u's'. To this day, I cannot remember where the punctuation goes in quotations, confuse 'se' with 'ze', and 'ent' with 'ant'.
Apparently I am doomed to be mocked forever.
ps: I thought Al Gore invented the internet?
"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Stephen Pinker's "Words and Rules" is good reading for those interested in how words become regularised/-ized and standardised/-ized with time. New words or nouns turned into verbs almost always take regularised plurals/participles (unless you are one of those anal retentives who thinks that the plural of "kleenex" should be "kleenices"). He gives one example of an irregular verb "to fly" which in baseball terms then becomes a noun ("a fly ball", "a fly out") which then gets turned back into a verb again "to fly out" but which is now reglularised ("He flied out to left field" not "He flew out to left field")
M
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Dr Michael F Platten
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Ajack1 - I wish America would embrace the European sports like the Euros embrace Amercian sports. I miss playing Cricket. I still have all my gear and am starting to teach my stepson how to play Cricket. If it's not MLB, NFL, NBA, or Nascar ESPN gives it about 10 seconds of airtime.
ESPN - "Lance just regained the yellow jersey, now onto Baseball "I felt like a football team had hit me from behind. Next thing I knew, I'm on the ground trying to defend myself," Gamboa said. "It just happened so fast."
htt
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
You ask "Does anybody know how the rest of Euro spells color, humor, favorite?"
All I know is this: Color is spelled Färg, Farbe, Couleur, Colour in Swedish, German, French, British English.
I see no point in your question. There are only two countries in Europe where English is the native language. BTW, both use that "awful" British spelling.
Gunnar Englund
www.gke.org
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Character building stuff.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
"I can't stand it when people use antiquated english, ... Am i alone in my griping??"
No, I'm totally with you. My personal (un)favourite is "shoppe" - I really hate it - so plastic. Mind you, I've never seen it publicly displayed outside a retail establishment anywhere other than America.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
In Germany, its Farbe, Humor, und Favorit.
The irony is that in spite of (or because of) my German ancestry, I had to look up the German word for "humor".
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Which two countries out of Wales, Scotland, Ireland and English do you class as having English as its native language?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Hg
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RE: Olde English, appropriate?
rmw
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Our American society is beyond litigious. If you are a teacher who spanked a kid, you'd be arrested. If you are a kid slinging rocks, you'd be arrested.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
I was referring to the UK and Ireland. Should I have used nation instead, perhaps?
Gunnar Englund
www.gke.org
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
England, Scotland Ireland and Wales are countries.
"Great Britain" comprises England, Scotland and Wales.
"UK", or to give it its full name: "The United Kindom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" comprises England, Scotland, Wales and a (disputed) chunk of Ireland.
"Eire" is the bit of Ireland not part of the UK.
England, Scotland Ireland and Wales all have English as their most common language, although for Scotland, Ireland and Wales (and Cornwall for that matter) English is not the native language.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Is that not correct?
Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
1) GB vs UK (GB is a subset of UK).
2) Eire vs Ireland vs ROI (Eire and ROI never include Northern Ireland).
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
English is still a developing language and just like Latin there is bound to some fragmentation along the way. English unlike many other European languages is not afraid to absorb new words into every day use. There is no commission of wise old men passing judgment on words it just develops naturally.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
And, yes, this thread has lost its way rather.
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RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Middle English - The language of Chaucer, spoken from ~1100 to ~1400 (The time of the Great Vowel Shift when pronounciation changed from something like modern Dutch to something like modern English)
Early Modern English - The language of Shakespeare, Book of Common Prayer and King James Bible, ~1450 to ~1700
Modern English - ~1700 to present.
The extra letters in Olde English Shoppe are not due to language differences but due to the fact that there was no standardised spelling in British English. US spelling is much more standardised thanks to Noah Webster.
M
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Dr Michael F Platten
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
hmm, you know what they say about those in glass houses.. you don't know me so keep it on subject. btb, proper english discipline would be in for a rude mo-fo awakening cause i'm a bad bad man..
Thanks to everyone who posted! Can we agree to use American English over in the states, and keep the antiquity on the island? oh, and canada too.. heh heh
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Time to throw another wrench into this conversation's gears!
Last summer I was in Mountain View, California to teach a training course. At lunch, I was approached by one of my students who was concerned because I was talking about the Z-Axis (pronounced 'Zed', like Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction: "Zed's dead, baby... Zed's dead.."), when all he could find were the X, Y and 'Zee' axis. (I'm told its a Canadian thing?)
Nathan, I hope you didn't take my comments too seriously... I was just pointing out that we all have our differences that can sometimes get under each other's skins. I see what you mean, but I still think trying to decipher a drawing that was dimensioned in both mm and inches (new drafter, long story) is far worse than figuring out the difference between colour and color.
It goes to show though, that two cultures can evolve differently (Canadians have their own English too, eh?) even though we are separated by a border that is no more than a fence in a farmer's field in some places. Remember, we have two officical languages here, so if we really want to confuse the Americans, we say couleur, faveur, and voisin (instead of colour, favour and neighbour).
Unfortunately, the French no longer protect us from American culture, since we are so inundated with American media and propaganda that the CRTC (Canadian version of the FAA) had to step in and ensure a minimum of "Canadian Content" on TV and Radio. I'd say the media (Internet included) got us a lot closer to being taken over by the Americans than the "hair's breadth" back in 1812 (Where a certain House on Pensylvania Avenue was burned down, I think it was repainted White since).
I just hope that when the US runs out of fresh water and lumber, people don't start making up stories about nucular(sic) stockpiles and Weapons of Mass Distraction stored in our vast tundra.
Cheers
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
good posting, i like to spur conversation and i only jibe canada in good jest. i could get into admirable canadian traits, but that doesn't rile the masses.. anyways, when the US is full of toxic waste we'll get our just desserts fair and square.
This forum is just a means to vent some workplace frustrations i had. thanks to pennpoint my whole attitude is changed forever!!! his words of unfinite wisdom really guided me ;) I wanted to see if others out there had similar gripes, it seems to have opened pandora's box of how similar nations can get at each others necks. you make a great point about american media takeover. I give you your choice, toxic waste and water or american media?!? eh? eh?? write back with your selection please?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
You mean the FCC?
Now, the FAA, and its Candian counterpart, and the differences in Air Traffic Control ... another thread.
Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Nathan,
Good to see that you can accept arguments. Even if they do not always go your way.
I must give you this: For a "u"-hater it is strange to see your spelling of "unfinite"
Still friends?
Gunnar Englund
www.gke.org
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Are there many examples where US usage has remained unchanged over the last few hundred years, while the UK approach has altered?
The only one I can think of offhand is "....first to have gotten the visuals from Neptune"
Is "gotten" still widely used in the US, or is it now an archaism confined only to people (folks?) like Dan Quayle?
A.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Hg
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RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Seems to me after reading this that the majority of people who still speak an "antiquated english" are living in the USA.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
"Are there many examples where US usage has remained unchanged over the last few hundred years, while the UK approach has altered?"
One off the top of my head is the past tense of "to dive". Many US English speakers still use the original irregular form, "dove" ("Yesterday he dove down to the reef"), while British English has long since regularised it to "dived"
M
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Dr Michael F Platten
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Cheers.
Randall Shelaga AScT
Manager, Technical Operations
DIRAND Aerotech Inc.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
At least in my day, we were taught the olde English spelling, and officially we still use it. In formal documentation, nothing else will do.
At a lower level we are constantly being bombarded with American culture, Hollywood, CNN, and the internet. American based spell checkers are probably the most pervasive evil as far as perverting the traditional "correct" spelling goes.
In oZ we now seem to have two parallel systems, and most people are getting used to seeing and accepting both without having a violent psychological reaction.
No engineer here would ever dare to write "gage" in a printed technical manual. But the same engineer would not comment on seeing it around elsewhere.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
What makes me cringe is when I hear a person (of any nationality ... but in particular my Canadian son-in-law) say, "I don't gotta do that today".
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RE: Olde English, appropriate?
At least it's (a bit) better than "I don't gotta do nothing today".
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Every culture has its charm and fake immitations of any culture are irritating.
I cross 7's (my dad was USAF and this is common military practise), I do not cross 7's or 0's. I use US/English units 90% of the time (oil industry), but can easily use SI/metric units. Extra "u"'s are great for those in countries where that is the normal spelling, but it's not for me. I preffer platypi over platypuses. I believe most languages in the world are being destroyed by political correctness.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
M
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Dr Michael F Platten
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Naresuan University
Phitsanulok
Thailand
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
There are many rules in the English language but good number of exceptions as well.
To experience the abuse/misuse of the english language (by the Japanese and others) try a site called www.engrish.com
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
You're not going to acheive an international spelling of any word.
If you are an American company, your company as a whole should probably adopt traditional American spellings. (How did your first grade teacher spell it?) The perception of uniformity within your comapny is important for your customers to see.
On a side note... I am often forced to write my notes in multiple languages. It is usually English, then Spanish, then Protugese. I can't wait for the day we have to start writting the American then British English translations. ;)
Thanks
SC
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
It is all part of the decay in human intellect that is becoming all too pervasive these days.
When a US vice president spells potato "potatoe" on international TV, the guy just looks like a complete fool.
(Dan Quayle in 1992)
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
I am sure we will then all long for the days when color/ colour or whether you call a bar a pub or not were an issue.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
Vita sine litteris mors est.
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
AMERICAN: English muffin, ENGLISH: Unknown
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
AMERICAN: English Units, ENGLISH: ??? (the best I have come up with on Wikipedia is "US Customary Units").
If by "English muffin" you mean a sort of flatish savoury bread roll eaten toasted for breakfast then in English that would be (or rather, used to be) just "Muffin". However to most English people under the age of 25, a "Muffin" is now a sweet sponge cake with bits in that you get at Starbucks. This is fine by me. Give me the sugar and chocolate any day (easy on the blueberries though).
M
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Dr Michael F Platten
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
AMERICAN: English Units = ENGLISH: Imperial Units
AMERICAN: Tea Biscuit = ENGLISH: Scone
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RE: Olde English, appropriate?
AMERICAN: Scone = ENGLISH: ?
Hg
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RE: Olde English, appropriate?
American "English units" are only the same as English "Imperial" units if you stick to inches, feet, yards, pounds and seconds. Hundredweight, ton and fluid ounce (for example) are not the same in both systems.
M
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Dr Michael F Platten
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
(This was in response to my continual moaning about American beer: "Want a pint of beer?". "No thanks, but I'll have 4/5 of a pint of ice-cold horse-p*** in a frosty mug though.")
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
DB
RE: Olde English, appropriate?
HgTX ... I don't know.
SomptingGuy ... To my (very) limited knowledge of history the Brtish pint has always been 20 fl.oz.
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RE: Olde English, appropriate?
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RE: Olde English, appropriate?
I could really go for one right now. Too bad I'm far too lazy to bake and my mother isn't here.
Ooh! Y'all call it a "fruit scone". http://ww
Okay, now what's our muffin? It's less sweet than a cupcake but shaped like one.
Hg
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RE: Olde English, appropriate?
My Mechanic's Calculator (printed in England MDCCCXXXV), says that an ale gallon is 282 cubic inches and a wine gallon 231 cubic inches. It goes on to say that by an act of parliament passed in 1824 and passed into execution in 1826, an imperial gallon is 277.274 cubic inches.
I will assume this indicates a strong preference for beer. :)
JHG