Talk:American and British English spelling differences

Map is erroneous; needs color revision for USA

The map shows the United States in dark blue, which indicates English is official. In fact, the United States does not have and has no constitutional authority to establish a national official language. When the US Constitution does not give the federal state authority to do something, that power automatically defaults to the unitary states in confederation (see U.S. Const., Amend. X).

Most U.S. states have followed the lead of the federal United States and have established no official language, though all states, the three self-governing territories, the two commonwealths, and the federal district all conduct business in English.

A few U.S. state have established English as their sole official language. The State of Illinois has established "American" as its sole official language.

The State of New York was officially bilingual, English and Dutch, until about 1924. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was officially bilingual, English and German, until 1951.

The State of Hawaii is officially bilingual, English and Hawaiian. The State of New Mexico is quasi-officially bilingual, English and Spanish; "quasi-" because the recognition of Spanish as co-official with English at the grant of statehood was meant to be temporary but ended up being permanent.

The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is officially trilingual, Chamorro, English and Refaluwasch. But the most commonly spoken languages after English are Tagalog and Mandarin Chinese, because Filipinos and Chinese are the two largest ethnic groups in the commonwealth.

The Territory of Guam is officially bilingual, Chamorro and English.

The Territory of American Samoa is officially bilingual, English and Samoan.

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is quasi-officially bilingual, English and Spanish; "quasi-" because English is rarely used in Puerto Rico, thought everybody learns the language.

2601:645:C300:3189:F5DE:770:BE66:498E (talk) 21:35, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

"This article is written in American English"

That's not entirely true. Is it defined somewhere why this article is tagged with this as such? I don't believe that this flag should define this article to be chiefly American. I mean, this should be an exeption as it is broadly talking about the varieties of English and defining why one spells it 'colour' and the other 'color', etc. This is an article that, essentially, anyone from any form of English can come and learn the different dialects. With that said, having this tagged as 'American English' is making it like its only shown to the American point of view, not including British, Canadian, Australian, etc. I don't know the rules of Wikipedia about this, but what I know is that this article is mixed with British and American (which I see as a good thing), not just American — not just in the contents about the differences, but also within the text itself. 86.184.119.165 (talk) 18:46, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

You're right - you don't knows the rules. See WP:ENGVAR. - BilCat (talk) 21:34, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

...Okay, but that's not really proving anything to this scenario, nor are you bothered to being specific and only point something negative out from the previous comment... This article is on a multi-national basis - it has no strict ties to only one nation, etc., etc., yet still tagged as American English, even though the article is an exception... Why can't it be just "English"? Please, be more detailed rather than throwing WP:ENGVAR and think "job done". Also, I've read through the archives or this talk page and I can't help but think that some of the comments only support what I'm trying to emphasise. And, I've noticed that the tag was put there without reason in the summary? 86.173.234.130 (talk) 03:18, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

You are correct that this article has no MOS:TIES (no strong national ties to the topic). But the article itself should be written per MOS:ARTCON (consistently in a single national variety of English) -- although note that MOS:ARTCON explicitly lists an exception for "passages explicitly discussing varieties of English". So the question is, apart from the places where American or British varieties are being quoted, what national variety should be used consistently? Per MOS:RETAIN, this should be the national variety established by the first post-stub version of the article. Once this is established, it is helpful if an editor places the appropriate Varieties of English template on the talk page. It seems to me that because of potential confusion, it is even MORE important for this article to have one of these templates than other articles. Note that all of the manual of style (MOS) items I have referred to appear in the subsections of MOS:ENGVAR. I hope this helps. YBG (talk) 04:33, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

I think it doesn't matter what variety of English this article is tagged as being: I put the whole article to the British English spell checker of MS Word. Admittedly I have beaten that into submission over the correct spelling of all the "ize" words formed on the Greek, etc., in line with Hart and Fowler (go on, argue that they are wrong then). But the only words that were not the subject of discussion – and thus in quotes – that got flagged were "recoining, trisyllabic, and trademarking". If there are spellings in the discussions that are uniquely British English, then I'd not have found those. But I still think it makes the point that it doesn't matter at the moment, because what variety of English it's tagged with is most unlikely to change anything in the discussions or any of the words that are discussed. It's an interesting, but different, argument whether or not that makes this topic moot or not.Graham.Fountain | Talk 18:30, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

How about we just remove the banner, then? This article seems like a reasonable "occasional exception" to the ARTCON guideline anyway — in general, articles should use a consistent variety, but articles specifically discussing the differences between varieties seem like a different case. --Trovatore (talk) 19:10, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't change it back if someone did. But then I'm not sure why I've put as much effort into the issue as I already have.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Graham.Fountain (talk • contribs) 20:54, 2 July 2016‎

I think we should do it. I'm not fond of those banners anyway. I know they're supposed to be just informational and head off useless churning, but they have the potential to come across as a bit aggressive. I recently standardized the ENGVAR at Banach–Tarski paradox to AmEng, based on my reading of the history, and I considered adding a banner, but then I thought, why pick a fight if you don't need to. --Trovatore (talk) 21:05, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, agreeing on a standard ENGVAR is probably more important on this page than on other pages -- that is to say, it is more likely to be contentious. Full disclosure: although I am a native speaker of US English, I would actually prefer that this article be written in British English, mostly because that ENGVAR has historic priority. But the WP policies do not allow me to make such a change without first seeking a broad consensus. And I believe it is reasonable to think that removing the banner should also require a broad consensus, especially since the banner was added almost four years ago. But rather than banner that specifies en-us or en-uk, what would be even better is a banner that specifies that any engvar-specific wording should be eliminated in favor of engvar-non-specific forms.

Incidentally, I started to spell-check the article via MS-Word's US English spell checker. Before getting interrupted IRL, I found one violation of en-us. When I finish the task, I'll post the results here. YBG (talk) 22:28, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

OK, I finished my US spell-check courtesy of MS-Word. Here's what I found:

• UK-only forms: nativised, naturalised, standardised
• US-only forms: romanizations (though not in MS-Word dictionary)
• OK but not found: placenames, recoining, trisyllabic, uniquenesses

I will try to rephrase to eliminate nativised, naturalised, standardised, and romanizations. YBG (talk) 01:08, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

OK, I've made five different edits to un-en-US and un-en-UK the WP:ENGVAR:

• "romanization" → "latin script"
• "spelling was not widely standardized" → "spelling standards had not yet developed"
• "not standardized" → "inconsistent"
• "naturalised" → "adopted into English"
• "is nativised" → "conforms to English norms"

YBG (talk) 03:15, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

What about using something more like this?

(Potential pics include file:English language.svg used above or File:UK-US flag.png or File:US-UK-blend.png) If we decide to go down this path, then we need to decide whether we should (a) reach a 'broad consensus' as required for articles with no strong national ties, or we could alternately argue that it should be changed because of 'strong ties' to both ENGVAR. We would also need to find out how we to implement it -- for example, should we directly invoke {{English variant notice}} as I did here, or should we create a new template, e.g., {{UK and US English}}? YBG (talk) 23:17, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, this is good, I like this. Well, it's probably not my first choice, which would be just to exempt this article from ENGVAR-related formalities completely, and remind editors to be reasonable about it. But it's a solid second choice. --Trovatore (talk) 06:43, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Any ideas on selecting the 'flag' or improving the content of the message? YBG (talk) 07:18, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Still without any real understanding of why I'm getting involved in this (life's too short): Limiting it to British and American English is exclusive. And, as neither (I'm Yorkshire), I think you want a more inclusive solution. Also, on the assumption that the main purpose is to prevent bickering about spelling, identifying two forms won't do that. You would have to at least specify which of, e.g., the OED or Webster's had precedence. Personally, I'd always look to the OED and the original Fowler's Modern English Usage - and maybe Hart's rules where they don't help. But, oddly, that wouldn't agree perfectly with most people's interpretation of British English.Graham.Fountain | Talk 08:01, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Good catch, I hadn't thought about regional varieties. Basically, I was trying to come up with a stronger form of MOS:COMMONALITY, which says WP prefers to use forms which are common to all ENGVAR. I wanted to say that as far as this article is concerned, this is more than just a preference, it is close to a requirement. I would insist on using forms common to en-uk and en-us. But it shouldn't matter if this article uses a form that is unacceptable in en-ca, en-in, en-pk or some other variety, so long as the form were acceptable in BOTH en-uk and en-us. Another way of looking at this is to say I'd want to completely avoid any forms that are considered unacceptable in either en-uk or en-us. I presume that if a form is acceptable in BOTH standard en-uk AND standard en-us, then it would be unlikely to be considered unacceptable in a regional variety of either. And I was trying to say all of that without writing an overly long paragraph. YBG (talk) 09:01, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it seems likely that anything common in both UK and US English will be accepted elsewhere, at the very least in formal conversation. CMD (talk) 09:18, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your changes which I see as improvements. Dbfirs 08:53, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

OK, I have replaced {{American English}} with the hand-crafted version of {{English variant notice}} proposed earlier in this thread. It is rather ironic that before the my edits mentioned above, this article had several British-only spellings and no American-only spellings. YBG (talk) 15:36, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Wow, I am really confused... I'm half American and Half English so my spellings are all over the place... Half the time they're wrong through and through, though... Izbug13 (talk) 21:59, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Obsolete...

• The obsolete British forms may come in French deriatives like Gramme, Kilogramme, Olde, Steppe, Shoppe, Personne, Amour, Milliard, Billiard, Trilliard, Quadrilliard, etc., etc. 124.106.142.224 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:35, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

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List of obsolete words?

The list of this are obsolete: Aenigma/Enigma, Oeconomy/Economy, Expence/Expense, Colourphobia/Colorphobia, Defencive/Defensive, Offencive/Offensive, Expencive/Expensive, Kinema/Cinema, Parametre/Parameter, Diametre/Diameter, etc. 124.106.137.103 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:22, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

What list are you reading? I can't find these in the article, other than mention of some of them as obsolete. Dbfirs 08:54, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

I know, some words were here in wiktionary (look at wiktionary.org with English obselete words). Obsolete words (that are kinema, expence, aenigma, oeconomy, expence, colourphobia, defencive, offencive, expencive parametre, diametre, etc.). They can be found in wiktionary, as obsolete words. 124.106.137.103 (talk)