Spelling of center (centre)
English_is_not_my_native_language
English"?
1. center
2. centre
Don Aitken
English_is_not_my_native_language <amor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Which of the following spellings is correct in "International
>English"?
>
There is no such thing as "International English", although lots of
people seem to think there is. The term probably derives from the
perverse American use of "international" to mean "everywhere except
here". But other places have their own vesrions of English, not a
single undifferentiated "international" one.
Learners of English, if they are in a country where the language is
widely used, are normally taught the form in use in that country. If
they are in a country where English is not used they will be taught
either the American or the British form of the language; the choice
between the two is artitrary, and depends mainly on the availability
of teachers.
--
Don Aitken
Mail to the From: address is not read.
To email me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com"
madvlad
Others include:
fetus - fOEtus
stomach - stomache
color - colour
favorite - favourite
theater - theatre
Its just a difference between AmE and BrE
Skitt
> English_is_not_my_native_language wrote:
>> Which of the following spellings is correct in "International
>> English"?
>>
>> 1. center
>>
>> 2. centre
>
> Others include:
>
> fetus - fOEtus
> stomach - stomache
> color - colour
> favorite - favourite
> theater - theatre
>
> Its just a difference between AmE and BrE
Stomache?
--
Skitt (AmE)
Pat Durkin
"Skitt" <ski...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:XoCdnVD0pf5R71na...@comcast.com...
Seeing that last makes it difficult not to get a gut pain, doesn't it?
Richard Chambers
An interesting one in this series is program - programme.
Before the computer age, program was AmE, and programme was BrE. You would
go to a theater in Broadway, and buy a program, printed in color. Then you
would cross the Atlantic in the Queen Mary, go to a West End theatre and buy
a programme, printed in black and white on cheap paper. Makes your stomache
turn, dunnit?
Programme is still spelled this way in BrE for theatre programmes (which are
nowadays in colour), schudules, radio and TV programmes, etc. But "program"
has entered BrE for computer programs. Indeed, if you spell such a computer
program as "programme" you have committed a spelling error in BrE. So BrE
now has two words for the price of one, while the Americans muddle along
somehow with just one word which has two slightly different meanings.
Richard Chambers Leeds UK.
CyberCypher
They're both correct. The first is American and the second is British
English. The question you should be asking is more like "Which brand of
English should I use, American, Australian, British, Canadian, Indian,
Jamaican, New Zealand, South African, or some ?" The answer is that it
doesn't matter. Choose the one you like best and the one that will be
best for your needs (depends on where you live and work and who you
typically speak with and write to) and learn it as well as you can. The
fundamentals of all the brands are essentially the same, but they
sometimes differ significantly.
--
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor.
Cynical by nature, by habit, and by choice.
Native speaker of American; posting from Taiwan.
"It has come to my attention that my opinions are not universally
shared; ergo, they are not in the public domain." Anymouse.
CyberCypher
> English_is_not_my_native_language <amor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Which of the following spellings is correct in "International
> > English"?
> >
> There is no such thing as "International English", although lots of
> people seem to think there is.
We think there is because that's what we teach. You think there isn't
because you aren't involved with it.
> The term probably derives from the perverse American
> use of "international" to mean "everywhere except here".
Right, all American ideas are perverse if they differ from your ideas.
Good to know that your judgments about things outside your provincial
world can be trusted to be impartial.
> But other places have their own vesrions of English, not a
> single undifferentiated "international" one.
What we mean when we say "International English" is that it doesn't
matter which brand of English one uses, as long as one's usage is
consistent. We teachers of International English teach whatever brand
of English our employers require. Some private English language schools
require British English and some require American. It isn't unusual to
find Brits teaching American and Americans teaching British English,
but when that happens, it's usually done with appropriate textbooks.
While I am familiar with a great many differences between BrE and
American, I wouldn't attempt to teach BrE, even with a BrE textbook,
but I do point out those differences that I know about. I almost never
use textbooks but create all my own materials and use examples of
English from all over the world. That makes it more or less
international. When I'm forced by circumstances to use a textbook, I do
my best to choose one that does not focus on the language and culture
of one anglophone country -- I would do that only if I were teaching in
that country. And I don't specialize in American, especially in writing
classes, even though that's what I was raised speaking and writing. I
focus on clarity, brevity, sufficient development, and effectiveness.
> Learners of English, if they are in a country where the language is
> widely used, are normally taught the form in use in that country.
Finally something that is so obvious as to be indisputably correct.
> If
> they are in a country where English is not used they will be taught
> either the American or the British form of the language; the choice
> between the two is artitrary, and depends mainly on the availability
> of teachers.
Not always and not everywhere. It depends on what the employer offers
and what the teachers are capable of teaching. It also depends on what
the students want. I've had many classes tell me that they do not want
to listen to BBC news broadcasts because they didn't understand
BrE-accented English. I've had others that didn't want to hear American
news broadcasts because they didn't like the rapid and sloppy way
Americans speak and found BrE much easier to understand. I'd say that
in neither case were the students being arbitrary. And for the 25 years
that I've been teaching EFL in Japan and Taiwan, I've been told
consistently that I don't speak like a typical americanophone: my
pronunciation is too clear and precise and very easy to understand. No
one has ever mistaken my language for BrE, though.
It sounds to me as if you don't have much experience teaching EFL.
--
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor.
Cynical by nature, by habit, and by choice.
Native speaker of American English; posting from Taiwan.
Stupot
> English_is_not_my_native_language wrote:
>
>> Which of the following spellings is correct in "International
>> English"?
>>
>> 1. center
>>
>> 2. centre
>
> They're both correct. The first is American and the second is British
> English. The question you should be asking is more like "Which brand of
> English should I use, American, Australian, British, Canadian, Indian,
> Jamaican, New Zealand, South African, or some ?"
Is it significant that you listed those nationalities in alphabetical
order. Is it a common practice among teachers of ESL, so as not to
indicate favouritism of one flavour over another? My natural inclination
would be to list British or American somewhere at the start, Australian
and New Zealand somewhere in the middle, and Jamaican somewhere towards
the end.
--
Stupot http://insignity.blogspot.com
Peter Moylan
Abbreviation for stomach-ache.
--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.
CyberCypher
> CyberCypher wrote:
> > English_is_not_my_native_language wrote:
> >
> > > Which of the following spellings is correct in "International
> > > English"?
> > >
> > > 1. center
> > >
> > > 2. centre
> >
> > They're both correct. The first is American and the second is
> > British English. The question you should be asking is more like
> > "Which brand of English should I use, American, Australian,
> > British, Canadian, Indian, Jamaican, New Zealand, South African, or
>
> Is it significant that you listed those nationalities in alphabetical
> order.
There is no special meaning, no.
> Is it a common practice among teachers of ESL, so as not to
> indicate favouritism of one flavour over another?
I honestly don't know.
> My natural inclination would be to list British or American
> somewhere at the start, Australian and New Zealand
> somewhere in the middle, and Jamaican somewhere
> towards the end.
That is a reasonable and normal inclination. I'm an editor and a bit
obsessive-compulsive about certain things (which may be why I enjoy
editing so much).
Richard Chambers
>> 1. center
>>
>> 2. centre
> They're both correct. The first is American and the second is British
> English. The question you should be asking is more like "Which brand of
> English should I use, American, Australian, British, Canadian, Indian,
> Jamaican, New Zealand, South African, or some ?" The answer is that it
> doesn't matter. Choose the one you like best and the one that will be
> best for your needs (depends on where you live and work and who you
> typically speak with and write to) and learn it as well as you can. The
> fundamentals of all the brands are essentially the same, but they
> sometimes differ significantly.
There is just one little problem with this, which I sometimes come across.
Like many British people, I read a lot of material written in the USA, and a
similar amount written in the UK. English spelling is often non-phonetic.
The only way to learn English spelling is to read and/or write the words
often. For me, this gives rise to a problem with a word such as "fulfil"
(BrE) or "fulfill" (AmE). It is a relatively uncommon word, but when I do
come across it, it is sometimes in the Britsh and sometimes in the American
spelling. The result is that I am never confident of how to spell this
troublesome word. Should it be fulfil, fullfil, fulfill or fullfill? Even
after a lifetime of doing it, I still have to look the bloody thing up in
the dictionary every time I need to use the word. There is always a
sufficient lapse of time between one use and the next use of this word, so
that I have once again forgotten how to spell it.
I have a similar difficulty with dialed/dialled and propeled/propelled.
I often think that I would like to standardise (standardize) English
spelling. Most of the standardisation would be to the American version, for
two reasons. (1) in most cases where the Americans have altered BrE
spelling, they have rationalised it[1]; and (2) the USA, with 300M
English-speaking citizens, is now the major force in the continuing
evolution of the English language. The UK, although the historical source of
the language, is now a junior partner in the evolution of the language. How
could it be otherwise, since there are only 60M of us? We need to admit an
uncomfortable fact.
I would not want American spelling to win in every case, because there are
occasional instances where American attempted "rationalisation" has been
counter-productive.
[1] For example, in British English:-
colour
coloration, colouration (both forms in BrE, but coloration is the main
entry in the dictionary)
colorific (only)
colorimeter (only)
With spelling as irrational as this, it is not surprising that Britain has
one of the worst illiteracy rates in Europe. The British, on average, are no
less intelligent than the Spanish or Germans. Our high rate of illiteracy is
caused by our non-phonetic spelling and by the irrationality that exists
even within this non-phonetic spelling system.
Richard Chambers Leeds UK.
CyberCypher
I have the same problem. It comes from having read so many British and
American novels in which I saw the different spellings and then
translated them without paying attention to the spelling. It's
interesting to me that I never get confused about whether a Chinese
character is traditional (and, therefore, Taiwanese) or simplified
(and, therefore, PRC): the PRC's simplified characters always have
fewer strokes and are less aesthetically pleasing. The AmE spellings
almost always have fewer letters, except for "fulfil/fulfill", and they
never have digraphs or /ae/ or /oe/ in place of the digraphs, but they
are confusing because there still are some /ll/ spellings -- at least I
think there are even though I can't think of any right now.
> I have a similar difficulty with dialed/dialled and
> propeled/propelled.
This is usually an easy choice: /ll/ = BrE, /l/ = AmE.
> I often think that I would like to standardise (standardize) English
> spelling. Most of the standardisation would be to the American
> version, for two reasons. (1) in most cases where the Americans have
> altered BrE spelling, they have rationalised it[1]; and (2) the USA,
> with 300M English-speaking citizens, is now the major force in the
> continuing evolution of the English language. The UK, although the
> historical source of the language, is now a junior partner in the
> evolution of the language. How could it be otherwise, since there are
> only 60M of us? We need to admit an uncomfortable fact.
>
> I would not want American spelling to win in every case, because
> there are occasional instances where American attempted
> "rationalisation" has been counter-productive.
>
> [1] For example, in British English:-
> colour
> coloration, colouration (both forms in BrE, but coloration is the
> main entry in the dictionary) colorific (only)
> colorimeter (only)
> With spelling as irrational as this, it is not surprising that
> Britain has one of the worst illiteracy rates in Europe. The British,
> on average, are no less intelligent than the Spanish or Germans. Our
> high rate of illiteracy is caused by our non-phonetic spelling and by
> the irrationality that exists even within this non-phonetic spelling
> system.
That's an interesting theory. I have no idea whether it's true. I'd say
that the USA's illiteracy comes from cultural values that devalue
education and worship wealth, and from the irrational PC attitude that
illiterates and the uneducated are equal to the literate and educated:
"He's not an ignoramus! He's just differently knowledgeable!"
Athel Cornish-Bowden
> Don Aitken wrote:
>> English_is_not_my_native_language <amor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Which of the following spellings is correct in "International
>>> English"?
>>>
>> There is no such thing as "International English", although lots of
>> people seem to think there is.
>
> We think there is because that's what we teach. You think there isn't
> because you aren't involved with it.
[ ... ]
>
> It sounds to me as if you don't have much experience teaching EFL.
Maybe that is true (no doubt Don can tell us), but so what? The OP's
question didn't say anything about EFL, and your assumption that the
question was about EFL, while it may have been correct, was an
assumption nonetheless. I don't think people should be forced to accept
EFL jargon as part of the language if they are not speaking in an EFL
context.
When I read Don's posting (before I read yours) I was tempted to add a
comment to the effect that I couldn't have expressed it better myself,
to which you might have pointed out that I don't have much experience
teaching EFL either, which would have been true, at least in a formal
sense, but irrelevant.
--
athel
Athel Cornish-Bowden
<richard.cham...@ntlworld.net> said:
> [ ... ]
> I often think that I would like to standardise (standardize) English
> spelling. Most of the standardisation would be to the American version, for
> two reasons. (1) in most cases where the Americans have altered BrE
> spelling, they have rationalised it
I think that is true in all of the cases I can think of (color, gray,
sulfur, ecumenical, encyclopedia, hemoglobin, etc.) if by
"rationalised"[1] you mean "improved the correspondence between
spelling and the commonest ways in which the same spelling would be
understood as representing a sound". However,in a few cases the
rationalization may work against rapid recognition of the meaning on
the basis of etymology -- from that point of view I find "oecumenical"
a more helpful spelling than "ecumenical", especially as it's the sort
of word that doesn't crop up much in everyday conversation.
I'm not sure if the spelling "Romanian" that the Roumanians would like
to foist on the English language is more prevalent in AmE or BrE, but
either way it clearly goes against the first meaning of "rationalised".
[1]Incidentally, I don't include verbs in -ize under the heading of AmE
spellings, because I don't accept that there is anything wrong with
them in BrE, any more than there is anything wrong with double
quotation marks. However, past evidence suggests that I'm in a small
minority on these points among BrE speakers in this group.
--
athel
Skitt
> Richard Chambers wrote:
>> I have a similar difficulty with dialed/dialled and
>> propeled/propelled.
>
> This is usually an easy choice: /ll/ = BrE, /l/ = AmE.
Propeled? Hardly.
--
Skitt (AmE)
Skitt
> I'm not sure if the spelling "Romanian" that the Roumanians would like
> to foist on the English language is more prevalent in AmE or BrE, but
> either way it clearly goes against the first meaning of
> "rationalised".
The Romanians spell their country "Romania", so why add a "u"?
http://www.ici.ro/romania/ro/romania.html
--
Skitt (AmE)
Prai Jei
continuum:
> Programme is still spelled this way in BrE for theatre programmes (which
> are nowadays in colour), schudules, radio and TV programmes, etc. But
> "program" has entered BrE for computer programs. Indeed, if you spell such
> a computer program as "programme" you have committed a spelling error in
> BrE. So BrE now has two words for the price of one, while the Americans
> muddle along somehow with just one word which has two slightly different
> meanings.
That's cos the computer is an American invention. BrE has no native word for
the concept of a sequence of instructions for a machine to perform, so (as
so many times in the past) a forrin word has had to be borrowed.
--
ξ:) Proud to be curly
Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply
Don Aitken
Everyone likes to think that the meaning attached to a term in their
own specialised jargon is what defines "correctness". The worst, in my
experience, are those engineers who flatly refuse to concede that the
word "weight" can ever be used to mean "mass", even in the face of the
abundant evidence that that is what most people who use it mean by it
most of the time.
Outside ESL jargon, the term "international English" is about as
common as "sth". It is always going to be people who are not involved
in the relevant field who point these things out - those who are don't
notice them.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Richard Chambers set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
> continuum:
>
>> Programme is still spelled this way in BrE for theatre programmes
>> (which are nowadays in colour), schudules, radio and TV programmes,
>> etc. But "program" has entered BrE for computer programs. Indeed,
>> if you spell such a computer program as "programme" you have
>> committed a spelling error in BrE. So BrE now has two words for the
>> price of one, while the Americans muddle along somehow with just
>> one word which has two slightly different meanings.
>
> That's cos the computer is an American invention.
Tongue-in-cheek or serious? If the latter, it's not something I'd
expect from one with a .uk address. Besides Babbage's work in the
nineteenth century and the secret work by Turing and others at
Bletchley Park during World War II, the first stored-program computer
was, I believe, the Machester Mark I, built at the university of the
same name in the UK. (The ENIAC predated it, but it was programmed by
patch cords, and the Harvard Mark I wasn't Turing complete, taking its
program as a single stream of instructions from paper tape.)
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The plural of "anecdote"
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |is not "data"
Palo Alto, CA 94304
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Don Aitken
<kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>Prai Jei <pvsto...@zyx-abc.fsnet.co.uk> writes:
>
>> Richard Chambers set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
>> continuum:
>>
>>> Programme is still spelled this way in BrE for theatre programmes
>>> (which are nowadays in colour), schudules, radio and TV programmes,
>>> etc. But "program" has entered BrE for computer programs. Indeed,
>>> if you spell such a computer program as "programme" you have
>>> committed a spelling error in BrE. So BrE now has two words for the
>>> price of one, while the Americans muddle along somehow with just
>>> one word which has two slightly different meanings.
>>
>> That's cos the computer is an American invention.
>
>Tongue-in-cheek or serious? If the latter, it's not something I'd
>expect from one with a .uk address. Besides Babbage's work in the
>nineteenth century and the secret work by Turing and others at
>Bletchley Park during World War II, the first stored-program computer
>was, I believe, the Machester Mark I, built at the university of the
>same name in the UK. (The ENIAC predated it, but it was programmed by
>patch cords, and the Harvard Mark I wasn't Turing complete, taking its
>program as a single stream of instructions from paper tape.)
And if "program" means "a sequence of instructions for a machine to
perform" then M. Jacquard's invention seems to qualify.
Evan Kirshenbaum
I guess it's a program, but it's sort of a degenerate one: Jacquard's
card stack's, like Babbage's and the Harvard Mark I's tape, didn't
have the ability to make decisions. They could only perform the
precise set of instructions given to them.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |When correctly viewed,
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 | Everything is lewd.
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |I could tell you things
| about Peter Pan,
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |and the Wizard of Oz--
(650)857-7572 | there's a dirty old man!
| Tom Lehrer
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/
Pierre Jelenc
Blame the French. (Though why they did it is a mystery to me; as far as I
can tell, Romanian "o" is not similar to French "ou".)
Pierre
--
Pierre Jelenc
The Gigometer www.gigometer.com
Home Office Records www.homeofficerecords.com
R H Draney
>
>Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>
>> I'm not sure if the spelling "Romanian" that the Roumanians would like
>> to foist on the English language is more prevalent in AmE or BrE, but
>> either way it clearly goes against the first meaning of
>> "rationalised".
>
>The Romanians spell their country "Romania", so why add a "u"?
Luv is a thing that can never go wrong....r
--
What good is being an executive if you never get to execute anyone?
Evan Kirshenbaum
> I guess it's a program, but it's sort of a degenerate one:
> Jacquard's card stack's,
Just ignore it.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Bullwinkle: You sure that's the
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 | only way?
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |Rocky: Well, if you're going to be
| a hero, you've got to do
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | stupid things every once in
(650)857-7572 | a while.
Robert Bannister
>
> Like many British people, I read a lot of material written in the USA, and a
> similar amount written in the UK. English spelling is often non-phonetic.
> The only way to learn English spelling is to read and/or write the words
> often. For me, this gives rise to a problem with a word such as "fulfil"
> (BrE) or "fulfill" (AmE). It is a relatively uncommon word, but when I do
> come across it, it is sometimes in the Britsh and sometimes in the American
> spelling. The result is that I am never confident of how to spell this
> troublesome word. Should it be fulfil, fullfil, fulfill or fullfill? Even
> after a lifetime of doing it, I still have to look the bloody thing up in
> the dictionary every time I need to use the word.
I got caught out recently with a word I almost never have occasion to
spell: bulrushes. It still looks wrong to me without a second L.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
I prefer "Rumania" because that's how I say it. The 'ou' looks too
French to me.
--
Rob Bannister
Skitt
That's almost the Latvian way of spelling it -- "Rumanija", with a macron
over the middle "a".
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
http://home.comcast.net/~skitt99/
Evan Kirshenbaum
I learned to spell and pronounce it "Romania", but Jews historically
from that region are "Rumanian".
The first English mention of it in Google Books has it as "Romania":
Now stands Romania subject to my sword.
Barnaby Barnes, _The Divils Charter: A Tragædie Conteining
the Life and Death of Pope Alexander the Sixt_, 1607
The earliest I see for "Rumania" is 1813 and for "Roumania", 1833.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |It's gotten to the point where the
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |only place you can get work done is
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |at home, because no one bugs you,
|and the best place to entertain
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |yourself is at work, because the
(650)857-7572 |Internet connections are faster.
| Scott Adams
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/
Sara Lorimer
> Like many British people, I read a lot of material written in the USA, and a
> similar amount written in the UK. English spelling is often non-phonetic.
> The only way to learn English spelling is to read and/or write the words
> often. For me, this gives rise to a problem with a word such as "fulfil"
> (BrE) or "fulfill" (AmE). It is a relatively uncommon word, but when I do
> come across it, it is sometimes in the Britsh and sometimes in the American
> spelling. The result is that I am never confident of how to spell this
> troublesome word. Should it be fulfil, fullfil, fulfill or fullfill? Even
> after a lifetime of doing it, I still have to look the bloody thing up in
> the dictionary every time I need to use the word.
The same thing happens to me. I'm an American, but spent my childhood
overseas where most of my teachers were British and we were expected to
use British English in school -- except for when we weren't.
I sometimes work as a copyeditor, so this can be a problem -- a word
might look fine to me, but actually it's the wrong English. One way I
justify the time I spend on AUE is that people here discuss such things.
"Fulfil" is now added to my mental list of Words To Be Double-Checked.
--
SML
Oleg Lego
>Skitt filted:
>>
>>Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>>
>>> I'm not sure if the spelling "Romanian" that the Roumanians would like
>>> to foist on the English language is more prevalent in AmE or BrE, but
>>> either way it clearly goes against the first meaning of
>>> "rationalised".
>>
>>The Romanians spell their country "Romania", so why add a "u"?
>
>Luv is a thing that can never go wrong....r
What a glorious day for cycling!
--
WCdnE
Athel Cornish-Bowden
> Prai Jei <pvsto...@zyx-abc.fsnet.co.uk> writes:
>
>> Richard Chambers set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
>> continuum:
>>
>>> Programme is still spelled this way in BrE for theatre programmes
>>> (which are nowadays in colour), schudules, radio and TV programmes,
>>> etc. But "program" has entered BrE for computer programs. Indeed,
>>> if you spell such a computer program as "programme" you have
>>> committed a spelling error in BrE. So BrE now has two words for the
>>> price of one, while the Americans muddle along somehow with just
>>> one word which has two slightly different meanings.
>>
>> That's cos the computer is an American invention.
>
> Tongue-in-cheek or serious? If the latter, it's not something I'd
> expect from one with a .uk address. Besides Babbage's work in the
> nineteenth century and the secret work by Turing and others at
> Bletchley Park during World War II, the first stored-program computer
> was, I believe, the Machester Mark I, built at the university of the
> same name in the UK. (The ENIAC predated it, but it was programmed by
> patch cords, and the Harvard Mark I wasn't Turing complete, taking its
> program as a single stream of instructions from paper tape.)
There's also Ada Lovelace (not to be confused with Linda), ther world's
first computer programmer. I don't remember if she used the word
"programme", but she certainly understood the idea.
--
athel
Athel Cornish-Bowden
They can spell it how they like in their own language, but why should
they dictate how it's written in English? Do you pronounce it with a u
sound, or with an o sound?
--
athel
Athel Cornish-Bowden
I've no objection to "Rumania", but the Roumanians don't like it any
better than they like "Roumania". As I live in France I see the
French-derived spelling a lot more often than I see the English-looking
one.
--
athel
Athel Cornish-Bowden
I don't think I have _ever_ had occasion to write this word, but if I
did I'd want a second l as well; it looks very odd without one. The
SOED prefers -l- but it allows -ll- as an alternative.
--
athel
Nick Spalding
on Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:12:59 +0000:
Forty-some years ago I described what a program was to my mother. She
caught on immediately, "just like a knitting pattern" she said.
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE
Mike Barnes
>Don Aitken <don-a...@freeuk.com> writes:
>
>> On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:32:34 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
>> <kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Tongue-in-cheek or serious? If the latter, it's not something I'd
>>>expect from one with a .uk address. Besides Babbage's work in the
>>>nineteenth century and the secret work by Turing and others at
>>>Bletchley Park during World War II, the first stored-program
>>>computer was, I believe, the Machester Mark I, built at the
>>>university of the same name in the UK. (The ENIAC predated it, but
>>>it was programmed by patch cords, and the Harvard Mark I wasn't
>>>Turing complete, taking its program as a single stream of
>>>instructions from paper tape.)
>>
>> And if "program" means "a sequence of instructions for a machine to
>> perform" then M. Jacquard's invention seems to qualify.
>
>I guess it's a program, but it's sort of a degenerate one: Jacquard's
>card stack's, like Babbage's and the Harvard Mark I's tape, didn't
>have the ability to make decisions. They could only perform the
>precise set of instructions given to them.
Odd use of "degenerate": to me it implies something lost, not something
that has yet to arrive.
--
Mike Barnes
Cheshire, England
Evan Kirshenbaum
> There's also Ada Lovelace (not to be confused with Linda), ther
> world's first computer programmer. I don't remember if she used the
> word "programme", but she certainly understood the idea.
I actually checked out her (heavily expanded) translation of
Menabrea's "Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles
Babbage"
http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html
and, not only didn't she use the word "program(me)", as far as I can
tell she didn't use any actual word for the notion of a particular set
of cards used to make the engine perform a task.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |A handgun is like a Lawyer. You
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |don't want it lying around where
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |the children might be exposed to
|it, but when you need one, you need
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |it RIGHT NOW, and nothing else will
(650)857-7572 |do.
| Bill McNutt
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/
Skitt
> "Skitt" said:
>> Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>>> I'm not sure if the spelling "Romanian" that the Roumanians would
>>> like to foist on the English language is more prevalent in AmE or
>>> BrE, but either way it clearly goes against the first meaning of
>>> "rationalised".
>>
>> The Romanians spell their country "Romania", so why add a "u"?
>> http://www.ici.ro/romania/ro/romania.html
>
> They can spell it how they like in their own language, but why should
> they dictate how it's written in English? Do you pronounce it with a u
> sound, or with an o sound?
I use the O sound, like in "go", except shorter in duration.
--
Skitt (AmE)
Mike Lyle
> On 2008-02-28 00:44:40 +0100, Robert Bannister <rob...@bigpond.com>
> said:
>> I got caught out recently with a word I almost never have occasion to
>> spell: bulrushes. It still looks wrong to me without a second L.
>
> I don't think I have _ever_ had occasion to write this word, but if I
> did I'd want a second l as well; it looks very odd without one. The
> SOED prefers -l- but it allows -ll- as an alternative.
One of my pet peeves is the way people use "bulrush" for what is
properly called "reed-mace". But OED rather leans toward norma loquendi,
saying: <A name applied in books to Scirpus lacustris, a tall rush
growing in or near water; but in modern popular use, more usually, to
Typha latifolia, the 'Cat's Tail' or 'Reed-mace'. In the Bible applied
to the Papyrus of Egypt.>
I see that the bovine bull may not be implicated the Dict comments: <[f.
bull of uncertain origin (identified by some with BOLE1, cf. bulaxe,
BOLE-AXE; by others supposed to be an attrib. use of BULL n.1) + RUSH.
(The suggestion 'pool-rush' is baseless.)] >
I call the following "bulrushes", though I think the alternative name
"club-rush" is unambiguous:
http://www.plant-identification.co.uk/images/cyperaceae/scirpus-lacustris-2.jpg
aka:
http://tinyurl.com/2eoa9c
... and these are my "reed-mace":
http://www.weyriver.co.uk/Images/PlantGreatReedmace.jpg
aka
--
Mike.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Don Aitken
<kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>Athel Cornish-Bowden <athe...@yahoo.co.uk> writes:
>
>> There's also Ada Lovelace (not to be confused with Linda), ther
>> world's first computer programmer. I don't remember if she used the
>> word "programme", but she certainly understood the idea.
>
>I actually checked out her (heavily expanded) translation of
>Menabrea's "Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles
>Babbage"
>
> http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html
>
>and, not only didn't she use the word "program(me)", as far as I can
>tell she didn't use any actual word for the notion of a particular set
>of cards used to make the engine perform a task.
The "table" included in Note G is usually accepted as the first
published program including conditional branching and loops, although
not the first to be written - Babbage had written several others, some
of them a number of years earlier. The first machine capable of
executing them according to Babbage's design was the "Difference
Engine No. 2", built at the Science Museum in the 1990s to commemorate
the bicentenary of his birth.
There is an excellent biography of Ada, "The Bride of Science", by
Benjamin Woolley, which debunks the exaggerated claims made for her in
the 1980s.
tony cooper
<mike_l...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>One of my pet peeves is the way people use "bulrush" for what is
>properly called "reed-mace".
Pet peeve? Damn, Mike, a pet peeve has to be something you run into
frequently. Something like people who park their cars diagonally
across two parking spaces in a shopping centre* lot, men who
constantly jingle the coins in their pockets, women who dig in their
purses for exact change, or people who kiss their dogs on the lips.
You can't have a pet peeve that only comes up when someone talks about
plant growths in Egypt. It's like saying that people who throw
"cognisable" into the conversation is a pet peeve of yours. Pet
peeves have to be things that peeve you because they recur frequently
enough to become a pets in what peeves you. They earn the status of
pet among peeves because they are constantly making you peevish.
* Spelled that way because what you observe is a shopping centre and
not a shopping center, and, partially, because what I observe is a
shopping centre. It peeves me to see that, though. And, I do see
enough of that spelling to classify it as a pet peeve. You see how it
works?
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 07:44:13 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
> <kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>
>>Athel Cornish-Bowden <athe...@yahoo.co.uk> writes:
>>
>>> There's also Ada Lovelace (not to be confused with Linda), ther
>>> world's first computer programmer. I don't remember if she used the
>>> word "programme", but she certainly understood the idea.
>>
>>I actually checked out her (heavily expanded) translation of
>>Menabrea's "Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles
>>Babbage"
>>
>> http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html
>>
>>and, not only didn't she use the word "program(me)", as far as I can
>>tell she didn't use any actual word for the notion of a particular
>>set of cards used to make the engine perform a task.
>
> The "table" included in Note G is usually accepted as the first
> published program including conditional branching and loops,
Called "cycles". But I can't tell from a superficial reading just how
that loop (cards 13-23) is specified and terminated.
> although not the first to be written - Babbage had written several
> others, some of them a number of years earlier. The first machine
> capable of executing them according to Babbage's design was the
> "Difference Engine No. 2", built at the Science Museum in the 1990s
> to commemorate the bicentenary of his birth.
But to my mind she uses the word "table" for the particular
presentation, including the progressive interpretations of the values
of the variables (which, interestingly, are actually called
"variables") rather than for the sequence of operations and references
themselves.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Politicians are like compost--they
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |should be turned often or they start
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |to smell bad.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Mike Lyle
I do indeed, and your reasoning is impeccable. Except that it doesn't
take into account my capacity for harbouring a nomenclatural grudge. Or,
indeed, that bulrushes, and of course reed-mace, are common round here,
and quite often spoken of in fishing and naturalist circles. The
Egyptian ones in the Bible were actually papyrus. These misnomers can
hardly be considered rare.
Richard Chambers
> [ ... ] [1]Incidentally, I don't include verbs in -ize under the heading
> of AmE spellings, because I don't accept that there is anything wrong with
> them in BrE, any more than there is anything wrong with double quotation
> marks. However, past evidence suggests that I'm in a small minority on
> these points among BrE speakers in this group.
"-ize" and "-ization" are widely accepted nowadays as correct spelling in
BrE. Many British publishers use it, and I would use it myself if I could.
My typing fingers, in automatic mode, simply will not go to the "z" key for
me, and always land on the "s" key.
One thing I do not like about American rationalised spelling is the AmE
usage of "meter". For this particular word, I prefer the BrE usage of two
words, "metre" for a measurement of length (just over one yard), and "meter"
for a measuring instrument such as an electricity meter. Two completely
different concepts, which seem (to me) to require two distinct words.
Furthermore, BrE usage of "metre" ensures consistency with the rest of
Europe. Metre (France, but I do not do graves), metro (Spain), and Metre
(Germany, I think, but I have lost my German dictionary). [Having written
this, I have a nagging feeling that somebody will write in and tell me that
the German is das Meter. Also ist das Leben.]
Richard Chambers Leeds UK.
Robin Bignall
<dontb...@easypeasy.com> wrote:
>Richard Chambers wrote:
>> CyberCypher wrote
>>
>> > > 1. center
>> > >
>> > > 2. centre
>>
>> > They're both correct. The first is American and the second is
>> > British English. The question you should be asking is more like
>> > "Which brand of English should I use, American, Australian,
>> > British, Canadian, Indian, Jamaican, New Zealand, South African, or
>> > some ?" The answer is that it doesn't matter. Choose the one you
>> > like best and the one that will be best for your needs (depends on
>> > where you live and work and who you typically speak with and write
>> > to) and learn it as well as you can. The fundamentals of all the
>> > brands are essentially the same, but they sometimes differ
>> > significantly.
>>
>> There is just one little problem with this, which I sometimes come
>> across.
>>
>> Like many British people, I read a lot of material written in the
>> USA, and a similar amount written in the UK. English spelling is
>> often non-phonetic. The only way to learn English spelling is to read
>> and/or write the words often. For me, this gives rise to a problem
>> with a word such as "fulfil" (BrE) or "fulfill" (AmE). It is a
>> relatively uncommon word, but when I do come across it, it is
>> sometimes in the Britsh and sometimes in the American spelling. The
>> result is that I am never confident of how to spell this troublesome
>> word. Should it be fulfil, fullfil, fulfill or fullfill? Even after
>> a lifetime of doing it, I still have to look the bloody thing up in
>> the dictionary every time I need to use the word. There is always a
>> sufficient lapse of time between one use and the next use of this
>> word, so that I have once again forgotten how to spell it.
>
>I have the same problem. It comes from having read so many British and
>American novels in which I saw the different spellings and then
>translated them without paying attention to the spelling. It's
>interesting to me that I never get confused about whether a Chinese
>character is traditional (and, therefore, Taiwanese) or simplified
>(and, therefore, PRC): the PRC's simplified characters always have
>fewer strokes and are less aesthetically pleasing. The AmE spellings
>almost always have fewer letters, except for "fulfil/fulfill", and they
>never have digraphs or /ae/ or /oe/ in place of the digraphs, but they
>are confusing because there still are some /ll/ spellings -- at least I
>think there are even though I can't think of any right now.
>
>> I have a similar difficulty with dialed/dialled and
>> propeled/propelled.
>
>This is usually an easy choice: /ll/ = BrE, /l/ = AmE.
>
>> I often think that I would like to standardise (standardize) English
>> spelling. Most of the standardisation would be to the American
>> version, for two reasons. (1) in most cases where the Americans have
>> altered BrE spelling, they have rationalised it[1]; and (2) the USA,
>> with 300M English-speaking citizens, is now the major force in the
>> continuing evolution of the English language. The UK, although the
>> historical source of the language, is now a junior partner in the
>> evolution of the language. How could it be otherwise, since there are
>> only 60M of us? We need to admit an uncomfortable fact.
>>
>> I would not want American spelling to win in every case, because
>> there are occasional instances where American attempted
>> "rationalisation" has been counter-productive.
>>
>> [1] For example, in British English:-
>> colour
>> coloration, colouration (both forms in BrE, but coloration is the
>> main entry in the dictionary) colorific (only)
>> colorimeter (only)
>
>> With spelling as irrational as this, it is not surprising that
>> Britain has one of the worst illiteracy rates in Europe. The British,
>> on average, are no less intelligent than the Spanish or Germans. Our
>> high rate of illiteracy is caused by our non-phonetic spelling and by
>> the irrationality that exists even within this non-phonetic spelling
>> system.
>
>That's an interesting theory. I have no idea whether it's true. I'd say
>that the USA's illiteracy comes from cultural values that devalue
>education and worship wealth, and from the irrational PC attitude that
>illiterates and the uneducated are equal to the literate and educated:
>"He's not an ignoramus! He's just differently knowledgeable!"
That's pretty much the case in Britain, too, Franke. BrE
spelling is low on the list of causes of illiteracy. What people
don't appear to understand is that 60 years ago something like
40% of youngsters had literacy problems at 11 years of age, just
like today. In those days nobody talked about it much, and in
any case there were plenty of unskilled jobs in industry
available for them. We've lost maybe five million of those
unskilled jobs over the years, and many young Brits, particularly
the white ones, don't want to do that sort of work even when it's
available.
--
Robin Bignall (BrE)
Herts, England
Skitt
It's "der Meter" in German (sometimes "das Meter"). So ist das Leben.
In Latvian, it's "metrs". Then the inflecting begins ...
--
Skitt (AmE)
Robert Bannister
In addition, I have never seen the logic in "fence" and "defense". By
the way, have British sports commentators, like Australian ones, taken
to pronouncing the noun with a stress on the first syllable?
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
> I call the following "bulrushes", though I think the alternative name
> "club-rush" is unambiguous:
> http://www.plant-identification.co.uk/images/cyperaceae/scirpus-lacustris-2.jpg
> aka:
> http://tinyurl.com/2eoa9c
> ... and these are my "reed-mace":
>
> http://www.weyriver.co.uk/Images/PlantGreatReedmace.jpg
>
> aka
>
> http://tinyurl.com/29cdr8
>
>
Your reed-mace looks vaguely like bulrushes, but only slightly. The
other bears no resemblance. There's a nice picture at Google images of
Typhaceae, that look like "real" bulrushes to me, but the original image
appears to be unobtainable.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Lieblich
[ ... ]
> I do indeed, and your reasoning is impeccable. Except that it doesn't
> take into account my capacity for harbouring a nomenclatural grudge. Or,
> indeed, that bulrushes, and of course reed-mace, are common round here,
> and quite often spoken of in fishing and naturalist circles. The
> Egyptian ones in the Bible were actually papyrus. These misnomers can
> hardly be considered rare.
Why did you say "misnomer"?
Mark Brader
> > That's cos the computer is an American invention.
> Tongue-in-cheek or serious? If the latter, it's not something I'd
> expect from one with a .uk address. Besides Babbage's work in the
> nineteenth century and the secret work by Turing and others at
> Bletchley Park during World War II, the first stored-program computer
> was, I believe, the Machester Mark I, built at the university of the
> same name in the UK. (The ENIAC predated it, but it was programmed by
> patch cords, and the Harvard Mark I wasn't Turing complete, taking its
> program as a single stream of instructions from paper tape.)
See also my chronology at <http://www.davros.org/misc/chronology.html>.
--
Mark Brader "I can say nothing at this point."
Toronto "Well, you were wrong."
m...@vex.net -- Monty Python's Flying Circus
Amethyst Deceiver
says...
[snip]
> > And if "program" means "a sequence of instructions for a machine to
> > perform" then M. Jacquard's invention seems to qualify.
>
> Forty-some years ago I described what a program was to my mother. She
> caught on immediately, "just like a knitting pattern" she said.
You wouldn't believe the number of people who have said to me "but of
course you can do programming, you can knit!". Perhaps if someone had
said it to me 30 years ago I might have had a go.
--
Linz
Wet Yorks via Cambridge, York, London and Watford
My accent may vary
Mike Lyle
[..]
> In addition, I have never seen the logic in "fence" and "defense". By
> the way, have British sports commentators, like Australian ones, taken
> to pronouncing the noun with a stress on the first syllable?
That's utterly inexcusable. Particularly as our usual sports opposites
are not "offence" and "defence", but "attack" and "defence", so they
can't even plead clarity in extenuation. If I hear it, I'll be there
smashing broadcasters' windows.
Mike Lyle
You suspect my intent may not have been altogether pacific?
TsuiDF
wrote:
> In article <5o6ds3tf15t3jue3cnvd9igkkjp7q9r...@4ax.com>, spald...@iol.ie
> says...
>
> > Forty-some years ago I described what a program was to my mother. Â She
> > caught on immediately, "just like a knitting pattern" she said.
>
> You wouldn't believe the number of people who have said to me "but of
> course you can do programming, you can knit!". Perhaps if someone had
> said it to me 30 years ago I might have had a go.
But Shirley that should be 'you can do programming, you can weave'?
Stephanie
thinking about my next twill
HVS
> Robert Lieblich wrote:
>> Mike Lyle wrote:
>>
>> [ ... ]
>>
>>> I do indeed, and your reasoning is impeccable. Except that it
>>> doesn't take into account my capacity for harbouring a
>>> nomenclatural grudge. Or, indeed, that bulrushes, and of
>>> course reed-mace, are common round here, and quite often
>>> spoken of in fishing and naturalist circles. The Egyptian ones
>>> in the Bible were actually papyrus. These misnomers can hardly
>>> be considered rare.
>>
>> Why did you say "misnomer"?
>
> You suspect my intent may not have been altogether pacific?
It's rearing its head as something you rarely do.
--
Cheers, Harvey
CanEng and BrEng, indiscriminately mixed
Robert Bannister
> Robert Bannister wrote:
> [..]
>
>>In addition, I have never seen the logic in "fence" and "defense". By
>>the way, have British sports commentators, like Australian ones, taken
>>to pronouncing the noun with a stress on the first syllable?
>
>
> That's utterly inexcusable. Particularly as our usual sports opposites
> are not "offence" and "defence", but "attack" and "defence", so they
> can't even plead clarity in extenuation. If I hear it, I'll be there
> smashing broadcasters' windows.
>
I mainly hear it with basketball, so perhaps there's an excuse as so
many of the players and coaches are Canadian or American. However, I
recently heard a (male) commentator use it in netball, which sounded
strange.
--
Rob Bannister
R H Draney
>
>On Feb 29, 10:59=A0am, Amethyst Deceiver <s...@lindsayendell.co.uk>
>wrote:
>>
>> You wouldn't believe the number of people who have said to me "but of
>> course you can do programming, you can knit!". Perhaps if someone had
>> said it to me 30 years ago I might have had a go.
>
>But Shirley that should be 'you can do programming, you can weave'?
Modulo a semicolon, maybe....r
--
What good is being an executive if you never get to execute anyone?
Don Aitken
You'll hear it with baseball and American football too. It seems to be
the default assumption in American sport that everything that is done
on the field is either Deef Ence or Oaf Ence, and that every player is
there for only one of those purposes at a time. Batting, for instance,
is always Oaf Ence, which seems odd to a follower of cricket, in which
both batting and bowling may be done offensively or defensively,
depending on the match situation, but the difference in terminology
reflects a real difference in the way the game is played; it isn't
just done to confuse furriners.
tony cooper
wrote:
>You'll hear it with baseball and American football too. It seems to be
>the default assumption in American sport that everything that is done
>on the field is either Deef Ence or Oaf Ence, and that every player is
>there for only one of those purposes at a time. Batting, for instance,
>is always Oaf Ence,
Except it isn't. It's "off ence", not "oaf ence". Please don't
consider me to be oaf-ence-ive in pointing this out.
Don Aitken
I've heard both pronunciations. I think Joe Morgan says oaf ence;
certainly some commentators do.
tony cooper
wrote:
>On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:52:53 -0500, tony cooper
><tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>>On Sat, 01 Mar 2008 02:37:56 +0000, Don Aitken <don-a...@freeuk.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>You'll hear it with baseball and American football too. It seems to be
>>>the default assumption in American sport that everything that is done
>>>on the field is either Deef Ence or Oaf Ence, and that every player is
>>>there for only one of those purposes at a time. Batting, for instance,
>>>is always Oaf Ence,
>>
>>Except it isn't. It's "off ence", not "oaf ence". Please don't
>>consider me to be oaf-ence-ive in pointing this out.
>
>I've heard both pronunciations. I think Joe Morgan says oaf ence;
>certainly some commentators do.
You may have, but I'm a sports nut and listen to radio sports talk
shows and watch televised sports. I can't recall what Joe says,
although he was a regular commentator on a show that was carried here
until a recent change in programming.
I can honestly say that hearing "oaf ence", from an American, would
grab my attention as something completely wrong.
Default User
> On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:52:53 -0500, tony cooper
> <tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > Except it isn't. It's "off ence", not "oaf ence". Please don't
> > consider me to be oaf-ence-ive in pointing this out.
>
> I've heard both pronunciations. I think Joe Morgan says oaf ence;
> certainly some commentators do.
I hear it in the US, but usually from Canadian hockey players,
coachers, or commentators.
Brian
--
If televison's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who
won't shut up.
-- Dorothy Gambrell (http://catandgirl.com)
Don Aitken
<tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>On Sat, 01 Mar 2008 17:25:30 +0000, Don Aitken <don-a...@freeuk.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:52:53 -0500, tony cooper
>><tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>>On Sat, 01 Mar 2008 02:37:56 +0000, Don Aitken <don-a...@freeuk.com>
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>>You'll hear it with baseball and American football too. It seems to be
>>>>the default assumption in American sport that everything that is done
>>>>on the field is either Deef Ence or Oaf Ence, and that every player is
>>>>there for only one of those purposes at a time. Batting, for instance,
>>>>is always Oaf Ence,
>>>
>>>Except it isn't. It's "off ence", not "oaf ence". Please don't
>>>consider me to be oaf-ence-ive in pointing this out.
>>
>>I've heard both pronunciations. I think Joe Morgan says oaf ence;
>>certainly some commentators do.
>
>You may have, but I'm a sports nut and listen to radio sports talk
>shows and watch televised sports. I can't recall what Joe says,
>although he was a regular commentator on a show that was carried here
>until a recent change in programming.
>
>I can honestly say that hearing "oaf ence", from an American, would
>grab my attention as something completely wrong.
If I manage to remember until Channel 5 baseball starts up again (it
will be a while, because they don't cover spring training games) I
will make a point of listening out for this. It is possible I
misremembered, and it was one of the studio presenters (one American
and one British) who used this pronunciation, rather than a match
commentator. They use an ESPN feed, which most of the time means
Miller and Morgan.
Pat Durkin
"tony cooper" <tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:s37js3dhaig3in9tq...@4ax.com...
O(af) fence is completely normal to me, and not eyebrow raising in any
way.
The "AW fence" as preferred and most frequent? Not hardly.
tony cooper
wrote:
Hold on here, Pat. The subject is the pronunciation of "offense" in
sports usage. The discussion is about how the word is used to
describe the attacking players or attacking actions.
When would you hear "oaf fense" or "o fence" in this context?
When would you hear "They'll never make to the play-offs until they
get some players on o-fence"? When would you hear "Their oaf-ense is
better than their defense"?
If you're scanning the thread and think we are talking about how to
pronounce "offense" in other situations, you'd be wrong. Read this
entire post, not just the last line I wrote.
Don Phillipson
> The subject is the pronunciation of "offense" in
> sports usage. The discussion is about how the word is used to
> describe the attacking players or attacking actions.
>
> When would you hear "oaf fense" or "o fence" in this context?
>
> When would you hear "They'll never make to the play-offs until they
> get some players on o-fence"? When would you hear "Their oaf-ense is
> better than their defense"?
I'd risk a substantial bet that this common usage dates
from the 1930s because of the combination of:
1. The rules and methods of American football, which
does indeed have squads of players who specialize in
the offence and others in defence. This is not found
in other popular US sports like baseball or in soccer,
where substitutions are allowed only for injury.
2. Radio broadcasts of American football, new in the 1930s.
Commentators wanted to use the words Offence and Defence
(because of the rules and methods) but needed to distinguish
clearly between them, because, if stressed on the second
syllable as in Britain, they could be confused during rapid
speech or radio crackles. So radio commentators started
stressing these words on the first syllable (I guess) and
US radio audiences got used to it and generally followed suit.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Mark Brader
Tony Cooper:
>>>>> Except it isn't. It's "off ence", not "oaf ence". Please don't
>>>>> consider me to be oaf-ence-ive in pointing this out.
Don Aitken:
>>>> I've heard both pronunciations. I think Joe Morgan says oaf ence;
>>>> certainly some commentators do.
Tony Cooper:
>>> You may have, but I'm a sports nut and listen to radio sports talk
>>> shows and watch televised sports. ... I can honestly say that
>>> hearing "oaf ence", from an American, would grab my attention as
>>> something completely wrong.
Pat Durkin:
>> O(af) fence is completely normal to me, and not eyebrow raising in any
>> way.
Tony Cooper:
> Hold on here, Pat. The subject is the pronunciation of "offense" in
> sports usage.
I agree with Don and Pat. In the context of sports, I've heard the
accented initial O both long and short, and I find both versions
completely normal. That said, I don't follow any sports closely
any more, and I've heard Canadian commentators a lot more than American ones.
In a legal context I would expect the second syllable of "offense" or
"defense" to be accented. Military usage I don't know about, but the
metaphors of sports and war are so intertwined that I'd guess the
"DEE-fence" pronunciation might well have crossed over into that.
--
Mark Brader | "Now I feel stupid. Well, I guess it's not bad
Toronto | if that happens once a decade or so."
m...@vex.net | --Al Fargnoli
My text in this article is in the public domain.
tony cooper
>
>Tony Cooper:
>>>>>> Except it isn't. It's "off ence", not "oaf ence". Please don't
>>>>>> consider me to be oaf-ence-ive in pointing this out.
>
>Don Aitken:
>>>>> I've heard both pronunciations. I think Joe Morgan says oaf ence;
>>>>> certainly some commentators do.
>
>Tony Cooper:
>>>> You may have, but I'm a sports nut and listen to radio sports talk
>>>> shows and watch televised sports. ... I can honestly say that
>>>> hearing "oaf ence", from an American, would grab my attention as
>>>> something completely wrong.
>
>Pat Durkin:
>>> O(af) fence is completely normal to me, and not eyebrow raising in any
>>> way.
>
>Tony Cooper:
>> Hold on here, Pat. The subject is the pronunciation of "offense" in
>> sports usage.
>
>I agree with Don and Pat. In the context of sports, I've heard the
>accented initial O both long and short, and I find both versions
>completely normal. That said, I don't follow any sports closely
>any more, and I've heard Canadian commentators a lot more than American ones.
>
I have never listed to the play-by-play of the Hamilton Tiger Cats
playing the Winnipeg Blue Bombers or of the London Monarchs playing
the Barcelona Dragons. I have no idea how the commentators say
"offense" in the coverage of these games.
My comments about the pronunciation of "offense" only as "Off-ense"
pertains only to Americans speaking about American sports in the
context of the members of the team in possession of the ball.
Rich Wales
> Except it isn't. It's "off ence", not "oaf ence".
It's a Canadianism. Not wrong, just different from American speech.
As a general pattern in Canadian English, unstressed, syllable-final
"o", in a syllable before the stressed syllable, is pronounced as a
long "oh".
Thus, for example, "offensive" is usually pronounced in Canada as
"oh-FEN-siv" -- and "offence" (meaning a crime) will normally be
pronounced "oh-FENCE".
A few other examples of this same feature in Canadian English --
cases where Americans would probably notice something unusual --
would be "occur", "commission", and "collateral". All of these
words are pronounced by most Canadian speakers with a definite
long "oh" (not "uh" or a neutral schwa) in the first syllable.
Again, it's not an error, just a feature of a different regional
dialect.
As for the pronunciation "OH-fence" (with initial stress), this
logically derives from the ordinary Canadian pronunciation
(oh-FENCE) via a simple movement of the stress without changing
other sounds.
AFAIK, this feature is heard across Canada and is not specific to
any particular region of the country.
Rich Wales === Palo Alto, CA, USA === ri...@richw.org
http://www.richw.org === http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Richwales
tony cooper
wrote:
>Tony Cooper wrote:
>
> > Except it isn't. It's "off ence", not "oaf ence".
>
>It's a Canadianism. Not wrong, just different from American speech.
>
>As a general pattern in Canadian English, unstressed, syllable-final
>"o", in a syllable before the stressed syllable, is pronounced as a
>long "oh".
>
This is one of those instances where snipping - which is usually a
good thing - misleads people. The line of mine above was a reply to
Don Aitkin in which he said:
"You'll hear it with baseball and American football too. It seems to
be the default assumption in American sport that everything that is
done on the field is either Deef Ence or Oaf Ence, and that every
player is there for only one of those purposes at a time. Batting, for
instance,is always Oaf Ence."
Perhaps Don was referring to Canadian broadcasters, but the "in
American sport" bit prompted my response about how "offense" is
pronounced by American commentators in sports context. Always
"off-ence". "Oaf ence" is used by Americans when we are talking about
a crime or giving offence. A football player who plays off-ence can
commit an oaf-ence off the field, but he's on "off-ence" on the field
even if he's "oaf-ensive" to other players in the locker room.
R H Draney
When the "OFF fence" vs "OAF fence" question came up, the first thing my mind
produced was this exchange:
Teacher: "The only use of Ti Kwan Leep is self-defense. Do you know who said
that? Ki Lo Ni, the great teacher."
Ed Gruberman: "Yeah? Well the best defense is a good offense, you know who
said that? Mel, the cook on 'Alice'."
This is from a sketch by the Frantics, a Canadian comedy group, and the
pronunciation used is in fact "OAF fence"...I don't have a clip from "Alice", if
in fact such a thing actually exists, but it wouldn't surprise me to find that
Vic Tayback, the New Yorker who played "Mel, the cook on 'Alice'" said "OFF
fence"....
If anyone's interested, the entire routine can be heard at:
http://www.webguys.com/pdavis/karate/audio/16_Ti_Kwan_Leep_32kbs.mp3
Evan Kirshenbaum
> You'll hear it with baseball and American football too. It seems to
> be the default assumption in American sport that everything that is
> done on the field is either Deef Ence or Oaf Ence,
As with others, mine (and what I standardly hear) has /O/ rather than
/oU/.
> and that every player is there for only one of those purposes at a
> time.
Where "at a time" may mean "until posession of the ball/puck is turned
over to the other team".
> Batting, for instance, is always Oaf Ence, which seems odd to a
> follower of cricket, in which both batting and bowling may be done
> offensively or defensively, depending on the match situation,
If I understand what you mean, that would more probably be
"aggressively" and "conservatively" in the US. There is a notion of
"defensive hitting" (fouling pitches off until you find one that you
can hit), but I'm not sure if that's the sort of thing you had in
mind. I can't think of any notion of "offensive" pitching. (At least
in that sense of "offensive".)
> but the difference in terminology reflects a real difference in the
> way the game is played; it isn't just done to confuse furriners.
I'm not sure that's quite true, since we're happy speaking of
"offense" and "defense" in basketball, hockey, soccer, etc., too. The
basic notion is that if you have the possibility of scoring right now,
you're on offense, and if the other team does, you're on defense. The
only exception I can think of is in football, where the squads are
composed of different players, and so if you start a play on defense,
you remain on defense even if the ball is turned over during the play
and the "defense" has an opportunity to score.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |When correctly viewed,
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 | Everything is lewd.
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |I could tell you things
| about Peter Pan,
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |and the Wizard of Oz--
(650)857-7572 | there's a dirty old man!
| Tom Lehrer
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/
Oleg Lego
In Hockey (real hockey, not that running around on grass thing), there
are forwards and defensemen. Defense and offence require quite
different skill sets, and because the play does not pause when a puck
possession changes from one team to the other, both are on the ice at
the same time.
--
WCdnE
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On Mon, 03 Mar 2008 08:38:33 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum posted:
>
>>I'm not sure that's quite true, since we're happy speaking of
>>"offense" and "defense" in basketball, hockey, soccer, etc., too.
>>The basic notion is that if you have the possibility of scoring
>>right now, you're on offense, and if the other team does, you're on
>>defense. The only exception I can think of is in football, where
>>the squads are composed of different players, and so if you start a
>>play on defense, you remain on defense even if the ball is turned
>>over during the play and the "defense" has an opportunity to score.
>
> In Hockey (real hockey, not that running around on grass thing),
> there are forwards and defensemen. Defense and offence require quite
> different skill sets, and because the play does not pause when a
> puck possession changes from one team to the other, both are on the
> ice at the same time.
Right, but both play defense when the puck is in their own end and
both play offense when the puck is at the other end. It's just that
two are mainly there for defense and three are mainly there for
offense. (The goalie, of course, is nearly entirely there for defense
no matter where the puck is.)
It's interesting that in basketball, the player who leads the offense
is one of the "guards", a name that would seem to harken back to a
time when that was primarily a defensive position.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |On a scale of one to ten...
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |it sucked.
Palo Alto, CA 94304
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Oleg Lego
>Oleg Lego <r...@atatatat.com> writes:
>
>> On Mon, 03 Mar 2008 08:38:33 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum posted:
>>
>>>I'm not sure that's quite true, since we're happy speaking of
>>>"offense" and "defense" in basketball, hockey, soccer, etc., too.
>>>The basic notion is that if you have the possibility of scoring
>>>right now, you're on offense, and if the other team does, you're on
>>>defense. The only exception I can think of is in football, where
>>>the squads are composed of different players, and so if you start a
>>>play on defense, you remain on defense even if the ball is turned
>>>over during the play and the "defense" has an opportunity to score.
>>
>> In Hockey (real hockey, not that running around on grass thing),
>> there are forwards and defensemen. Defense and offence require quite
>> different skill sets, and because the play does not pause when a
>> puck possession changes from one team to the other, both are on the
>> ice at the same time.
>
>Right, but both play defense when the puck is in their own end and
>both play offense when the puck is at the other end. It's just that
>two are mainly there for defense and three are mainly there for
>offense. (The goalie, of course, is nearly entirely there for defense
>no matter where the puck is.)
While it isn't a required behaviour assigned to a position, and on
teams that do well, the defensemen play offensively in a different
manner than do forwards. They will hang back near the offensive zone
blue line, ready to check a an opposing player that comes into
possession of the puck. Sometimes they will take a chance and "pinch",
meaning that they go more deeply into the offensive zone to assist in
close-in offence. A good defenseman knows when to do this, and when to
stay at the point.
>It's interesting that in basketball, the player who leads the offense
>is one of the "guards", a name that would seem to harken back to a
>time when that was primarily a defensive position.
--
WCdnE
Garrett Wollman
Oleg Lego <r...@atatatat.com> wrote:
>possession of the puck. Sometimes they will take a chance and "pinch",
>meaning that they go more deeply into the offensive zone to assist in
>close-in offence. A good defenseman knows when to do this, and when to
>stay at the point.
Oddly, one of the annual awards in the NHL is for the best "defensive
forward" (so, apropos of the subject header, a cent(er|re) would be
eligible), but there is no official award for the best "offensive
defenseman" (although I suppose the Norris goes to such a person not
infrequently). (Looking at the list on nhl.com reminds me how much I
miss the funky old conferences and divisions, named after people
rather than regions. It's not like the NHL really *needs* a southeast
division, anyway.)
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are
wol...@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry
Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape
of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness
Evan Kirshenbaum
> (Looking at the list on nhl.com reminds me how much I miss the funky
> old conferences and divisions, named after people rather than
> regions. It's not like the NHL really *needs* a southeast division,
> anyway.)
Looking at the divisions, one thing that strikes me is that between
the Southeast and Pacific divisions, there are probably more cities
that (almost) never see snow (let alone a naturally frozen body of
water) than there are teams in Canada.
Of course, there are twice as many Canadian teams there now as there
were when I was growing up (six as opposed to three).
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |...as a mobile phone is analogous
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |to a Q-Tip -- yeah, it's something
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |you stick in your ear, but there
|all resemblance ends.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Ross Howard
(650)857-7572
Django Cat
> > Learners of English, if they are in a country where the language is
> > widely used, are normally taught the form in use in that country.
>
> Finally something that is so obvious as to be indisputably correct.
>
> > If
> > they are in a country where English is not used they will be taught
> > either the American or the British form of the language; the choice
> > between the two is artitrary, and depends mainly on the availability
> > of teachers.
Not so. And in many cases language planners in state education systems
specify they only want teachers from a specific language flavour
background.
>
> Not always and not everywhere. It depends on what the employer offers
> and what the teachers are capable of teaching. It also depends on what
> the students want. I've had many classes tell me that they do not want
> to listen to BBC news broadcasts because they didn't understand
> BrE-accented English. I've had others that didn't want to hear
> American news broadcasts because they didn't like the rapid and
> sloppy way Americans speak and found BrE much easier to understand.
Well, as we both know, students often say these things but in a blind
test couldn't tell spoken BrE from spoken AmE from a hole in the ground
unless they're given some lexical clues. They also often react based
on received ideas of what they think given varieties of English are
going to be like or non-linguistic elements - such as they passionately
want to study in the US/they passionately don't want to study in the US.
> I'd say that in neither case were the students being arbitrary. And
> for the 25 years that I've been teaching EFL in Japan and Taiwan,
> I've been told consistently that I don't speak like a typical
> americanophone: my pronunciation is too clear and precise and very
> easy to understand.
But as I'm sure you're aware, Franke, that tells us something about how
your own English has very subtly changed over the years to make you
more comprehensible to specific sets of non-native ears. Happens to
everybody over time.
>No one has ever mistaken my language for BrE,
> though.
So does BrE have a reputation for being clear and precise, then? Your
students should spend some time on the cold meat counter in Denton
Sainsburys sometime.
>
> It sounds to me as if you don't have much experience teaching EFL.
If at all.
DC
--
Django Cat
> > Others include:
> >
> > fetus - fOEtus
> > stomach - stomache
> > color - colour
> > favorite - favourite
> > theater - theatre
> >
> > Its just a difference between AmE and BrE
>
> Stomache?
Headache, backache, stomache. What's the problem here?
DC
--
Skitt
Do stomas ache?
--
Skitt (AmE)
Django Cat
> With spelling as irrational as this, it is not surprising that
> Britain has one of the worst illiteracy rates in Europe. The British,
> on average, are no less intelligent than the Spanish or Germans. Our
> high rate of illiteracy is caused by our non-phonetic spelling and by
> the irrationality that exists even within this non-phonetic spelling
> system.
>
Whoop! Hang on there pardner, that's a big jump! And do we have one
of the worst illiteracy rates in Europe? Can you quote us some stats?
And which Europe would that be? The one that includes Scandanavia and
Germany, or the one that includes Albania and Romania?
DC
--
Django Cat
> > > Stomache?
> >
> > Headache, backache, stomache. What's the problem here?
>
> Do stomas ache?
I'd guess they would, but the question is, do stoms?
DC
--
Robin Bignall
wrote:
Actually, yes.
--
Robin Bignall (BrE)
Herts, England
John Kane
> CyberCypher wrote:
>
>> Not always and not everywhere. It depends on what the employer offers
>> and what the teachers are capable of teaching. It also depends on what
>> the students want. I've had many classes tell me that they do not want
>> to listen to BBC news broadcasts because they didn't understand
>> BrE-accented English. I've had others that didn't want to hear
>> American news broadcasts because they didn't like the rapid and
>> sloppy way Americans speak and found BrE much easier to understand.
>
> Well, as we both know, students often say these things but in a blind
> test couldn't tell spoken BrE from spoken AmE from a hole in the ground
> unless they're given some lexical clues. They also often react based
> on received ideas of what they think given varieties of English are
> going to be like or non-linguistic elements - such as they passionately
> want to study in the US/they passionately don't want to study in the US.
>
I'd question this. I have no problem at all distinguishing a
Metropolitan French accent from a Canadian French accent and I would not
be surprised to find that English learners can do the same for UK and US
English.
--
John Kane, Kingston ON Canada
Adrian Bailey
news:fr9a8o$qda$1...@registered.motzarella.org...
I side with the Cat. My (Hungarian) wife's fluent in English and has been
teaching it for many years, but one of the few problems she still has is
recognising accents. For whatever reason, native speakers find this much
easier.
Adrian