Monday, September 21, 2009

Just not -me

Though resistant to many forms of American cultural
imperialism I've long thought that other English-speaking
countries besides Australia should adopt American
spellings like program, color and traveler. (Come to think
of it, why did Australia and not New Zealand go that way?)
I already can’t be bothered with ‘programme,’ which is not
only inconsistent with similar words (we have ‘telegram’
and ‘angiogram,’ after all—imagine writing ‘angiogramme’)
but looks ugly into the bargain. It seems we’re stuck with
‘labour,’ though, unless the party of that name drops it.

On the other hand, the Americans opt for the double-l in
words like 'fulfillment' and 'willful,' which is plain perverse.

1 comment:

Poneke said...

Australia doesn't appear to me to have adopted American spellings.

The Australian Labor Party spells its name that way, but the word "labour" is spelled the way it always was elsewhere.

Ditto with colour, harbour, axe and every other word I have seen in my travels there.