Michael Everson scripsit:
> Ar 10:31 -0700 1998-07-14, scríobh John H. Jenkins:
>
> >Japanese and Chinese think so. (Britons and Americans tend to find one
> >another's spellings of their common language bizarre, too.)
>
> Ahem. You mean "speakers of European English" and "speakers of American
> English", don't you John? Ireland is <B>not</B> in Britain, though we
> number English as one of our national languages. Britons, on the other
> hand, may speak Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish, or Romany. Or indeed
> Punjabi, Bengali, etc. etc. etc.
Well, if it comes to that (and to be absolutely pernickety about it),
*speakers* of English can't necessarily *write* English, still less
spell it correctly by any standard. Anyhow, there are basically two
typographical traditions: U.S. and Commonwealth/Elsewhere (not just
"European"), except that Canada uses many but not all U.S. spellings:
U.S. "tire center", C/E "tyre centre", Can. "tire centre".
I don't know whether English is a national language of the U.S.
It is certainly not an *official* language of the U.S.
-- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org You tollerday donsk? N. You tolkatiff scowegian? Nn. You spigotty anglease? Nnn. You phonio saxo? Nnnn. Clear all so! 'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)
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