User talk:Mahagaja/Unified English Spelling

This page was nominated for deletion on 13 May 2020. The result of the discussion was Speedy Keep.

Responses to the essay

Fascinating piece of work (thanks!) and a thorny topic which I'd love to see a resolution to on Wikipedia — though I don't expect to see one any time soon!

For what it's worth (and intended as friendly discussion, not argument), I think some of the reasoning here is at odds; "Fewer letters; in Latinate words also nearer the etymological source" is given as a reason for preferring UES for the first examples, yet "Better reflects the pronunciation" is given for the last example. My problem with this is that pronunciation is another issue altogether. The first examples may match U.S. pronunciation, but "color" is certainly not the British pronunciation of that word... I think the extra "u" helps reflect the softening of the word. And then we get into regional accents and it gets even more complicated — I expect some "archaic" pronunciations in rich regional accents (in the U.K. at least) are closer to the sources of words than the "Queen's English" versions.

(EDIT) Also, "deflexion, reflexion" — what dictionary lists these as valid British English? Not the online Chambers, at least. Sadly I don't have access to a massive OED to have a look though. (Or are they just Commonwealth?) – Kieran T ^(talk) 12:45, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree about color not representing the British pronunciation. The u in colour doesn't "reflect the softening" at all; on the contrary, having more vowel letters puts more emphasis on the syllable. Consider contour and tenor (both of which are spelled the same in en-GB and en-US)--which of those words has a final syllable that's more like the final syllable of colo(u)r in pronunciation? Deflexion and reflexion are both in the OED, where it's revealed the Latin is deflexio and reflexio (in the latter case reflectio only in Late Latin). But the OED does concede both spellings are rare now. —An gr 16:30, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Jewelery

Interesting idea Angr: smooth the problem of varient spelling out into a solution that nobody will be happy with ... at least not till the end of the century. I will, however, make one suggestion. You suggest jewelry but it seems to me that there's something the jewellery has going for it which the shorter version lacks. Jewel(le)ry is jewel + er + y, right? So, wouldn't you say that the longer spelling is the better reflexion of the word's meaning? Of course, you're not doubling the ls so it would have to become jewelery, which isn't standard anywhere ... oh well. J i m p 00:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why can't it just be jewel + -ry? Anyway, that's the nature of a good compromise: it leaves everyone equally unhappy. —An gr 05:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. Hey, you never know, one of these days something of this sort might even catch on. Nice work. J i m p 06:14, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Some English people pronounce this word joolery. Djwebb1969 (talk) 00:21, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So do some Americans, despite our spelling. Those of us who grew up in central Texas pronounce Pedernales "perdenallis", too. +An gr 07:29, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Gray

Although I do not agree with all your solutions, I welcome your work. It is a pity that the English language with its strange mix of (pseudo-)phonetic and etymologic orthography has different standards of it. There is no legitimate standardi[s|z]ation body for spelling in most languages – some linguists even consider it wrong for any language. Therefore it would be quite okay for Wikipedia to define an inhouse spelling of its own. Contributors would of cause not be required to follow this convention, but articles should obey it at the time they are considered somehow final, i.e. recommended and featured articles. Alas the community prefers compromise to consent, which usually leaves us with an inconsistent mishmash or the worse solution (e.g. for apostrophes and quotation marks or the silly thing of “UK” but “U.S.”).

The decision between “grey” and “gray” doesn’t have to be done by coin if you consider other European languages, in German the color is “grau”. Christoph Päper 12:20, 19 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just for interest, and I couldn't say whether this is a Scottish English convention – or just an even more local thing to the area in which I grew up – but I was always taught that "grey" was the colour (although we were aware that the US spelling was "gray") and that for us "Gray" was the surname. – Kieran T ^(talk) 12:29, 19 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thoughtful and logical

Nice idea. I find oestrogen and encyclopaedia awkward vowel combinations and connexion an unnecessary consonant conversion akin to sox, but otherwise you've got a convert. I wrote something[1] recently for my own site that is somewhat related. --Tysto 01:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, from an etymological point of view, it's not an consonant conversion nor anything like sox. J ɪ m p 07:32, 15 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. Thoughtful but illogical

Good intention, but you have many contradictions in your essay:

You say "defense, offense, pretense : The -se forms are etymologically preferable and reduce the likelihood of misspelling derivatives like defensive, offensive, and pretension."; yet you go on to say "vice : Better reflects the pronunciation". Which is it; -ce to better reflect pronunciation, or -se for etymological preference?

To me, your strangest assertion is this: "licence (n. & v.) and practise (n. & v.) : These homophonous noun/verb pairs should be spelled the same. The -ce form is etymologically preferable in licence, while in practise the -se form is. Drawback: licensure can't conveniently be spelled any other way.". What about licentiate and practical, etc.? Are they now licenciate, practisal?

The forms you label "etymologically preferable" simply ignores the spelling shifts that occurred in the words' untidy etymological past. (In fact, you ignore the Latin word licens completely.) Take the same approach with other words – ignoring whole swathes of history – and you might end up recommending that shirt and skirt are both spelled scirt.

For all the words above, the noun form should end in -ce, the verb form in -se. What could be more logical? Words beginning licenti- have valid etymology in that spelling, so should stand. English is a complex language, and not every "standard" follows such simple logic, however. My suggestion, if you want to see some logical change? Write a few plays and sonnets in your own "standard" spelling. Then maybe someone will take notice.

(For what it's worth, I had similar ideals a while back; but I wanted to dump out as much Latin influence as possible. Maybe a better use of our time would be a study on the shifts and changes in spelling, and how they got to where things are today?) --Rfsmit (talk) 21:45, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, anything would be better than having homophonous nouns and verbs spelled differently. That's frankly insane. As for writing my own plays and sonnets, I'm not a playwright or a poet. But this isn't a plan to completely overhaul English spelling so it's "logical" (an unattainable goal); it's just a plan to eliminate British and American spelling differences in a neutral way, not giving a priori preference to either country's spelling traditions. Words like "licentiate" and "practical" that are spelled the same in both systems would be unaffected by this proposal. —An gr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 21:57, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Surely the purpose of written language is to facilitate communication rather than spelling? If so, then homophonous words with different meanings should be kept - practice/practise, program/programme, analog/analogue, kerb/curb.

Also, your removal of double consonants causes confusion about whether to apply the silent e modifications and would cause some words with different sounds to be spelt the same. –OrangeDog (talk • edits) 21:18, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Revival of Þ and Ð

I just made a userbox for the support of their revival, here it is:

ÆȜÞ

Ðis user feels its only riȝht to revive some or all of ðe former English letters Æ, Ð, Ȝ, Þ, ænd Ƿ.

Use it if you'd like. — ᚹᚩᛞᛖᚾᚻᛖᛚᛗ (talk) 12:24, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cute, but going much further than my proposal here. —An gr 12:39, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I figured "some or all of" should cover just about everyone's range of desired revival. I've seen different levels and combinations, but most often, views do indeed go along with just simply þ and ð. — ᚹᚩᛞᛖᚾᚻᛖᛚᛗ (talk) 03:41, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not even going that far. I'm not suggesting any spellings that are currently nonexistent, I'm just suggesting standardizing one current spelling for each word across all English-speaking countries. Thus, for example, everyone should write either theater or theatre, regardless of what country they're from (my preference is theatre for etymological reasons); but I'm not suggesting anyone should write þeater or þeatre. —An gr 06:29, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just realized you're responding to my little note at the bottom of the page. I had forgotten about writing that! —An gr 06:37, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dhe problem with using þ for dhe unvoiced dental fricative, and ð for dhe voiced is that Old English used dhe two letters interchangeably to represent both sounds. (And Middle English still used þͤ for dhe word dhat Modern English currently spells "the"). I think a better solution is to keep th but use it only for dhe unvoiced sound (as in "bath"), and spell the voiced sound (as in "badhe") with dh --ABehrens (talk) 04:56, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Just use OED spellings

and you can get an OED spellchecker if you use Open Office wordprocessing software. I remember -ize being used in the UK, where I went to school (not too long ago - I left secondary school in 1985) and all of a sudden the change to -ise has become total, in the UK at least, and it strikes me as wrong.Djwebb1969 (talk) 10:49, 22 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Consistency

<Fulfill(ment)> is better than <fulfil(ment)>, because one of the stems is <fill> (just as <skillful> contains <skill>).--91.148.159.4 (talk) 16:51, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm.. I wonder to what extent "fulfill" is synchronically felt to be connected to "fill", especially by people who spell it "fulfil". However, "fulfill" is better because it has greater identity with "fulfilled" and "fulfilling". +An gr 17:04, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I do feel the connection synchronically, but that might be because I'm not a native speaker, and I'm used to other languages that use the same "filling" metaphor for "fulfilment", the same "plenary" metaphor for "completion", etc..--91.148.159.4 (talk) 17:22, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disk/disc

Angr, this is a very interesting essay (but being a stuffed up Brit I cannot agree with it!). However, I think I need to point out that 'disc' is not a verb in British English. 'To disk' (Amer. Spelling) may be a verb in US Eng. (meaning something to do with ploughing), and this will be why the inflected forms appear as 'disking' and 'disked'. The forms *discking and *discked could not exist simply because 'disc' when spelt with a '-c' is British English and is not a verb. --KageTora - (影虎) (A word...?) 13:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't a common verb in any dialect of English, but my (British) Collins English Dictionary does list a verb "to disc" meaning "to work (land) with a disc harrow". Also, even nouns can take the -ed ending when modified, as in the (possibly hypothetical) adjectives "three-disced" and "red-disced". +An gr 15:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You give the American spelling as "disk", which is true in a non-digital context. But "compact disc" is almost always spelled with a "c" in America. For example, the Wikipedia page Compact Disc spells it exclusively with a "c", even though the page later uses the American spelling "center". I suggest that you amend the cell on the American spelling from "disk" to "disk (but compact disc)", analogous to your entry "programme (but computer program)" for the British. 75.183.96.242 (talk) 17:55, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My 2₵

At last, a practical application of optimality theory.

I don't think aluminium belongs here, since it's not solely a difference of spelling, but also one of pronunciation. One might as well resolve the practice/practise difference by changing the verb's pronunciation to [præktaɪz].

Have you no judgement on judgment? I would assume the latter's length wins.

It would be clearer to add a column for each your five criteria; the complaints about your lack of consistency are where you omit mention of the points in the opposite direction.

Some justifications given in the table are not in the list of 5 criteria:

reduce the likelihood of misspelling derivatives
allows a distinction to be made between analyses and analyzes
conformity with adjective molluscan
go with less unusual letter

One point that you don't mention at all is consistency with unrelated words, which would favour -or, -er, and -ise to match error, enter, advertise. Certainly that would reduce spelling errors from the less etymologically aware.

OED's opinions are just Murray's idiosyncrasies; if you accept his judgement on disk, why not on forward vs forwards, or sounding the p in Greek ps- words?

The ranking of your five criteria is odd. Length is pragmatic, while etymology is idealistic. I wonder if you reverse-engineered the ranking to produce your pre-favoured outcome?

jnestorius^(talk) 21:31, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's not quite optimality theory because the criteria don't necessarily consistently have consistent rankings - especially when etymology and letter-count conflict, sometimes etymology wins and sometimes letter-count does. And I didn't mean to imply that OED's opinions are decisive arguments, I just wanted to show that other people more influential than me have thought about these things too. I do favor the shorter spellings of "judgment" and "acknowledgment". But I don't think I arranged the ranking to produce an outcome I favored from the beginning, otherwise I never would have picked British spellings like centre at all! As for Al, what's to stop Americans from spelling it aluminium while pronouncing it /əˈlumɪnəm/? English spelling is certainly insane enough to allow a silent "i" in this word. (By the way, did you intentionally use the symbol for the Ghanaian cedi rather than the symbol for the U.S. cent?) +An gr 21:43, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, my opinion is worth about $1.40 at current rates. OK, I assumed ₳ ฿ ₵ ¢ ₡ ₢ $ ₫ ₯ € ₠ ₣ ƒ ₴ ₭ ₤ ℳ ₥ ₦ № ₧ ₰ £ ៛ ₨ ₪ ৳ ₮ ₩ ¥ would give the US symbol priority. But now I see it's sorted by currency name rather than just glyph resemblance. Another crucial decision to fret over. jnestorius^(talk) 22:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Snubbing the competition

Nice try, but a century too late, Angr. We Canadians have already completed this project, successfully, and the results have been stable for decades. And we're polite, so we won't tell you how we really feel about your totally ignoring the third variety of English spelling. Cheers. —Michael Z. 2010-03-15 22:31 z

Can you give me a single example of a Canadian spelling that is not either an American spelling or a British spelling? American spelling and British spelling have each been stable for decades too. The point is not to favor one country's traditional spelling (whether US, UK, or Canada) but to find a compromise that leaves all sides equally unhappy. +An gr 22:49, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with Mjazac here, your lumping of Canadian in with "Commonwealth" doesn't work, we're not like British or Australian or Indian spellings.......no one spelling no, but specific differences like our use of -re on the one hand and of -ize on the other. The polarity between UK and US spellings is also an issue for us in commercial spellcheckers and autocorrects, it doesn't represent reality at all. We also distinguish between the use of "program" and "programme" in various ways, same with "disk" and "disc"....and we definitely don't use "kerb" or "tyre".Skookum1 (talk) 06:27, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Where do I lump Canadian in with "Commonwealth"? Canadian spelling isn't even mentioned in the proposal. I know perfectly well that Canadian spelling sometimes follows British spelling and sometimes American spelling. Angr (talk) 20:27, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Canada is one of the leading countries in the Commonwealth, and is the largest of the "white" ex-colonies (unless South Africa is back in now, I'm not sure if they are). And I'm not sure at all that Australians and NZers use "kerb" or "tyre", either, but I don't think they do. Hard to say in Jamaica, the Bahamas, Belize, Kenya etc. Indian English is its whole separate thing. I was head of the wordprocessing pool for a World Bank conference, we had over 100 styleguides for different forms of English that were to be used in each country's documents, there's no consistency in the Commonwealth; even Singapore has a different official English from Malaysia; and non-Commonwealth countries, e.g. the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam etc all have differences in their official English usage (even when English is not an official language, each country has its own orthographic system for using English). Your table as it sits now should just read "UK and Eire" (if Ireland does have the same system, not sure about that).Skookum1 (talk) 02:04, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's why it says "British/Commonwealth spelling". Some spellings are just British, others are found throughout the Commonwealth (or rather a subset of the Commonwealth, since Mozambique doesn't really have an established system of spelling English). Angr (talk) 15:31, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Judgment/judgement and acknowledgment/acknowledgement

You said above that you prefer the shorter (American) spellings. As a writer of American English, I've always cringed whenever I've had to write them this way; I prefer the British spellings, which conform better to pronunciation. So I think that conformity to pronunciation ought to be higher in your ranking of criteria. 75.183.96.242 (talk) 17:42, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Analog/analogue etc.

You list the American spellings as analog, catalog, dialog, demagog, pedagog, monolog, homolog. But my American English dictionary (Random House Webster's College Dictionary) in every case gives both spellings, and with the exception of catalog it lists the longer spelling (with "...gue") first, implying that it is the preferred spelling. I suggest you put both spellings in the American English cell. 75.183.96.242 (talk) 18:07, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

comment ter vs tre

Hi, Loved your essay. I have had some thoughts in this direction my self. My goal was not only to unify English spelling, but to make it more consistent and easier. I like the ideas you have here as beginning that.

I do have one thing I'd like to comment on: ter vs tre. As in center vs centre. Everytime I see tre I want to pronounce the "lettres" in the order they appear. :-) As used in outré. So I end up with sen-tray for centre and sen-ter for center. I agree it would be better to have just one unified way to spell the "r" sound. I understand your point about etymology, but I'm seeing eventual confusion of people over centres and lettres, bettres, wettres (letters, betters, wetters ). There are many more words that end in er in Commonwealth English, (CE) than ones that end in "re". Its a smaller change to have all words with the "r" sound at the end in "er" form, then changing them all to the "re" form. This reflects the idea that simpler, more internally consistent spelling is best, and it still provides a path to the Unified spelling that is your goal. Jjk (talk) 17:48, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

P.S - have you seen Mark Twain's ideas for fixing English Spelling? http://web.archive.org/web/20030629161605/http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/simple.html. Funny and True!

I think it's just a matter of what you're used to. You're not used to centre, so it looks wrong and tempts you to pronounce it wrong. But I bet you don't have any parallel temptation for words like bottle and candle. I don't know why Noah Webster didn't change those to bottel and candel, but he didn't. And Americans are used to massacre and ogre, so we can get used to centre and theatre (both of which are often used in America already, in an attempt to look more sophistimacated). Angr (talk) 18:17, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I do agree that "This looks funny" is not enough of a reason to prefer one spelling or another. However, the American spelling of words like "center" and "theater" is more consistent with the way those words are pronounced in all varieties of English. Yes, one can argue that they're closer to the root, but how does that help? Why is the past better than the present for the purpose at hand?

"Well things ought to work this way" and "it really looks like this should work" aren't sufficient reasons either. It's like that whole silly debate about British punctuation being "more logical" than U.S. punctuation. Unless one set of rules facilitates reading comprehension better than the other, then neither is more or less logical. The point of writing is to communicate with a reader. Is either spelling easier to read, more fluid, more expressive, or in any way more useful in practice? Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:14, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the American spellings are really closer to the pronunciation. The words end in a single sound ([ɚ] in a rhotic accent; [ə] in a non-rhotic accent), so it doesn't really matter which order you put the two letters in when you're spelling a single sound. And even American English uses -re in words like ogre and massacre. Not to mention using -le for [l̩] in words like middle (why didn't Noah Webster change that to middel?). Centre and theatre are more convenient because of central and theatrical - you just have to drop the final silent e and then add the suffix, something you have to do all the time in English anyway. Using the American spelling you have to remove a letter from the middle of the word before adding the suffix. Angr (talk) 21:54, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Um, in "center," the schwa sound occurs and then the R sound occurs. They don't occur at the same time. So yes, the -ter sound is closer to the pronunciation than the -tre spelling.

Yes, I did read your "ogre," "massacre," and "middle" examples from your previous post. But why add more non-phonetic spelling?

As for "central," the reader has to remove the e from center/centre no matter which spelling is used. It's not "centeral" or "centreal." Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:22, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there's an r sound that follows the schwa sound. There's one single r-colored schwa sound. In centre → central you only have to remove the e from the end of the word, not from the middle. And there are lots of words where you have to remove a silent word-final e before adding a suffix, but hardly any where you have to remove an e from the middle of the word before adding a suffix. Angr (talk) 23:39, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

People must speak differently where you are from, then. The schwa sound might remind you of an r, but take a recording of the word and cut off the end, and you have cen-tuh without an r sound. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:59, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Same's true of "bottle", but no-one spells it *bottel. — kwami (talk) 06:30, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

moved from user talk

[didn't see all these comments before making mine. moving them here.]

for counselor, etc, maybe another reason: doubling the el is done in other words to indicate the preceding short vowel is stressed, which this one is not. but calliper should retain the double el for just that reason.

british usage is split on -ize, so commonwealth spelling is -ise/-ize.

storey would be nice to dab a homonym, but AFAICT is minority commonwealth usage.

connexion - not parallel to connect?

you say vice better reflects the pron. but then wouldn't practice as well?

is the verb 'cosy up to' in the US? anyway, no-one spells it *nozy.

no etym. exception for moustache?

My spell checker is constantly correcting my mixed English, so I have it memorize UK spellings I use. Bit of an annoyance for those who follow me on WP, though.

— kwami (talk) 08:23, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

story and storey are said to have the same etymology anyway, so why distinguish the spellings? Good point about connection, though. Caliper can fall under trisyllabic shortening. Mustache is from μύσταξ, which is no better represented by moustache, and I'm not about to start spelling it mystache. Angr (talk) 20:58, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

moustache is just a french loan; some people still even pronounce it that way, so IMO a french spelling is reasonable. (and odd to revert to the u but not to the x)

the etym of storey is so obscure that's hardly a good reason, IMO. lots of cognates have diverged to the point of being unrecognizable. but i think the storey spelling is problematic because it's not established anywhere.

i might start adopting some more of these that i agree with. but i see no reason to use ae, oe just because a word is technical: that just makes technical vocab less accessible, which IMO is not s.t. we want to encourage in a society concerned about scientific literacy.

-gram (under ax, caliper) is pref for the same kinds of reasons as -og: diagram is never -gramme, program would have alt tech spelling, usage is split in UK for some words, etc.

mollusc matches the pron of molluscigerous [s], but has the 'sceptic' prob w molluscicide [sk]. and those are such important words.

might want to add cue / queue — kwami (talk) 23:15, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

cue/queue isn't a US/UK difference. Both spellings are used in both countries, with different meanings. See wikt:cue and wikt:queue. Angr (talk) 23:40, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Drawback: licensure can't conveniently be spelled any other way." Ibid "practicable". — kwami (talk) 20:01, 5 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks

This is an excellent, thought-provoking read. It's sad that I can't see such a reform (even if not this specific one) ever being adopted; but at the same time I can anticipate, with some degree of hope, a change in attitudes that would allow it to happen. A few thoughts:

-ize has the upper hand, having being perfectly usual in the UK. It has, I believe, been in decline there (and most certainly is here in Australia), and I believe the reason is reaction against Americanisation of spellings, by people who don't realise it isn't actually an American innovation.
It's too late for -xion. That's already all but unified, and -ction won the fight.
On the other hand, while some of the ae/oe spellings (medieval, homeopathy) are moribund in the Commonwealth, I'd back an effort to save them, if only for consistency with those still fighting! (And to stop bad jokes and confusion around pedometer/pedophile. On that note, you list pedagogue in the -ogue section, but what about paedagogue? Or *paedagog?)
I'd prefer to see story and storey remain (Cth)/become (US) separate. (Yes, it's alive and well in Commonwealth spellings.) Etymologically they might be akin, but that connection has been all but lost, and "fewer homophones" ought to be a goal of at least secondary concern! Likewise, why not keep tyre? Its etymology is (at least according to Wiktionary) obscure anyway.
I was going to argue for kerb on similar grounds, but then I realised that not only is it curb etymologically, but the senses aren't very far apart at all. (Also, User:Skookum1 is wrong. We Aussies, and our NZ neighbours, definitely use kerb and tyre.)
User:Rfsmit has a point about license and Latin licens, plus going that way solves the licensure problem.

-- Perey (talk) 14:30, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Love it

As an American, I'd adopt these in a heartbeat if the rest of the English-speaking world would do so, as well. I'd even throw in the metric system for good measure (yes, I'm aware it's already the legally prescribed system on a federal basis). Now if we could only move forward on US/Canada unification.... (topic for another day) White Whirlwind 咨 04:01, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Kerb/Curb

Curb is a verb. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:14, 27 November 2016 (UTC).[reply]

-Ize is not etymological

The table states that -ize is closer to the etymological source, except in recognise. This is false; the etymological source, either from Latin or Greek, is always -ise. SpikeballUnion (talk) 22:20, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Userbox

Have created a userbox displaying general support for this proposal at User:UBX/Unified English Spelling. White Whirlwind 咨 07:39, 24 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Licensure drawback

So why not make it license (n. and v.)? S is a more reasonable spelling than "soft c" for the /s/ sound anyway. Double sharp (talk) 21:03, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Connexion etc

As a Brit, I can tell you this spelling is almost never used - it's really a relic of the older education system and few people would recognise it as an "alternate spelling" rather than simply wrong nowadays. Stan traynor (talk) 10:08, 10 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Cosy | Cozy

In UK and US English, the word ends in the sound /zi/ making the “cozy” spelling preferable assuming the sound is a factor. 98.109.207.142 (talk) 22:47, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Counterproposal: Rename en-US to Yanklish

Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are—to my knowledge—mutually intelligible, as are Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian. Ergo, just rename America's bastardised variation of English to something more appropriate: Yanklish (yk can be used as an IETF language tag). Tell Canada to pick a side already (either Yanklish or English, but not "bolth"), and make usage of the term "British English" ~~punishable by death~~ (okay, that's probably taking it too far 😉).

In all seriousness, English is—by its very nature—inimical to consistency and sanity. Any attempt to reform the language will only splinter it further, because nothing about English phonetics makes a lick of sense (we have "c", "k", "q", and "s", for example, and silent letters everywhere). (Also, no self-respecting and educated member of the Commonwealth is gonna choose US orthography over their own country's, and vice versa).
</unhinged-rant>
Alhadis (talk) 23:01, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]