A question for non-Americans.

[ishtat]

It really doesnt matter how they spell, no Commonwealth Anglo has had shit to say since before 1914.

Certainly James, American English has tended to dominate for the past 100 years, but consider this:

90 million Indians speak English fluently every day as their first language as do about 30 million Pakistanis and Banglas. A further 300 million speak it as a second language. Your grand, and great- grand children will be speaking sub-continental Indian English if present trends continue. And incidentally they follow English spelling conventions.

 

[tiggerlilly]

Write it your own way

As a Canadian, I've received comments that I frequently misspell the same words, such as colour, flavour, etc. I'm not offended, or embarrassed, but it got me thinking. Is it such a huge thing to give up the spellings favoured in my country for a lack of distraction for American readers.

For the British, certainly it is a different situation. The language variations and diction between the UK and the US is far more extreme.

My question is this. Given the long reach of American media in the world, how many authors are changing their spellings and writing styles to more closely appeal, or go unnoticed, to the American market. Do people do this? I would suggest that dropping 'colour' for 'color' would go unnoticed and is of minor concern to me. On the other hand, I would keep such words a tuque, pickerel, serviette and runners. Since they are not mere spelling variations, to me they colour the language and are valuable because of this.

Thoughts?

Americans are welcome to comment as well (how could I stop you).

I write in British English because that's what I am. As an experiment i wrote the first half of my first novel in US English because it was set in the US and the second half in UK English, then relised too late that my US spelling was a bit off. It does though, I humbly propose work for the dialogue between the two main characters.
Slightly tongue in cheek, I appended a glossary of British slang at the end for any perplexed American readers.

The Devil's Daughters by A P Doyle, available on Amazon and Smashwords


'Lil

 

[RodenAddison]

Just to annoy people further, I'm going to include a temperature in Celsius

It's 28 degrees here today. Shorts and t-shirt weather.

 

[damppanties]

It's 28 degrees here today. Shorts and t-shirt weather.

23 degrees and a fine drizzle here.

 

[CharleyH]

As a Canadian, I've received comments that I frequently misspell the same words, such as colour, flavour, etc. I'm not offended, or embarrassed, but it got me thinking. Is it such a huge thing to give up the spellings favoured in my country for a lack of distraction for American readers.

For the British, certainly it is a different situation. The language variations and diction between the UK and the US is far more extreme.

My question is this. Given the long reach of American media in the world, how many authors are changing their spellings and writing styles to more closely appeal, or go unnoticed, to the American market. Do people do this? I would suggest that dropping 'colour' for 'color' would go unnoticed and is of minor concern to me. On the other hand, I would keep such words a tuque, pickerel, serviette and runners. Since they are not mere spelling variations, to me they colour the language and are valuable because of this.

Thoughts?

Americans are welcome to comment as well (how could I stop you).

I don't think you have to pander to an American audience. I try not to. Many intelligent Americans understand that the rest of the English-speaking world uses UK (or in Canada's case, semi-UK, semi-US) spellings. All European countries learn British English and a lot of Asian and Arab countries, as well. HOWEVER, Americans are the biggest porn buyers, so unless you are writing something akin to "Jane Austin", conceding to the lowest common denominator is the best way to make money.

With this being said... the most important thing is that you need to be coherent and consistent. If you abandon the British/Canadian standard of spelling and start using the American standard, why would you keep on using words that are specific to Canadian/British usage and that an American may not be aware of? Either you go for one standard or for the other.

 

[estragon]

I sent something like the following to a Canadian author for whom I copy edit: "Sorry that I had to purge all your Canadianisms of spelling and diction from the text. If you were writing a story that was set in Canada, or in a neutral setting, of course I would leave the Canadian forms alone. But you set your story in the USA, and so far as I can tell your characters are all USA nationals, so I had to edit to use American forms, in order not to distract the reader."

Hopefully this will not create an international incident.

 

[oggbashan]

I state that I write in British English in my profile.

I have only had one adverse comment on my British language and the next comment rebuked the commentor.

 

[Recidiva]

I sent something like the following to a Canadian author for whom I copy edit: "Sorry that I had to purge all your Canadianisms of spelling and diction from the text. If you were writing a story that was set in Canada, or in a neutral setting, of course I would leave the Canadian forms alone. But you set your story in the USA, and so far as I can tell your characters are all USA nationals, so I had to edit to use American forms, in order not to distract the reader."

Hopefully this will not create an international incident.

In this current political atmosphere the Canadianism cops have been defunded.

 

[jehoram]

It's 28 degrees here today. Shorts and t-shirt weather.

I talked to a friend of mine in Redding, California a few weeks ago. "It's forty degrees," he said. "I never knew it got so damn hot here!" (He's from Austria.)

I edit for a woman who's American but was mostly educated in England, and the spelling and syntax in her first drafts are all over the map. Sometimes she'll use "gray" and "grey" in the same story, so most of what I do is sort out the irregularities. Interestingly, she'd use British spellings in dialog spoken by English people and American spellings in dialog spoken by Americans. She had this idea that it somehow made the dialog more "authentic" but I finally persuaded her that there is no difference in the way "gray" and "grey" are pronounced, and that consistency was the greater virtue. We agreed that since most of her stories take place in the US, we'd go with the American spellings and use British syntax only for dialog spoken by Britishers.

But I'd have no problem with her using entirely British spellings if the premise is that the story's narrator was British. And, of course, if an American should appear as a character in the story, he would say "Do me a favour" rather than "Do me a favor," because that's how the narrator would have spelled it (or should I say ... spelt it?).