Hands across the sea, part 2

Did you think Part 1 was rather short and ended abruptly? That’s because there wasn’t supposed to be a part 2. I thought I had saved what I had been working on and stepped away from the computer to walk the dog and eat supper and make a list for our firstborn to take with him to the grocery store on Saturday. I intended to come back later and continue with that post, but something unexpected happened that took me by surprise, as unexpected things are wont to do.

I received a comment in my email inbox from Red in Alberta, Canada, on the post that I didn’t think I had published.

Whoa!

Obviously I had clicked on something other than the Save button and that something was obviously the Publish button.

As Gomer Pyle used to say, “Surprise! Surprise!”

When the world hands you a lemon, you do what Ann Landers, the famous advice columnist (British, agony aunt) said to do. You make lemonade.

In this case, making lemonade means acting as if nothing had happened, so I decided to call the first post, which didn’t even have a title, Hands across the sea, part 1.

Welcome to Part 2 of Hands across the sea!

We’ll pick up where we left off.

There are many differences between the two countries (the two countries being the U.K. and the U.S.) in the spelling of words.

I had found some great colored (British, coloured) charts of the major differences between U.K. English and U.S. English, with a few examples of each. You could probably name the families: -ise vs. -ize, -our vs. -or, -re vs. -er, double consonants vs. single consonants (ll vs. l, pp vs, p), oe vs. e, ae vs e, and so forth. They were neat and I wanted to plop them into this post. Now I can't find them. Pity. Or as the French say, C'est dommage.

But I did find a "comprehensive" list of 1,800 words we spell differently. Simply click here if you want to peruse it.

The first word pair I checked for isn't even in the comprehensive list. Whinge and whine. So much for the list's comprehensiveness.

In my exhaustive research (it is to laugh), I discovered the main reason we do things differently. It's all traceable to the dictionaries we base our language on, I mean on which we base our language. Dr. Samuel Johnson's dictionary in England was created in 1755 and Noah Webster's dictionary in the United States was created in 1828. Webster favored what he called "simplifying" the language. Lots of words on both sides of the Atlantic have fallen into disuse, and lots of new words have come along. The Oxford Englsh Dictionary, first published in 1884 and now running to nearly 22,000 pages, is the prime example, but we still hearken back to our 1755 or 1828 preferences when it comes to spelling.

Some new things that come along require the invention of new words, and some new things that come along just combine existing words in ways they never were before, like his husband and her wife.

Another very long post could be made on the different names we have for things, like nappy vs. diaper, lorry vs. truck, loo vs. bathroom, biscuit vs. cookie, chips vs. French Fries. The list goes on and on and on. It could be Part 3, but don't hold your breath. It's been done to death.

Here's a look at the title page of the second edition of Dr. Johnson's dictionary: