Timeline for Is it ok to use "aluminium" in an otherwise American English text?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
18 events
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| Jan 23, 2019 at 16:54 | comment | added | Peter Taylor | Re "The 2/3 part is definitely not in dispute as that's only counting Americans": maybe the numerator of that fraction is not in dispute (beyond a percent or so), but the denominator is a major problem. That's why I mentioned possible discrepancies in the definition of native English speaker between different sources. | |
| Jan 23, 2019 at 16:45 | comment | added | reirab | @PeterTaylor I added the 40% part due to the comments (I agree that that's a little questionable since, while the dialects spoken in the countries mentioned in the comments are closer to AmE than BrE, they're not exactly AmE.) The 2/3 part is definitely not in dispute as that's only counting Americans. I think that stat is useful to demonstrate the false premise implied by the bit of the question that talks about a particular spelling 'only' being used in the U.S. and Canada. | |
| Jan 23, 2019 at 12:28 | comment | added | Peter Taylor | IMO the stats are a distraction from the point. The values are open to doubt and dispute because sources aren't given and global statistics would necessarily be aggregated from many national statistics which might not use the same definitions of English speaker, native English speaker, and American English speaker (if they even try to distinguish between dialects). I think it would improve the answer to remove "in light of the fact that around 40% of all English speakers and over two thirds of all native English speakers worldwide speak the American variety". | |
| Jan 22, 2019 at 22:54 | comment | added | Chappo Hasn't Forgotten | @Acccumulation I've reviewed the remaining comments as a whole, as perhaps there was a case for deleting my first comment. But I don't think it breached the "be nice" rule, there are 5 upvotes for the comment, the stats are useful (and took me some time to compile), and all up I think the comment is better to be retained. If you disagree, I'm comfortable with you flagging it for a mod to independently review. | |
| Jan 22, 2019 at 22:39 | comment | added | Chappo Hasn't Forgotten | @Acccumulation you're late on the scene. It was disingenuous because it was unnecessarily selective by excluding non-native speakers; Reirab & I exchanged additional comments (since deleted as no longer necessary) & came to a happy agreement. I derived the percentage figure and Reirab added it as an edit. I'm pleased that you take the Code of Conduct seriously. However, disingenuous means "not speaking the whole truth", which was a fair comment; if I delete that comment, the stats also get deleted and the rest of the exchange becomes meaningless. | |
| Jan 22, 2019 at 22:19 | comment | added | Acccumulation | @Chappo "It's true that "over two thirds of all native English speakers worldwide speak the American variety", but this is disingenuous, as there are plenty who speak fluent English as their second language" You make no case for how it's "disingenuous", especially since reirab first gave the percentage for all speakers. The term "disingenuous" is arguably a violation of the "be nice" rule. | |
| Jan 22, 2019 at 17:31 | comment | added | JMac | @camerondm9 Canadian generally uses the British spelling rules (or at least that's how they were teaching it like 10 years ago); but aluminum is a bit of the odd one out. We use the "American" spelling for aluminum for some reason. I'm totally okay with that though, since aluminum saves us a syllable while the usual spelling rules have no bearing on that. | |
| Jan 22, 2019 at 6:28 | history | edited | reirab | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 337 characters in body
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| Jan 22, 2019 at 6:22 | comment | added | camerondm9 | @Chappo We would generally think of ourselves as using Canadian English. In some contexts/industries it will be closer to British English, and in others it will be closer to American English, but we have enough unique words, slang, and exceptions to the rules (from mashing the other English variants together) that our English is different from the other variants. See Wikipedia for a list of some of our uniquenesses. | |
| Jan 22, 2019 at 6:04 | comment | added | reirab | @Chappo You're right that less than half of all English speakers use the American dialect, but that doesn't contradict the point in my answer. I was just pointing out that it's kind of silly to dismiss the spellings used by 'only' a large percentage of all English speakers and a strong majority of all native speakers. It would be equally silly to dismiss the British spellings. One should just pick a dialect and then be consistent when writing. | |
| Jan 22, 2019 at 6:01 | comment | added | Chappo Hasn't Forgotten | @camerondm9 thanks, that resolves my ignorance! Out of interest, do Canadians think of themselves as using AmE, or are they more likely to insist that they have their own unique variant (i.e. Canadian English)? Or does it depend on context? | |
| Jan 22, 2019 at 5:20 | comment | added | camerondm9 | @Chappo This isn't exactly the strongest data point, but I'm Canadian and I would spell and pronounce "aluminum" the AmE way. In general, I'd say our pronunciation matches AmE, and our spelling is split somewhat inconsistently between the English variants. | |
| Jan 22, 2019 at 4:59 | comment | added | Chappo Hasn't Forgotten | And the point I'm making is that over half of all English speakers do not use AmE spelling. But let's be specific: Canadians generally use British spelling, so do they spell it "aluminium"? If so, the numbers are even more strongly slanted against the AmE spelling being useful outside of the USA. | |
| Jan 22, 2019 at 4:53 | comment | added | reirab | @Chappo I wasn't saying that over half of all total English speakers speak AmE. I was just saying that it's kind of silly to say 'just' the U.S. and Canada use a particular spelling when that's over two thirds of all native speakers. | |
| Jan 22, 2019 at 2:05 | comment | added | Chappo Hasn't Forgotten | It's a bit harder to work out how many speak AmE. If I count the total English speakers in the main AmE-speaking countries - USA 283 million, Philippines 92m, Canada 30m (though some would argue Canadians speak Canadian English), Mexico 16m, Brazil 11m, others ~12m) I get a total of 445 million. That's still less than half the English speakers worldwide. The USA doesn't (yet) dominate our language ;-) | |
| Jan 22, 2019 at 1:28 | comment | added | Chappo Hasn't Forgotten | It's true that "over two thirds of all native English speakers worldwide speak the American variety", but this is disingenuous, as there are plenty who speak fluent English as their second language. The total number of English speakers globally is 1.18 billion, with (in order) 283 million in the USA, 259 million within the European Union, 125 million in India, 92 million in the Philippines and 79 million in Nigeria. There are more English speakers in Germany (45 million) than in Canada (30 million)! | |
| Jan 21, 2019 at 20:05 | review | First posts | |||
| Jan 21, 2019 at 21:54 | |||||
| Jan 21, 2019 at 20:03 | history | answered | reirab | CC BY-SA 4.0 |