Richard talked about the “-ize” problem which as I observe has been complained about from early in peoples comments. It is interesting no offense but watching English-speaking people talking about English especially in a Chinese person’s eyes (I fortunately avoided typing “in a Chinese people’s eye”). Warning: this post has no point!
I personally love using “ize”, but I admit “ise” catches my attention from time to time in a peculiar way. In my own illusion there are only two English’s, the British one and the American one, although Richard emphasised emphasized that there is no British English at all. High school English education in China proposes what’s known as British by sending all fibers and centers to hell, while Microsoft Word, a software developed by Americans (please allow such superficial recognition), keeps reminding the Chinese-version users by underlining every colourful neighbours. Obviously The MS corp. beats L. G. Alexander who once conquered Chinese English learners with his New Concept English.
The most cynical lesson of New Concept English I remember is situated in a bus. The man was headed for Trafalgar Square, somewhere I don’t know, but the ‘conductor’ (whom for quite a moment I can’t realize is actually the DRIVER) couldn’t change his note. He then asked several passengers for a pound of small notes who appeared to be of noble class and have no small notes. At last two dirty workers had some and helped change the poor one pound note. Then the two workers said something quite cynical to conclude the lesson I don’t remember but sort of “only poor people would have a lot of small notes to help you out”. Wow that’s amazingly cynicism scarcely seen expressed in any other English textbooks. The T Square which seem hard to get to and the cynic workers in the bus gave me the first impression of London.
Obviously “ize” was used throughout the four-volume New Concept English. Therefore I thought alternatively “ise” was American English and was then astonished by the popularity of the British’s “ize” in US contexts where people seldom use colourful fibre, until I read Richard’s post and get the essential point that there was is and will be no ‘ise’ at all, except in some crazily designed softwares (excluding MS Word). Hip Hip Hurray!
God bless those people (esp. some journal’s editors) who still know what I’m talking about even if I use only present tense with colourful fibre in neighbour centre.
Hah. I was wondering what the deal is in China, actually.
Offence, offense, either way none taken.
The whole ize/ise, yse/yze debate often boils down to Greek etymology, which is notoriously difficult to pin down because it uses an entirely different character set. Hence the UK’s RSC’s willingness to have sulf- instead of sulph- there is no F in Greek, after all.
Transliteration between Greek and English—zeta and sigma to ‘zed’ and ’ess’—is quite standard. I’d hardly call that ‘notoriously difficult’.
The problem with f/ph is that fosforus is just plain silly. We may as well hand out doctorates in filosophy (philo pastry anyone—the pastry of love, perhaps).
Richard> … I am a proud doctor in “filosofi” but then again, that is Swedish ;) [you really would need to change both ph:s into f, wouldn’t you?]
Nothing strange about f instead of ph, but then of course it depends on if you focus on “pronouncation should follow spelling” or the other way around. (since I would pronounce ph as p and h, wheras the sound of [ffeh] is only spelled with a f.)
:)
Andrew> Fun to read about your experience! I had the quite opposite experience of -ise and -ize. It is indeed a bit confusing at times.
Yeah, okay, point taken Richard…there’s definitely some issue with words based on lysis though ain’t there?
I could look it up, David ;) but I think it’s because of the root noun:
which is ‘analysis’ for example, not ‘anal’ … ‘is’ becomes ‘e’ in the verb. It’s a clue to the root noun, isn’t it?
Advert/advertisement doesn’t become ‘advertize’, even across the Pond, although you do get ‘merchandize’.
Andrew -
Going on the mention of a pound note in your story, then the conductor is not the driver. Back then, a bus in the UK had two staff members, the driver who… well, drove it, and the conductor, who walked around the back and upstairs of the bus, taking fares, giving tickets and telling off small boys.
You can date the story by the existence of pound notes in London! We still have them in Scotland, but they threw them all into an investment called the millenium plug-hole some time ago in England.
Incidentally, most of us speak English in Scotland. Not British English, or English English. And we used to speak and write our law in Lallans Scots as well. I’m with Richard on calling it by the country it developed in. I wonder if similar arguments can be applied to Cantonese and Mandarin.
Ah righto…I was learnt wrang.