What is the language "British"?

[Anne Wilson]

On Thursday 31 August 2006 04:42, Charles Curley wrote:
>
> I had always thought fuze (as detonator) a Briticism, so I looked it
> up in my copy of Mencken's The American Language (1982, as updated
> with new material by Raven McDavid). According to Mencken, in both
> senses it is a Briticism.
>
> Further, he says that American spelling is gaining ground even in
> Britain, and that even the Overdose of English Dictionary prefers some
> American spellings to English, e.g. ax to axe. He cites the (British)
> Authors' and Printers' Dictionary (1956) as preferring jail and jailer
> over gaol and gaoler, and fuse to fuze.
>
> In a footnote, he refers to the Dictionary of U.S. Army Terms
> (Washington, 1943) as preferring fuze for a detonating device.
>
> That lead me to look it up in the Overdose Of English Dictionary
> (1971), which accepts both spellings for both the detonator and
> bringing together, but doesn't mention the electrical device at
> all. It includes a 1644 use of fuse in the former sense.
>
> On spell checking this email, I found that the aspell dictionary
> doesn't accept fuze as sufficiently American.
>
> Is everyone now thoroughly muddled? Good.

Yup - it sounds to me like one of those words that no-one wants to own :-)  
Rather like the instrument that we call the French Horn.  I think the French 
call it a German Horn, and no doubt the Germans have a different name for it.

Anne
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/attachments/20060831/515169b6/attachment-0001.sig>