[HN Gopher] BritCSS: Fixes CSS to use non-American English
___________________________________________________________________
BritCSS: Fixes CSS to use non-American English
Author : OuterVale
Score : 136 points
Date : 2025-02-21 00:15 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| earthtograndma wrote:
| "Fixes"
| bradrn wrote:
| Yes, fixes.
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| No, it sorts it.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Sorts it, right proper.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| CSS it, say it, sorted.
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| Does it support 'grey'
| jsheard wrote:
| No need, vanilla CSS already accepts either spelling.
| kibwen wrote:
| Obliged to point out that "color" is how it's spelled in Latin,
| Old French, and therefore post-Norman English, that the
| superfluous "u" was added later by the English aristocracy
| because they were jealous of how fancy the newly-respelled French
| looked.
| troad wrote:
| Obliged to point out that spelling is always an entirely
| cultural artefact, and that before colour was spelt color, it
| was spelt colos. There's nothing more correct about older
| forms, or newer forms, or any other forms. What matters is what
| is going to be clearest to your speech community and audience.
| FlamingMoe wrote:
| However, that is not the perspective of the creator of
| BritCSS, who refers to current CSS property names as
| "bastardised" spellings.
| troad wrote:
| S/he's wrong, simple as that. "The particular spatio-
| temporal version of speech that _I_ grew up with is
| correct, and all others are bastardised " is not a
| defensible or - frankly - interesting position. Chaucer
| would find virtually all modern English to be debased; Bede
| would wince at Chaucer's English; and so on, forever.
|
| Nothing fruitful comes from cultivating arrogance towards
| the language of others. It is just as much a cherished part
| of their cultural inheritance as yours is to you.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| It's a joke.
| ruined wrote:
| your wrong
| TrnsltLife wrote:
| Is that like "my bad"?
| LuciOfStars wrote:
| I find it ironic that you're making an argument about how
| language evolves in the same sentence that you insist on
| an awkward "s/he" instead of just using a singular "they"
| (or if you're Richard Stallman, whatever neopronoun he
| fancies, I forgot what it is)
| brailsafe wrote:
| I mean, wouldn't the U.S as a nation essentially be a
| bastard child of Britain, and thusly use a bastardized
| English?
| defrost wrote:
| The colonies were acknowledged as the offspring of
| Britain .. the United States of America is more of a
| chosen fraternity of the emancipated offspring after they
| fled the control of their former legal guardians.
| rikroots wrote:
| Strangely, it's the insular dialects across Britain that
| have become more bastardised over time. The North
| American English dialects are far more conservative when
| it comes to evolution. As this BBC article[1] says:
| "[...] although there are plenty of variations, modern
| American pronunciation is generally more akin to at least
| the 18th-Century British kind than modern British
| pronunciation. Shakespearean English, this isn't. But the
| English of Samuel Johnson and Daniel Defoe? We're getting
| a bit warmer."
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20180207-how-
| americans...
| genewitch wrote:
| I've heard more specifically the southern US dialect is
| probably closest. Not sure how deep or dirty in the
| south. I have about as hard a time understanding people
| with the US South accent as UK accents.
| nickt wrote:
| Wouldn't that be Fitzenglish?
| ChrisRR wrote:
| It's fair to assume that if a brit writes something online,
| it's highly likely to be a piss take joke. We just don't
| waste our time writing /s on the end of every sentence
| GJim wrote:
| It must be said that the Americans are rather well known
| for an inability to spot the satire and sarcasm that
| pervades our conversation here in Blighty!
| matthewowen wrote:
| yeah, but IME (as a british person) a lot of british
| people _do_ actually see it that way.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The transition in spelling from "colos" to "color" did not
| have anything with culture, but it has correctly reflected a
| change in the pronunciation of the word.
|
| English is one of few languages where the relationship
| between the writing and the pronunciation of the vowels is
| mostly unpredictable, so knowing whether a word is spelled
| with "o" or with "ou" does not help you to know how to
| pronounce it.
|
| So for the case of English, you are right that spelling is a
| cultural artefact, but not for the case of most languages,
| including Latin.
|
| The oscillations in the spelling of Old French were caused by
| the fact that French had acquired some vowels that did not
| exist in Latin, e.g. front rounded vowels, so the French
| speakers did not know what Latin letters should be used to
| write them, and there existed no standardizing institution to
| choose some official spelling.
| troad wrote:
| Spelling is in every case a cultural artefact, even for
| languages more phonetic than English. Such an orthography
| still needs to make choices about what distinctions to
| reflect in writing (e.g. should the orthography reflect
| regular and predictable allophony? voicing assimilation?
| final obstruent devoicing?) and there's no correct answer
| to this, there are only various trade-offs.
|
| Colos to color was indeed part of a common sound change in
| early Latin (e.g. floses > flores), and led to new
| spelling, but many later substantive changes in Latin did
| not lead to any changes in spelling (e.g. the
| palatalisation of /k/ before front vowels). Similarly,
| English spelling used to change regularly to reflect
| changes in pronunciation, until Middle English, when it
| suddenly stopped and became largely fixed. And yet other
| languages continued to evolve orthographically after that
| point (e.g. major Czech spelling reforms in the 19th
| century). Why?
|
| All of this is entirely cultural. In certain societies and
| at certain times, language users will prefer phonetic
| spellings, and in other societies and at other times they
| will prefer etymological ones. Sometimes spellings can
| evolve dramatically in a short span of time, at other times
| they seem eternal and utterly immovable. Language is deeply
| cultural.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The spelling of a word is one thing, the writing system
| of a language is another thing.
|
| Of course, the writing system of each language is a
| cultural artefact, which differs from the writing systems
| of other languages for various historical reasons.
|
| On the other hand, for most languages the spelling of a
| word is determined by uniform rules, which are the same
| for most words, with the possible exception of a small
| number of words, typically recent loanwords from other
| languages.
|
| In such languages for most words the spelling is not a
| "cultural artefact", but it is determined by the rules of
| the writing system, which have nothing to do with that
| individual word.
|
| Few if any languages have, like English, words that come
| from a great multitude of sources, where each source had
| different spelling rules, so that now, when seeing a
| written word, one cannot guess which spelling rules have
| been applied to it, unless one knows the history of that
| individual word.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| How are spelling rules anything other than a cultural
| artefact? They are invented by a person or group of
| people and then agreed upon and implemented by a larger
| group. Then the rules are obeyed or not on a case by case
| basis by an even larger group of people. Arguably
| language itself is not a cultural artefact. But
| distinctions between languages and all attempts to
| describe or prescribe their use are.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > English is one of few languages where the relationship
| between the writing and the pronunciation of the vowels is
| mostly unpredictable, so knowing whether a word is spelled
| with "o" or with "ou" does not help you to know how to
| pronounce it.
|
| That is true, but it's a trade-off made for other benefits.
| Why is there a silent "g" in "sign"? Because it provides
| semantic meaning - it preserves its connection to works
| like signatory, signature, significant, signal, etc. While
| English spelling doesn't always help you pronounce the
| word, it does help you identify its meaning. If it was
| spelled "sine" or "sin" (if you choose to also do away with
| silent "e"s in your spelling reform) that connection would
| be weakened or lost.
|
| Also, this has a lot to do with the pronunciation of words
| changing over time and drifting out of sync with the
| spelling, but the spelling not changing to match the new
| pronunciation in order to preserve the aforementioned
| connection with similar words.
|
| I don't know if the "g" in "sign" was pronounced at some
| point, but other silent letters today exist because the
| Norman scribes used them to indicate sounds that were in
| fact pronounced by the Anglo-Saxons at the time, such as
| the oft-maligned "ough" - a sound which has pretty much
| entirely disappeared from modern English (but as I
| understand can still be found in an extant distant
| relative: Dutch).
| genewitch wrote:
| Does the dutch phrase "Acht en tachtig kleine kacheltje"
| contain a few "ough"? I am trying to figure out if your
| "ough" is like "ach", "och" or cough, rough, plough
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Another fun fact... almost all "American spelling" came from
| Britain, i.e. variants that died out in Old Blighty in the
| 1800s. Accent as well. For the most part, they were the ones
| that changed!
|
| There's more--the -ize spelling comes directly from the old
| Greek spelling. -ise and -re were forced-on/taken from French.
| The British like to taunt the French, but apparently have
| forgotten about the spelling thing, and criticize Americans
| (unknowingly) for not doing the same.
|
| In short, don't take any crap from Brits on the subject, haha.
| Most of my chats with them happened during my backpacking days,
| before Wikipedia and so I was not able to explain at the time.
| I believed it too with no other information.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_s...
| mathieuh wrote:
| It's a common misconception that American accents have
| changed less than British accents. Both accents have changed.
| There's a pretty obvious example that American accents have
| changed in the fact that many American accents have vowel
| mergers that result in pronunciation mergers of syllables
| with different spellings that aren't merged in non-American
| accents. Wikipedia gives the example odd-facade-thawed, which
| all rhyme in most American accents but which have completely
| different sounds in non-American accents.
|
| Likewise some American accents have lost the distinction
| between the vowels in marry-Mary-merry, or merge the vowels
| in pin-pen.
|
| If American accents had changed less then why would they
| continue to use spellings that no longer match pronunciation
| in their own accents but which do match in many non-American
| accents?
|
| The reality is that both accent groups have diverged.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| There are folks that do Shakespeare in the original accent,
| and it sounds modestly closer to the "average" American
| pronunciation than modern British.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_in_Original_Pronu
| n...
|
| Believe I saw a video on it on youtube or similar, where
| they have audio as well.
| amenhotep wrote:
| Presumably you're implying an average over British
| pronunciation also, but if you ask me that's even more of
| a leap than over the American.
|
| Like the other chap said, it basically sounds like a West
| Country accent.
| 0tfoaij wrote:
| The idea that American spelling and pronunciation have a
| better heritage than British English is a compelling one,
| especially as the idea that Southern and Appalachian accents
| are closer to those of the Founding Fathers and Shakespearean
| English is a nice balance to the perception that these
| accents sound unintelligent and uneducated, but it's simply
| not true that one dialect has diverged more than another -
| both have diverged and in many cases substantially.
|
| One of the common reasons given is that British accents like
| RP (there's a lot to criticise about RP but that's another
| topic), Cockney (featured elsewhere on the thread and the
| internet in general, oi m8 you got a loicence for that?), and
| general loss of rhoticity in BrE (and some AmE) accents that
| are most represented in American media have diverged
| substantially, but to me the examples of Shakespearean
| English in classic pronunciation sound closer to the West
| Country accents than they do any American accent. Note that
| there could be some bias here as the speakers are British,
| but you get features like H-dropping which simply don't exist
| in AmE. It also wouldn't be fair to say any modern accent
| sounds even remotely close to this.
|
| Shakespearean English:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYiYd9RcK5M
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s
|
| Some good reddit threads on the matter:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9ju72b/is_th.
| ..
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/j3imwe/is_it_t.
| ..
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/9oke84/is_.
| ..
|
| Another weird one is spelling, given that etymology and
| spelling is pretty interesting in general, at least up until
| the advent of the printing press. Both BrE and AmE have made
| some questionable decisions here. BrE standardised earlier
| and kept some Frenchisms like -ise (the OED maintains that
| -ize is correct with -ise being valid) but this was likely
| because -ise is correct for some words like advertise, or
| prise (which AmE dropped entirely for pry, and weirdly took
| up burglarize) and universal -ise makes spelling easier. In
| some cases it's just because words/pronunciations came much
| later from French in BrE whereas they came from Spanish and
| Italian in AmE. American spelling on the other hand was
| intentionally simplified, and although the spelling reform
| Webster wanted never truly happened (if it did you'd be
| speaking the American languaj) it did lead to the dropping of
| -our for -or, -re for -er, -oe for -e, etc.
|
| I'm biased but I do prefer the etymological spelling, even if
| it means that we do say lieutenant differently.
| gizajob wrote:
| "Better heritage" lol. Hardly.
| nine_k wrote:
| It's additionally funny that in French, "ou" reads as [u], that
| is, approximately like the wovel in "fool" (cf "jour", "amour",
| "troubadour", etc). I wonder if it was actually pronounced like
| "coloor" at any time in the past.
| card_zero wrote:
| Yes! Wiktionary gives one such Middle English pronunciation
| here:
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/colour#Middle_English
|
| The second vowel, /u:/, is like in "true". (Note also the
| range of alternate spellings: colur, color, culur, coler,
| coloure, kolour.)
| 0tfoaij wrote:
| Obliged to point out that Latin -or words were often spelled
| with -or, -our, and -ur in Old French also. If you are using
| Wiktionary as a source you have to click through to the Old
| French definitions to see the alternate forms, as well as
| parsing the descendant table to see the derived forms that the
| simple etymology blurb often leaves out. Doing so you can also
| see that Middle Dutch has 'coleur' (modern kleur) which very
| likely did not originate from Middle French given the
| timeframe.
|
| The earliest quotations for colour in the Oxford English
| Dictionary are from around 1300 where it was spelled 'colur'
| (cf Welsh) which while being post-Norman England is not post-
| Norman English. For Norman/Angevin-England the OED also has a
| quotation for honour as 'onur' listed as before 1200 (and again
| as 'onour' from around 1300). If you want to make a case of
| superfluous 'u's being added a better example would be
| something like chancellor, where the 'u' was added in Middle
| English and then later removed, rather than colour (or honour)
| where the 'u's have existed since the earliest quotations. The
| reason color and honor stuck about in English is most likely
| because that is how they were spelled in Latin.
| timeon wrote:
| However I think that when Americans brought it back they missed
| opportunity to get rid of 'c' and put 'k' there instead. Is 'c'
| even used in English language? It usually is just 'k' or 's'.
| atypicaluser wrote:
| Usually, but not always. Here you go--'cinch'. Could replace
| the first 'c' with s, but the second instance would be a
| little more difficult, as 'sh' has a softer pronunciation
| than 'ch' here, which itself is not as hard as 'j' (emoji) or
| 'ge' (rage).
| timeon wrote:
| Hmm yes I forgot about c case.
| cguess wrote:
| Webster and a few other folks tried. It just didn't stick.
| Tagbert wrote:
| In Old English, 'c' was always hard and the soft sound used
| 's'. 'K' was not used or at least not common. We got the
| mixed up 'c' sounds with the Norman French influence.
| gizajob wrote:
| How does modern French spell it?
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| This creates a second language where two dialects that have minor
| differences meaning stackoverflow code won't always work, nor
| will code you extract from other websites. This creates a mess,
| all while adding a JavaScript pre-processor that is prone to have
| errors, vulnerabilities and other flaws from the NPM hellscape.
| No thanks.
| mattl wrote:
| I mean, yes but this is also a joke.
| jsheard wrote:
| HTTP had the right idea, just get the spelling completely wrong
| so everyone gets equally pissed off.
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Re...
| sebmellen wrote:
| Hilarious. I feel like referer looks correct now, having seen
| it so often.
| jsheard wrote:
| Except now there's also the "Referrer-Policy" header, which
| is spelled correctly. I wonder if the spec committee debated
| calling it Referer-Policy for consistency.
| k1t wrote:
| Personally, I would have, since it refers to the Referer
| header it seems like it should follow the same spelling.
|
| It would be like CSS having a "color" attribute, but then
| doing something like "default-colour".
| dullcrisp wrote:
| It's actually more like CSS having a "colr" attribute and
| then doing something like "default-color".
| k1t wrote:
| I think that depends on whether or not you consider
| 'color' to be the correct spelling? :)
| bogdan wrote:
| Guess you're not British then :)
| varun_ch wrote:
| Exactly, a Referer on the web is its own thing now.
| Referrer should be considered a typo if you're referring
| to the Referer header.
| tyleo wrote:
| They are paving a way to release a third spelling in the
| next update :p
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| If they just spelled it Refera, they could save another
| byte.
| bdhcuidbebe wrote:
| Reefa
| makeworld wrote:
| Canadian friendly!
| h4ny wrote:
| > Fixes CSS to use non-bastardised spellings
|
| The last thing I need a tool to do is to spread divisiveness.
| _ZeD_ wrote:
| Then learn to speak proper English!
| kennysoona wrote:
| We prefer 'Free' English over your King's English, thank you
| very much.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Not the best day for Americans to chide others about having
| a king.
| kennysoona wrote:
| Ouch! Only because the truth hurts :(
| lenerdenator wrote:
| 1. All of this could have been avoided but for the want of some
| MPs for some colonies. But no.
|
| 2. "License: Not Specified" instead of "Licence: Not Specified"
| int_19h wrote:
| Speaking as a non-native English speaker, I'm not sure how I
| feel about American imperialism replacing British imperialism
| in general, but as far as English spelling and phonology goes,
| god bless America.
| yourpants wrote:
| Speaking as a non-native English speaker, I'm not sure how I
| feel about American imperialism replacing British imperialism
| in general, but as far as English spelling and phonology
| goes, umm... God save the king? Oh dear no... What am I
| saying!?
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| Both British and American English spellings are objectively
| incorrect. The only reason anyone believes them to be correct
| is that teachers in both countries have joined a cabal to
| play a mass prank on their pupils. Any second now, they will
| reveal that it was all just a big joke.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Are you trying to tell me that the British gentleman Sir Tim
| Berners-Lee misspelled all these things when they went into the
| spec that CSS was based from?
|
| \s (sort of)
| bdhcuidbebe wrote:
| Tim?
|
| CSS was created by Hakon Wium Lie (norwegian) and Bert Bos
| (dutch).
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Before CSS, HTML tags had color attributes, not colour
| attributes.
| Lammy wrote:
| Where's the LOICENCE.md? Is it MIT? If only there were an Oxford
| License.
|
| e: speling correction ;)
| brudgers wrote:
| There is BSD and Berkley was an English philosopher...but
| ironically only if the external world exists.
| keane wrote:
| Anglo-Irish, born in Kilkenny, Ireland.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| It's "licence" with a C in British English.
| Lammy wrote:
| Fixed, thanks!
| ChrisRR wrote:
| And then a LAHHSUNSE.md for US readers.
| pvdebbe wrote:
| Why does the author use `initialize` for a function name in the
| source code? I question their purity of intentions!
| com wrote:
| Filthy non-OED user. The author is probably a Cambridge
| dictionary person!
|
| Seriously, -ize endings in the Cambridge spelling tradition
| relies on you knowing the etymology of the word, and if it's
| from the Ancient Greek, that's the one you use. Otherwise -ise
| for French or Latin words.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Isn't this the Oxford way? I'm not sure what Cambridge does.
| defrost wrote:
| It is indeed the Oxford way to be unsure what Cambridge
| does.
| yujzgzc wrote:
| I believe that some people's actual full-time job is to translate
| software from US English to British English. I wonder what that
| job feels like after the thousandth time you've replaced color
| with colour and neighbor with neighbour
| skipnup wrote:
| Correcting the number/date formatting will probably be the more
| challenging, yet still boring, Job, I guess.
| _blk wrote:
| The AI revolution will take care of that job
| yourpants wrote:
| Will it? Even when told to specifically use correct British
| English, LLMs make occasional mistakes and also get too eager
| and use it in code like CSS. With careful prompting, you can
| probably get pretty decent results with Claude or ChatGPT but
| it isn't perfect yet. I'm afraid that America has won another
| battle in this war.
| drwoland wrote:
| As a programmer working in the UK I've never been asked to
| rewrite something into British English. I have been instructed
| to convert some old codebase to American spellings to "avoid
| confusion". Probably about 6 times in 20 years of professional
| programming and usually by some product manager based in San
| Jose following an acquisition. This is why the library exists I
| expect.
| drwoland wrote:
| To be clear, I don't think the library would actually be used
| to accomplish this task. Rather I suspect a tounge in cheek
| reaction to years of tedious spelling adjustment disguised as
| urgent feature requests.
| rikroots wrote:
| I've been dodging requests to "fix" British date formats in
| published articles to meet US reader expectations for a while
| now ...
| GJim wrote:
| Don't get me started on US calendars that have the weeks
| beginning on Sunday instead of Monday!
| Benanov wrote:
| YYYY-MM-DD should aggravate everyone equally, switch to
| that
| ChrisRR wrote:
| That's localisation
| yieldcrv wrote:
| bit mental that they didnt release this on chewsday
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Or toosday for the US
| kennysoona wrote:
| Kind of funny the animus the author has against US spellings.
| It's nothing but shade to refer to US spellings as 'simplified'
| and UK spellings as 'traditional', regardless of the merit of the
| argument for doing so.
|
| I can't imagine anyone will really need to use this, but it seems
| to have let the author work out some issues.
| _nivlac_ wrote:
| I think it's a play on the Chinese language having Traditional/
| Simplified versions. I'm choosing to take this repo as tongue-
| in-cheek, which is hard to really determine online...
| kennysoona wrote:
| I want to see it as tongue-in-cheek as well, but, I feel like
| that's a stretch...what would be the humor in that? But even
| if it doesn't make sense to me, I prefer your interpretation
| of motive.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| Look as a Brit let me reassure that it is a joke. No one
| thinks American English is simpler than British English.
| _blk wrote:
| Arr, only pirrates have trru spellingg LC_ALL=en_PR
| kennysoona wrote:
| I guess ninjas also since they use pirate spelling as well.
| pwdisswordfishz wrote:
| Puerto Rican English? Does it differ that much from mainland
| US variety?
| jasonjei wrote:
| The funny thing about references to Traditional Chinese (HK and
| Taiwan) and Simplified Chinese is that there's even more shade
| in Chinese...
|
| Jian Ti Zi (Jian Ti Zi )Simplified characters
|
| Fan Ti Zi (Fan Ti Zi )Complicated characters
| aragilar wrote:
| Spoken like someone who hasn't had their code fail because they
| spelt words correctly ;)
| kennysoona wrote:
| This comment is perfect for being equal amounts 'lol' and
| 'grrr'.
| gizajob wrote:
| I second that animus.
|
| An example I had to endure in Britain recently was bus adverts
| for an Apple movie starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney called
| "WOLFS". At first I thought I must not be seeing an
| apostrophe... but then... the horror.
|
| For speakers of English (simplified) who can't understand, the
| plural of wolf is wolves.
| brigandish wrote:
| Reading the comments makes me realise that a library for fixing
| the ability (or non-ability, I should say) to recognise (British)
| humour should be next on the list.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| Americans really don't get irony do they.
| jbreckmckye wrote:
| No, but they do get mad
| rob wrote:
| Only if we're served tuna and beans on a "jacket potato."
| jbreckmckye wrote:
| Tuna _or_ beans. Not both, you madman
| LoganDark wrote:
| Socks in sandals my guy.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| At this point it seems we have two separate languages American
| and English and I say it as a non native speaker.
|
| Wach an US movie, then watch a British movie. Compare TV shows,
| compare news articles.
| nprateem wrote:
| Then drop the words fanny and rubber into conversations with
| each for some puzzled expressions.
|
| Ironically, you'd use an American rubber with a British fanny.
| rocky_raccoon wrote:
| Technically, you could use an American rubber with an
| American fanny too.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| I'd say its more of a cultural thing than a language thing
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| I came to highlight the similarities to Spiffing
| (https://github.com/visualidiot/Spiffing) but I note that the
| author already did that.
|
| Always funny to poke a little fun at ourselves.
| nrvn wrote:
| The man who got really pissed off by complete disconnection
| between spelling and pronunciation of words in English was George
| Bernard Shaw. Throughout his life he was an avid critic of the
| latin alphabet that was (and still is) used to represent spoken
| words.
|
| He was so frustrated that shortly before his death in 1950 Shaw
| put the creation of a new alphabet in his will backed by grant in
| aid. And thus the Shavian alphabet was born. Enjoy:
|
| - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet
|
| - https://youtu.be/D66LrlotvCA
| bmn__ wrote:
| Not enjoyable to me. It elevates the pronunciation that Shaw
| used into the status of the one true English and marginalises
| any other spoken variants, dialects all over the globe. This is
| presumptuous and unfair.
|
| How about this (equally unworkable) idea to achieve the goal of
| fixing the disconnect: instead of reforming the spelling,
| reform the pronunciation. Keep the writing as it is, but
| pronounce it to the rules (mostly: the letter/multigraph to
| phoneme map) which you find naturally in the majority of the
| other languages that use the Latin script. One can argue over
| the precise details and exceptions.
|
| The good: it makes English much more regular and amenable to
| learners, all English speakers more or less affected in the
| same way The bad: the change is drastic so that movies from the
| time before reform need subtitles, pronunciation will start
| drifting apart soon and undo the reform efforts quickly
| nrvn wrote:
| While I agree with you I can't imagine reforming the
| pronunciation of - say - "Ought to cough and hiccough through
| the ploughing drought".
| card_zero wrote:
| Who would have thought there were so many tough
| pronunciations, though? They're all weird, but hiccough
| reigns soughreme.
|
| _Edit for thoroughness_
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Absolutely terrible. You should spell everything in American
| English when programming as like it or not the standard in every
| codebase and programming language going to be this. I am British
| but coding is not language, and trying to be clever like this is
| incredibly counterproductive especially in a diverse team. If you
| want British English to be used why shouldn't the German on your
| team be able to use their language for example.
|
| If everyone was just aiming for consistency we would be better
| off than following developer whims. We should aim to get over our
| personal preferences and try to be consistent and that means not
| having an ego about American vs British English.
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| HN. Never change!
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Not every codebase. OpenStreetMap uses British English, for
| example.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| I'm english, my team is english. We use english spelling
| throughout.
|
| I'm not switching to american spelling to appease americans who
| aren't reading my code, in the same way as I'm not programming
| in french either
| andy_ppp wrote:
| So you'd advocate that codebases should be written in the
| locale of the people writing them? What about open source
| projects, should they be dictated by the first language of
| the creator in most cases?
|
| You presumably can't use British English for the standard
| library calls so now you have a mixture of languages which to
| me is pointless and more about the ego of the people writing
| things. I'm just in favour of consistency which unfortunately
| you cannot achieve unless you're wrapping americanised
| standard library calls with true English equivalents.
|
| If you were coming to a codebase that defined American
| English as the standard I'm certain you wouldn't change it.
| Why then when the underlying language makes that choice for
| you do you feel good about ignoring that?
| GJim wrote:
| The belief that _only_ the US 'ian way of doing things is
| correct is curiously prevalent on the other side of the
| pond to a level that borders on arrogance.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| All I'm saying is keep your codebase consistent with the
| language the standard library of the coding language
| you're using. If there was a programming language with
| British spelling without the use of awful hacks I'd be
| fine with that. Unfortunately most languages use American
| English, deviation from this means mixing languages and
| debate, therefore I'd consider it bad practice in almost
| every case.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Why would you assume that the open source project in
| question would be written in US english?
|
| Hell, why assume that the project even be written in
| english at all? There's more non-english speakers in the
| world than english speakers
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Because if you want your project to be well used and
| contributed to you're probably writing it in English. I
| don't see too many French or Arabic or Chinese or British
| English open source projects that have taken off, but I'm
| happy to be proven wrong...
|
| Even large open source projects built in China like Ant
| Design have documentation and interfaces in American
| English because even if you don't like it it's the
| correct decision to not needlessly buck against patterns
| laid down in the programming environment you're working
| in.
| arp242 wrote:
| > So you'd advocate that codebases should be written in the
| locale of the people writing them? What about open source
| projects, should they be dictated by the first language of
| the creator in most cases?
|
| Yes. I'm the one writing the code and I can use whatever
| bloody spelling I damn well prefer. If someone else takes
| over then they're writing the code and they can use
| whatever spelling they want.
|
| Trying to enforce some particular detail like spelling or
| whatnot for all of "open source" is just eyerolling. Use
| what you prefer and leave the rest alone. It's that simple.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| _" So you'd advocate that codebases should be written in
| the locale of the people writing them?"_
|
| That's unavoidable, to some degree. You can be a programmer
| who doesn't speak English particularly well. You can write
| code about a domain that lacks English terms (e.g. you're
| writing code for a government in Norway -- there will be
| words in your code that lack English equivalents).
|
| Why should a team in China spell out everything in English
| if very few (if any) English speakers will ever see that
| code, and if a lot of the people on the team don't speak
| English well? Just because the language has keywords like
| "if" or "function"?
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| TBH most programming languages' alleged "English" is their
| own weird dialect anyway. Take Ruby's "include?" (should be
| includes?, and yes I have read the rationale), for example,
| or the eternal weirdness that is C++ ("deque" ain't no
| country I've ever heard of). If you're going to fixate on
| doing the same as the stdlib then you're just laying down
| rakes in your own path.
| flobosg wrote:
| Why not both?
| https://dplyr.tidyverse.org/reference/summarise.html#:~:text...
| PetitPrince wrote:
| This should be paired with British PHP (
| https://aloneonahill.com/blog/if-php-were-british/ )
| DaveChild wrote:
| I have nothing but good things to say about the author of that
| piece.
| penguin_booze wrote:
| Calling British English (also known as just English) 'non-
| American English' is like calling an original a 'non-duplicate'.
|
| American is basically English with typos, bad grammar, and bad
| style.
| GJim wrote:
| Somebody must be remarkably thin skinned and with a poor sense
| of humour (the kind spelt with a 'U') to have downvoted you!
| card_zero wrote:
| I like and endorse Webster's reforms (-or, -er, -ize). Why
| write the French way? What have the Normans ever done for us?
| Apart from the legal system, chivalry, heraldry, and centuries
| of low-key class warfare.
| cr125rider wrote:
| Well if the British invented something for once they can spell
| that thing with extra letters.
| jampekka wrote:
| English is basically a random mix of half a dozen languages
| with typos, bad grammar and bad style. All of its dialects have
| ridiculous spelling.
| bdhcuidbebe wrote:
| > American is basically English with typos, bad grammar, and
| bad style.
|
| In that sense, english is basically bastardized old norse.
| gizajob wrote:
| Hallelujah
| randlet wrote:
| wx got it right:
| https://docs.wxwidgets.org/3.2/classwx_colour.html
| hk1337 wrote:
| The British Empire ruined the English language.
| bdhcuidbebe wrote:
| Right, so this is a way to bend the world to your will.
|
| The reason css properties have a standardized spelling is not to
| make fun of british spelling, but to have a standard that
| everyone could follow for interopabilitys sake.
|
| If youre such a british language purist that you go this route,
| you will need to port/retrofit this hack to your future projects
| or you will once more have to debug why "colour" doesnt do
| anything in your css declaration.
|
| This is anti progression and a non-solution.
|
| In addition, running this hack on the client side (really, why??)
| has additional downsides as color wont render right until after
| page load.
|
| A solution for this non-issue would be scss preprocessor
| variable, something like this: $colour =
| "color" table { $colour: red; }
|
| TLDR: css is a standard, so learn it and work with it, not
| against it.
| gxonatano wrote:
| Next we need JS and CSS keywords in Esperanto, so that we're not
| privileging English-speaking regions over others.
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