Quote:
Originally Posted by Luke King
Yes, but I wonder how common it has been for Americans to see variant spellings before the advent of ebooks. I would imagine, as the US is such a large market, that print books have always appeared in American English regardless of where they were written.
I'd like to know whether this is true or not.
The use of American terms - trunk for boot, pacifier for dummy, fall for autumn, would obviously be silly in a novel set in Australia.
I wonder how long it will be before the Englishes merge into one standard. I suppose that's inevitable. As a child I was taught to spell program, programme, but the Australian English has now dropped the older spelling.
The most recent thing, which is annoying me, is the appearance of the word "anyways" instead of "anyway".
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I think divergence of language is far more likely than convergence. American English is moving faster and faster away from what had been thought of Standard American English to. . . it won't exactly be "Spanglish", but it will not be exactly conventional English either. Local geographic and cultural differences will always win in the end.
As for me, the only time language differences get in the way of my enjoyment of a book is when the author makes Americans the same as Brits only louder and cruder. The Benny Hill version of unthinking cultural stereotypes.