The Inquisition

Consider this:

To (sexually) love children is wrong but to have those same feelings for adult feet is just weird.

Paedophiles feel strong sexual attraction toward the legally protected underaged. Pedophiles ought to be turned on by smelly pods. A podiatrist looks after your feet while your children are safe-guarded by paediatricians.

The differences are the US and International English dictionaries. This differing can be easily fixed – the US version is wrong. A paedophile is a lover of children and comes from the greek paedos (child) and philo (to love). A ped is latin, however, for a foot. Therefore a pedophile ought, in actual fact, be a trans-adriatic lothario seeking meaningful congress with willing amture feet.

The differing spelling of encyclopaedia/encyclopedia stem from the same issue. It is originally adapted from the greek phrase for all-encompassing education (for children) – ‘enkuklios paideia’.

Z instead of S

Americans are usually more classically correct when they use the slightly obtuse character of z in participles and more. This is a more archaic usage and therefore essentially ‘purer’.

Of course, this should never be officially accepted! We need to be constantly vigilant against these heresies by those linguistic barbarians. Why? Well, consider the best known example – americans have lazers and everyone else have lasers because they are devices of Light Amplification by Stimulated Emmission of Radiation. Which proves that the nation which retains miles and inches is wrong about absolutely everything, ever, obviously.

Insular and Impervious to change

It is generally accepted that British English has evolved more than US English over the past centuries, mainly due to far-flung imperial influences.

American English began approximately 4 centuries ago when a hoard of religious zealots decided to appropriate the lands of heathens. Once they had successfully duped the indians with trinkets, gunpowder, alcohol and no short supply of violence the Pilgrims set about fixing their language in their reformist and unadorned manner. Directness presumably pleases God more than flowery Papist diatribes. The New England Primer taught 3 million kids their language using biblical reference.

Linguistic interlopers abounded. Some examples include: the French in Canada gave caribou, the Creole French gave gopher, Native Americans had their animals’ names bastardised (bastardized) and the spanish made the most important contribution of chocolate.

Linguisitic butchery

Burglarized – burgled
Obligated – obliged
route – route (not rout because that is different)
misunderestimate – You voted him in, twice
Meter – metre (the french invented the metric system and spell it metre, so, no contest)

Just different

color – colour
tires – tyres
humor – humour
plow – plough

A Word About Webster

Noah Webster defined the basis of US English when he wrote his dictionary. Gone were the clipp’d vowels of the upper classes. In came logical spellings such as ‘center’ and ‘honor’. Letters disappeared by magic(k) as in the case of ‘travel(l)er’. Of course, this essentially negates the purists’ view that American English is a purer more archaic form in its entirety – it’s only some bits.

Caveat

Americans, please take note. This article is simple levity; this has to be clearly stated as we over in Old Europe are aware of your serious humour deficits. It is understood that you don’t get jokes.

Bibliography
The New Oxford American Dictionary, Elizabeth J. Jewell and Frank R. Abate (editors), Oxford University Press, September 2001
Collins Concise English Dictionary, Harper Collins, 2001
The Story of English, Melvyn Bragg, Hodder & Stoughton, 2003
The purists’ view on Yahoo Answers

This post is tagged America, changes, differences, england, evolve, imperial, language, linguistics, queen's english, spelling