[featherfour]

That time they tried to take our U away​

I remember back in the…60s, maybe early 70s? Perhaps it was because we'd switched to decimal currency that inspired the thought, but someone in the government decided that it was about time we got our spelling in line with our friends on the other side of the Pacific, and we should therefore drop those superfluous "u"s from words such as "colour". It was quite the thing at the time, with newspapers and magazines getting on board…until everybody decided that was silly, and they stopped doing it, and we got our "u"s back. I wonder what might have happened, would z have taken the place of s in some words? Would we have lost a bunch of double letters? Would we have started saying "aluminum" instead of "aluminium"? How far could this have gone? Would we have started pronouncing "zed" as "zee"? Would we have eschewed the metric system? I have to admit to being old-fashioned and liking the weirdness of English spelling just the way we've inherited it. I know it can be tricky, but I love to keep in mind that English is pretty much the world's favourite second language (after the one they were brought up speaking)

 

[Jarred Santos]

That time they tried to take our U away​

I remember back in the…60s, maybe early 70s? Perhaps it was because we'd switched to decimal currency that inspired the thought, but someone in the government decided that it was about time we got our spelling in line with our friends on the other side of the Pacific, and we should therefore drop those superfluous "u"s from words such as "colour". It was quite the thing at the time, with newspapers and magazines getting on board…until everybody decided that was silly, and they stopped doing it, and we got our "u"s back. I wonder what might have happened, would z have taken the place of s in some words? Would we have lost a bunch of double letters? Would we have started saying "aluminum" instead of "aluminium"? How far could this have gone? Would we have started pronouncing "zed" as "zee"? Would we have eschewed the metric system? I have to admit to being old-fashioned and liking the weirdness of English spelling just the way we've inherited it. I know it can be tricky, but I love to keep in mind that English is pretty much the world's favourite second language (after the one they were brought up speaking)

I absolutely love this @featherfour! It's simple yet so thought-provoking when you really look into how nearly everyone in the world knows English... Would it have changed how Aussies approached the language in any way?

 

[Wandiwa]

Imagine if Bill Gates the founder of Microsoft had been born in China, would English still be the "go to" language or would we all be banging away on keyboards with Chinese symbols?

 

[Jarred Santos]

Imagine if Bill Gates the founder of Microsoft had been born in China, would English still be the "go to" language or would we all be banging away on keyboards with Chinese symbols?

想象我们所有人都这样写真是太奇怪了！(It's so weird imagining all of us writing like this!)

 

[Jest]

That time they tried to take our U away​

I remember back in the…60s, maybe early 70s? Perhaps it was because we'd switched to decimal currency that inspired the thought, but someone in the government decided that it was about time we got our spelling in line with our friends on the other side of the Pacific, and we should therefore drop those superfluous "u"s from words such as "colour". It was quite the thing at the time, with newspapers and magazines getting on board…until everybody decided that was silly, and they stopped doing it, and we got our "u"s back. I wonder what might have happened, would z have taken the place of s in some words? Would we have lost a bunch of double letters? Would we have started saying "aluminum" instead of "aluminium"? How far could this have gone? Would we have started pronouncing "zed" as "zee"? Would we have eschewed the metric system? I have to admit to being old-fashioned and liking the weirdness of English spelling just the way we've inherited it. I know it can be tricky, but I love to keep in mind that English is pretty much the world's favourite second language (after the one they were brought up speaking)

i keep getting rebuked with my spelling as i refuse to not use the U. I thought it was called english spelling. never heard of american spelling.

 

[GretaD]

After reading this please forgive me but can I be told why the political party in Australia has the spelling of Labor rather than Labour (I am originally from the UK so I was taught the English language and spelling and I always spell OR correct the spelling of colour).

 

[Observer]

May as well take away the 'th' words as Chinese cannot say them. They commonly only use the letter 's' only in place of 'th'. eg. As in Sursday or Sank You. (can always pick out a Chinese when they speak to you) Asians as a whole have a hard time trying to work out where the other Asians hail from and generally all revert to speaking English. Go figure.

 

[wjs1957]

What ever happened to GAOL? I think that very few of us spell it that way now!

 

[MotherGoose]

According to Wikipedia's entry on the Australian Labor Party:

In standard Australian English, the word "labour" is spelt with a u. However, the political party uses the spelling "Labor", without a u. There was originally no standardised spelling of the party's name, with "Labor" and "Labour" both in common usage. According to Ross McMullin, who wrote an official history of the Labor Party, the title page of the proceedings of the Federal Conference used the spelling "Labor" in 1902, "Labour" in 1905 and 1908, and then "Labor" from 1912 onwards. In 1908, James Catts put forward a motion at the Federal Conference that "the name of the party be the Australian Labour Party", which was carried by 22 votes to 2. A separate motion recommending state branches adopt the name was defeated. There was no uniformity of party names until 1918 when the Federal party resolved that state branches should adopt the name "Australian Labor Party", now spelt without a u. Each state branch had previously used a different name, due to their different origins.

Although the ALP officially adopted the spelling without a u, it took decades for the official spelling to achieve widespread acceptance. According to McMullin, "the way the spelling of 'Labor Party' was consolidated had more to do with the chap who ended up being in charge of printing the federal conference report than any other reason". Some sources have attributed the official choice of "Labor" to influence from King O'Malley, who was born in the United States and was reputedly an advocate of spelling reform; the spelling without a u is the standard form in American English. It has been suggested that the adoption of the spelling without a u "signified one of the ALP's earliest attempts at modernisation", and served the purpose of differentiating the party from the Australian labour movement as a whole and distinguishing it from other British Empire labour parties. The decision to include the word "Australian" in the party's name, rather than just "Labour Party" as in the United Kingdom, has been attributed to "the greater importance of nationalism for the founders of the colonial parties".

 

[GretaD]

Hi Mother Goose. Many thanks for enlightening me so thoroughly as to why Australia's political Party Labor spells that word minus the "U" rather than the way I remember the UK Party spelling it as in the English language. I appreciate the time you have taken in answering my comment. Thank you again.

 

[MotherGoose]

The case of S versus Z is an interesting one, affecting words that typically end with the suffix -ise or -ize and their derivatives (-ises, -ised, -ising, -iser, -isation). Spelling with an S instead of as Z is a distinctively Australian practice. Americans almost always use Z and the British are somewhat divided in their usage. The arbiter or authority for correct spelling conventions is the Oxford English Dictionary which advocates the Z ending. The reason Z is more correct most of the time (but not always) is because most of the words that have an -ize ending are derived from the Greek -izo and -izein, which means to make or employ. So if a word carries the meaning "to make", it should be spelt with a z. For example sterilize, to make sterile.

Bill Bryson said, in his book "Troublesome Words", "It is one of the more arresting ironies of British usage that the leading authorities all prescribe -ize and hardly anyone pays them any heed. In this respect, The Oxford English Dictionary is at once the most venerated and most ignored of arbiters".

 

[thomas]

That time they tried to take our U away​

I remember back in the…60s, maybe early 70s? Perhaps it was because we'd switched to decimal currency that inspired the thought, but someone in the government decided that it was about time we got our spelling in line with our friends on the other side of the Pacific, and we should therefore drop those superfluous "u"s from words such as "colour". It was quite the thing at the time, with newspapers and magazines getting on board…until everybody decided that was silly, and they stopped doing it, and we got our "u"s back. I wonder what might have happened, would z have taken the place of s in some words? Would we have lost a bunch of double letters? Would we have started saying "aluminum" instead of "aluminium"? How far could this have gone? Would we have started pronouncing "zed" as "zee"? Would we have eschewed the metric system? I have to admit to being old-fashioned and liking the weirdness of English spelling just the way we've inherited it. I know it can be tricky, but I love to keep in mind that English is pretty much the world's favourite second language (after the one they were brought up speaking)

it's the same with the Christmas alphabet, everyone says "noel" ( no L)

 

[Observer]

it's the same with the Christmas alphabet, everyone says "noel" ( no L)

Does that mean the Christmas alphabet only has 25 letters and not 26?

 

[PHW]

That time they tried to take our U away​

I remember back in the…60s, maybe early 70s? Perhaps it was because we'd switched to decimal currency that inspired the thought, but someone in the government decided that it was about time we got our spelling in line with our friends on the other side of the Pacific, and we should therefore drop those superfluous "u"s from words such as "colour". It was quite the thing at the time, with newspapers and magazines getting on board…until everybody decided that was silly, and they stopped doing it, and we got our "u"s back. I wonder what might have happened, would z have taken the place of s in some words? Would we have lost a bunch of double letters? Would we have started saying "aluminum" instead of "aluminium"? How far could this have gone? Would we have started pronouncing "zed" as "zee"? Would we have eschewed the metric system? I have to admit to being old-fashioned and liking the weirdness of English spelling just the way we've inherited it. I know it can be tricky, but I love to keep in mind that English is pretty much the world's favourite second language (after the one they were brought up speaking)

- Many speakers, on the evening news for example, including politicians "try" to sound American by becoming lazy in their pronunciation of the letter "t", particularly after the letter "n". So, "Fremantle" becomes "Fremanle" (said like "castle"). Others are now just "disappoining" (no longer "disappointing") and so on ...
- Coming from an American-English speaker it may be considered 'acceptable' but from a traditional English speaker (who should know better and didn't start talking like that) it sounds awfully like laziness to me.

 

[Loubeauxarts]

After reading this please forgive me but can I be told why the political party in Australia has the spelling of Labor rather than Labour (I am originally from the UK so I was taught the English language and spelling and I always spell OR correct the spelling of colour).

Good question

 

[Loubeauxarts]

The other curious one in that era was the push to make phonetic pronunciation of foreign words and names the norm. Remember how Don Quixote became Don Kwixoat and so many others. The ABC were at the forefront of that one but, thankfully, it didn't catch on

 

[thomas]

Does that mean the Christmas alphabet only has 25 letters and not 26?

Does that mean the Christmas alphabet only has 25 letters and not 26?

yeah that's right, when it comes down to it, there's a lot of people that say "never mind aye (A") so then there are only 24 letters in the alphabet. but then of course there is "B(e) off with (yo)U"so, if b has gone off with u then that only leaves 22 letters in the alphabet, (I think I had better stop while I am ahead)

 

[MotherGoose]

- Many speakers, on the evening news for example, including politicians "try" to sound American by becoming lazy in their pronunciation of the letter "t", particularly after the letter "n". So, "Fremantle" becomes "Fremanle" (said like "castle"). Others are now just "disappoining" (no longer "disappointing") and so on ...
- Coming from an American-English speaker it may be considered 'acceptable' but from a traditional English speaker (who should know better and didn't start talking like that) it sounds awfully like laziness to me.

I don't think politicians are "trying" to sound American - I think it's just laziness of speech.

 

[PHW]

it's the same with the Christmas alphabet, everyone says "noel" ( no L)

Strangely...

Remembering the "Mutant Ninja Turtles" (or the Archangel), unlike the Australians (apparently), Spanish, Portuguese, South Americans, Italians, French and others (for example), English and American speakers don't say "Raphael" as "Rapha L" but have to include a "Y" sound just before uttering the "L", resulting in something like "RaphaYel".

This is even reflected by the letter "i", "j" or "y" in the English phonetic by writing it as [RA-fai-ehl] or [rɑːfaˈjel] or [ra-FIGH-ehl] or [ r AH - f ay - EH l ], etc.

I really don't see why this is since it is just as easy to say it properly and without extraordinary pronunciation prowess by not adding that fancy "Y" in the mix.

 

[Marnyy]

That time they tried to take our U away​

I remember back in the…60s, maybe early 70s? Perhaps it was because we'd switched to decimal currency that inspired the thought, but someone in the government decided that it was about time we got our spelling in line with our friends on the other side of the Pacific, and we should therefore drop those superfluous "u"s from words such as "colour". It was quite the thing at the time, with newspapers and magazines getting on board…until everybody decided that was silly, and they stopped doing it, and we got our "u"s back. I wonder what might have happened, would z have taken the place of s in some words? Would we have lost a bunch of double letters? Would we have started saying "aluminum" instead of "aluminium"? How far could this have gone? Would we have started pronouncing "zed" as "zee"? Would we have eschewed the metric system? I have to admit to being old-fashioned and liking the weirdness of English spelling just the way we've inherited it. I know it can be tricky, but I love to keep in mind that English is pretty much the world's favourite second language (after the one they were brought up speaking)

Agreed, but i think you will find they have already slowly done so to a lot of words, i have noticed lots of words have changed like organization is now spelt with a S not a Z, colour has dropped the U, Labour has dropped the U, favourite has dropped the U, sad to say that gradually it is creeping into our world as the kids of today weren't taught the same way as we were.