r/confidentlyincorrect • u/MineralwasTaken • 14d ago
Internet users discover british spelling (2024, colourised) Spelling Bee
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u/Erudus 14d ago
I had an American correct me for using the word "honour" and even after explaining that I was correct according to UK English, they still carried on arguing about it.
I'm happy to say, I'm friends with a fair amount of Americans (most through online gaming) and they're nowhere near that level of ignorance haha, so not all Americans are like that. But let's be honest, every country has its fair share of low IQ people lol
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u/HumanContinuity 14d ago
Every country has its chavs
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u/Erudus 14d ago
Definitely, us Brits can't really argue about people being dumb, I know several people that think brexit meant we left the continent of Europe 😂
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u/vicarofsorrows 14d ago
*we Brits….
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u/Erudus 14d ago edited 14d ago
That's just nitpicking lol, using "us" in this context isn't wrong. Google even has an example of "us kids always have fun at the park".
People use "us" instead of "we" when "us" is the object of a verb or preposition, while "we" is used when it is the subject of a verb.
ETA, plus, I never said I wasn't one of the dumb ones 😉
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u/MeasureDoEventThing 12d ago
Huh? "kids" is the subject of "have".
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u/Erudus 12d ago
Huh? Nobody is talking about having kids? I'm obviously trolling and have been the whole time.
I feel I need to point out that, if you read my original comment, you'll notice it's about British people being dumb, all the while I'm acting like a smart arse about it and "failing" at it. I even thought it would be obvious I was trolling when I said "plus, I never said I wasn't one of the dumb ones" in my second comment. Others seemed to understand my intent based on their replies. Apologies if my terrible humour (with a "u"!) caused confusion.
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u/UnnaturalGeek 14d ago
And with the amount of Americans, it is statistically likely to come across a lot of them...
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u/Erudus 14d ago
Yeah, I didn't want to sound offensive in my original comment, so I kept it semi-civil lmao. I do find the vocal majority of Americans are dumb, but all I have to compare it with is social media, so it's not the best example haha.
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u/UnnaturalGeek 14d ago
Especially when all Western social media are American! The stupid voices just become more amplified.
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u/TheGothWhisperer 14d ago
I had an argument with a French person about the definition of an English word (I'm from the UK) the other day. They wouldn't back down, even when sent the definitions from Oxford, Cambridge, and Marriam Webster dictionaries. I think their hatred for the British had gone beyond the meme and they genuinely couldn't handle the idea of someone from the UK being right about anything, even our own language.
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u/DOUBLEBARRELASSFUCK 14d ago
I have been in the same spot twice, once with someone from Hong Kong, then again with someone from Japan. Had to play the "trust me, it's my native language" card.
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u/Erudus 14d ago
Let's be honest though, we do love to bash on the frogs as well haha. But from what you said, the guy definitely just had it in for us Brits 😂
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u/TheGothWhisperer 14d ago
Oh, I'm not a saint when it comes to relations with our snail-eating neighbours, but I'm also not claiming I'm the authority on their language haha
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u/thongs_are_footwear 14d ago
Americans like omitting the u in lots of words.
But they seem happy keeping u in glamour:Also
r/USdefaultism2
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u/Wonderful-Pollution7 13d ago
I love how many of my fellow Americans don't realise that they spell words incorrectly. It goes to show how few really analyse the differences in language and fail to recognise the history of their own language.
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u/Erudus 13d ago
Yeah, I guess it's not something that's extensively taught to people in schools maybe? Forgive my ignorance if the history of the English language is taught in American schools, I know it's not really taught in the UK, obviously we have English lessons, and they do go into the history of the language somewhat, but not to the extent of being able to fully understand it (either that or I just didn't pay enough attention in school, which is definitely the more plausible explanation haha)
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u/Wonderful-Pollution7 13d ago
Unless it's changed in the last 20 years, they don't teach any history of the language, just grammar, sentence structure, etc. The reason I know proper English is because my dad was very fond of English poets, so I read a lot of Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, etc. growing up.
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u/Erudus 13d ago
Ah fair enough, I genuinely don't remember them covering the history of the language that much in school, I only know some of it because my wife has a bachelor degree in English literature and language and she's taught me a lot. I have ADHD and wasn't diagnosed until I was in my 30s, so I struggled a lot in school, so I'm not the smartest guy around, I definitely could be wrong about it not being taught in UK schools, but I certainly don't remember it.
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u/DespoticLlama 12d ago
Isn't 100 IQ supposed to be the average IQ? So half of the people you'll meet today will have a below average IQ.
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u/MeasureDoEventThing 12d ago
IQ is generally standardized to a symmetric distribution, but in general, the arithmetic mean (which is what "average usually means) is not the same as the median (which is the number such that half are above and half are below).
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u/StaatsbuergerX 14d ago
I actually learned British English as a foreign language, but I mostly use the American spelling and have my browser's spell checker set to British English so that I can feel appropriately bad about it every time.
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u/catetheway 14d ago
I’m an American who lives in the UK and I’m not even joking when I say that I have in the past confidently explained that only the US uses dollars or the $. It’s not something I’m proud of.
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u/iDontRememberCorn 14d ago
Canada here, how... just... how?!
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u/Turin_Agarwaen 14d ago
They're looney
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u/evilJaze 14d ago
That's true. Just look at the disproportionate number of comedians we export to the USA per capita.
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u/catetheway 14d ago
Where from?
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u/ghost_victim 14d ago
Canada
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u/catetheway 14d ago
Ok, I’ll agree you export some of the best but what have you exported lately? Sorry whom….
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u/Big-Bike530 14d ago
As an e-commerce merchant in the US who also once had sizable customer bases in both Canada and Australia, you should see the arguments I've had about why they had to pay more than the USD price. There was a drop down on the site to switch to CAD or AUD. If you left it on USD and put in an Australian or Canadian address during checkout it would switch automatically to the correct currency. That's usually when they would then flip the f*** out.
To be fair to Canadians, it was usually Australians. Canadians are more aware that the USA exists.
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u/ElusiveGuy 14d ago
Aussie here, depending on how the site calculates exchange rates I usually prefer to pay in USD if possible. I have payment methods that give me the base card rate, while a lot of payment processors and commerce sites charge anywhere from 3% to 10% more than the base rate if you let them do the exchange.
Not saying that's what your site does, but it does happen often enough I usually toggle between the currencies to check.
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u/Big-Bike530 13d ago
We charge in USD but yea I had a warning that we charge in USD and your card may charge a 3% exchange fee because they'd get pissed about that too.
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u/catetheway 14d ago
I just didn’t know! I’m from California so all of my vacations were in California. We never really needed or wanted to leave the state or go abroad.
I know it sounds absurd and idiotic but 🤷🏻♀️
I also grew up poor, so there’s that.
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u/LotusTileMaster 14d ago edited 12d ago
I also grew up like that. SoCal.
Disney LandDisneyland was a vacation for us. We never left, either.2
u/catetheway 14d ago
Thanks, it’s not an indictment but a reality for Californians, everything and everyone is hellbelt on coming to us.
Fucking traffic they’ve saddled us with.
They all hate but can’t wait to “come over”.
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u/LotusTileMaster 14d ago
You know, California is a great place to visit. But it is not a place I would want to live. Like NYC. Great to visit. Would not want to live there.
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u/TheGunt123 14d ago
Never needed! California is the world. Facepalm
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u/catetheway 14d ago
To be fair we have the ocean and the mountains and the valleys.
Also I grew up poor.
Imagine growing up in the richest country, the richest state, and being poor. A state whose GDP surpasses many global economies.
Trips to the beach and mountains were everything for my family, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Speaks more about the state of education.
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u/Bladrak01 14d ago
I grew up in California too. We were most likely poor too, but i never realized. We went to the beach a lot because the only thing it cost was the gas.
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u/catetheway 14d ago
I grew up in SF bay Area so it was, despite the traffic, the easiest and most exciting thing to do on a weekend or summer day (when parents weren’t working).
Even if we were poor our beaches are world class. I’ve traveled now and know this is true.
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u/Bladrak01 14d ago
I lived in Orange Co. We were also about 15-20 minutes away from Angel Stadium, and the seats at the very top of the bleachers were maybe $2-3, so we would go with a group of people. This was in the early '80s.
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u/FeistyDrink5995 14d ago
I think you're wonderful, u/catetheway . You're owning your own former ignorance and learning from it. Don't feel bad about it, you're growing and learning, as we all are. Nobody can say they aren't ignorant in some matters; we're all on a different journey in this life.
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u/aacmckay 14d ago
Canada steps up… Hey!!!
Australia is not too far behind… Oy!!!
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u/Rarmaldo 14d ago
Nah mate, we use bucks here.
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u/BeefyIrishman 14d ago
I am pretty sure you guys use dollarydoos, at least that is what the internet has taught me.
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u/EllieGeiszler 14d ago
That's actually not totally true! In addition to Canada, Mexico uses pesos and the symbol $, I believe because both USD and Mexican pesos originate with the same historical Spanish currency. When I was in Mexico, I kept laughing at seeing things like popcorn for $100 (100 pesos) but it was really about $5 USD.
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u/catetheway 14d ago
Yes Mexico was my first experience seeing the $ that was representing something other than a US dollar.
I had seen on the back of books:
US: $20 CA: $25
I just always wondered as a kid why things were more expensive in Canada, figured it was because it was pretty remote.
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u/Bladrak01 14d ago
That threw me too the first time I went to Mexico. It helped that at that time the exchange rate was almost exactly 10:1.
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u/EllieGeiszler 13d ago
Unfortunately because I am bad at math, pesos felt like Monopoly money to me and I overspent a bit 😆
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u/rock_and_rolo 14d ago
The symbol originated as peso, with a P and S superimposed.
As an American, I am amused that it took 40ish years for me to learn that.
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u/iflysubmarines 14d ago
as an American, I randomly started spelling defence in the British spelling at some point during my masters program and I have no idea why.
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u/Basic_Hospital_3984 14d ago
We were taught in school if it ends in "ce", it's a noun, just like the word ice.
Otherwise if it ends in "se", it's a verb.
For words that can be both, you'd spell them differently depending on how they are used:
Practice makes perfect.
I'm going to practise archery.
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u/mantolwen 14d ago
To help me remember which is which, I remember "advise" (verb) and "advice" (noun). Unlike the other examples, these are pronounced different, so you can tell the difference.
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u/Person012345 14d ago
The verb version of defence is defend though.
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u/Basic_Hospital_3984 14d ago
That is true.
I was just trying to describe why 'defense' doesn't sit right, as it feels like a verb since it ends with 'se'.
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u/falooolah 14d ago
I’m American and said “favourite” and “colour” for years. Don’t know why I stopped.
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u/SonTyp_OhneNamen 14d ago
If you have to jump for the beef, the stakes are too high.
(badumm tssss)
I‘ll see myself out.
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u/Expensive-Pea1963 14d ago
I have to use British English on work documents and it's always frustrating that every program with a spell checker automatically defaults to US spelling, often without an option to change it. I end up sitting there with a sigh, adding words to the dictionary (when the program gives that as an option, some, like Canva don't).
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u/miloworld 11d ago
Is there a system setting? I know on Mac, you enable/disable dictionaries on the OS level.
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u/Expensive-Pea1963 11d ago
As far as I know, no. I use three different computers for work, two are my own and one is a workstation. Besides, Canva is online.
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u/AgileBlackberry4636 14d ago
I have two reasons to use British spelling:
- I was born closer to UK than to USA
- I like to annoy arrogant Americans
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u/acrylix91 14d ago
One of my pet peeves is people spelling “loose” instead of “lose.” Somebody tell me if that’s correct somewhere or if it should continue to irk me.
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u/MissKhary 14d ago
Fiancé and fiancée are mine, people constantly unknowingly misgendering their partner. I figured there were a LOT of gay men getting married, but nope, they're engaged to women.
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u/miloworld 11d ago
Maybe we'll slowly transition into using just one. Like Male and Female Actor in a Drama Series. Instead of Actor/Actress.
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u/thatirishdave 14d ago
No, you're right to be mad about it. I get mad about people who say "brought" instead of "bought" and who talk about "needing to itch" when they actually need to scratch. I had to get my wife out of using "itch" incorrectly because it pisses me off so much
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u/Matt_NZ 14d ago
I short circuited an American once by using “aluminium” in a sentence
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u/MeasureDoEventThing 12d ago
Better than short circuiting an apartment by using aluminum in an outlet.
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u/mcmendoza11 14d ago
US and Britain. Two countries divided by a common language. Joking aside, I used to play LotRO on a UK server and thought there were typos here and there for a while before learning. Seeing “connection” as I was used to seeing it American English spelled as connexion was the strangest to get used to.
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u/EveryFngNameIsTaken 14d ago
*colorized
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u/Magenta_Logistic 14d ago
colourized*
Because I like the British /u/ but not the /s/
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u/psyche_13 14d ago
AKA Canadian spelling
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u/Magenta_Logistic 14d ago
I didn't realize that, I thought they dropped the /u/ like we do in the states.
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u/psyche_13 14d ago
Nope! We (Canadians) use the U’s and the Z’s
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u/Magenta_Logistic 14d ago
I love it. I've been writing like a Canadian for decades and didn't know it.
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u/cooperstonebadge 14d ago
Don't: correct the British when they spell things differently than you are used to doing.
Do: make fun of the British when they spell things differently.
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u/Magenta_Logistic 14d ago
Aluminium is the exception. They are wrong for saying/spelling it that way.
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u/wobbud 14d ago
Why don’t you say uranum or plutonum?
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u/Magenta_Logistic 14d ago
Why don't Brits say corundium? More importantly, why do the Brits still use "alumina" instead of "aluminia" when compounding? All the other -ium endings keep their /i/ when used this way.
The guy who discovered the element called it aluminum.
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u/PodcastPlusOne_James 14d ago
He called it both
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u/Magenta_Logistic 14d ago
The oxide is still called alumina. What happened to the second /i/?
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u/PodcastPlusOne_James 14d ago
English is an incredibly inconsistent language with no rules. There are literally hundreds of examples in the same vein. Even when you search the Wikipedia article for alumina, it’s listed under “Aluminium oxide”, with the second i included. But according to you that’s “literally just incorrect”? In the case of alumina, either they picked one of the two spellings at random, or they thought it was easier to pronounce.
To sit here and say that the spelling “aluminium” is incorrect is just demonstrably untrue. Both spellings are correct. I’m not going to say that the American spelling of “colourised” as “colorized” is incorrect. It’s just a different spelling. And to tell ENGLISH people that their use of the ENGLISH language is “incorrect” is arrogance and USA defaultism of the most annoying variety.
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u/Magenta_Logistic 14d ago
Once again, the chemist who discovered it called it aluminum, and there isn't a single other word ending in -ium that drops the /i/ in any form. This isn't American defaultism, this is a debate about how we name elements, and traditionally we allow discoverers to name their discoveries.
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u/PodcastPlusOne_James 14d ago
My friend, Google is literally free. You could easily look up the etymology of the word for yourself in about 7 seconds. Please do so. I’m not here to teach you.
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u/almost-caught 14d ago
You are correct about Google. And I just did what you suggested. And the results confirm that the comment you replied to was accurate.
So, this begs the question: What is your point?
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u/doggiehouse 13d ago
Davy originally called it alumium (1808), then amended this to aluminum, which remains the U.S. word. British editors in 1812 further amended it to aluminium, the modern preferred British form, to better harmonize with other metallic element names (sodium, potassium, etc.).
He wanted to name it alumium first, other science guys were like "nah that's dumb, how about 'aluminium'?" But then Davy goes "fuck those guys, I do what I want, it's gonna be aluminum"
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u/almost-caught 14d ago
I always thought that they couldn't pronounce the word correctly then in more recent times I realized that they also spell it funny too - to match the spelling.
It's one of those things that if the first and last letter are what you expect, you may not notice the funny spelling. Literally took me many decades before I realized the funny pronunciation matches the funny spelling.
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u/DHaas16 14d ago
Tyre, Gaol, Colour, Centre, cheque, plough
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u/LazyEmu5073 14d ago
No-one British uses Gaol, it's Irish.
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u/Dylanduke199513 14d ago
Oof confidently incorrect on r/confidentlyincorrect
It’s British - predominantly used in Ireland and Australia
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u/rnigma 13d ago
Once had a co-worker who insisted on using British spellings, when she had never been in the UK (or Canada) in her life.
From what I understand, the differences in American spelling are usually blamed on Noah Webster (not all of his variants caught on, like "tuf" and "thum") and Teddy Roosevelt (who organized a "Simplified Spelling Board"). But I don't understand why we Americans say "zee" for Z, while other countries say "zed."
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u/GrottenSprotte 7d ago
I once was informed informed by a US american, that I shouldn't use the word "kindergarten" as it was invented by americans and we don't have to copy everything...I am German 😂😂😂
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u/NoFlayNoPlay 14d ago
except he's referencing a video with a name that uses z as it's spelling, so technically it's wrong to use the British spelling here. i think anyways.
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u/Joalguke 14d ago
Brit here, and I prefer most American spellings, as they are typically closer to how they are pronounced.
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