What is the language "British"?

[Tim]

Tim:
> > Some time ago our newspapers started using American spelling, which *is*
> > "incorrect" to do in Australia.  One reason given was that it was a
> > complete pain trying to work around the American spell checker.
> 
Gene Heskett:
> Humm, if it results in less miss-understandings between the peoples by
> pushing the people toward a common ground for language usage, I can't
> see as its an undesirable effect.

Okay, let's see the yanks fall in line with origins of their language,
rather than subverting someone else's...  ;-)

> In the above case, I believe there are English(GB) versions of the
> spell checkers available, so why don't they use them?

My guess would be along the lines that a dedicated news paper's printing
system was a bit more limited in software choices than the average desk
top computer word processor.  I did say "some time ago", I've no idea
what their current excuse is.

For what it's worth, Australian English is distinctly different than
other countries.  You do need to regionalise such things.  Trying to
tell another country to spell things in a foreign way is insulting.
We'll inventitate our own languages, thank you very much...

-- 
(Currently running FC4, in case that's important to the thread)

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
I read messages from the public lists.