What is the language "British"?

[Mike McCarty]

Beartooth wrote:
> On Wed, 06 Sep 2006 22:09:04 -0400, Bob Goodwin wrote:
> 
> 
>>>>I sympathize with the American posters here who know no better than to
>>>>use American toys that call themselves dictionaries.  The OED which is a
>>>>real English dictionary does not define fuze directly but simply refers
>>>>to fuse.  The definition of fuse(n.) includes something to break an
>>>>electrical circuit and something to ignite explosives, so that should
>>>>settle it.
> 
> 
> Point of information here : the makers of dictionaries have no pipeline to
> any gods of language, if such there be. What they do is go out and study
> usage, then report what they find. 

[snip]

In this context, yes. However, this is emphatically not universally
true. There are dictionary/language standards groups which do assume
authority to dictate actual usage in other languages. In particular,
Spanish and German are both dictated that way. Not too long ago, there
were "official" changes to both of those languages (which I have some
facility in) which I disagreed with. One letter was elided from Spanish
(sad day for me, now spanish spelling is "weird" like that in English
in some ways) and German changed the official spellings of words
with triple letters in them (like ,,stillliegen") to only have double,
(,,stilliegen") and some minor changes in orthography regarding the
sharp "s". So now German has some more "funny" rules for pronunciation.
"Stilliegen", as spelled, should be pronounced with a glottal stop
after the Ls. But that's not the way the word is pronounced. So,
german spelling (which is much but not an enormous lot better than
english spelling) has some more blemishes on it.

Mike
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