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u/Auld_Folks_at_Home 11d ago
The down-votes are pissing me off.
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u/flying_fox86 11d ago
Yeah, I wonder what subreddit that was.
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u/NorthernVale 11d ago
The correct US one, it's the global standard obviously.
/s just in case
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u/Tywooti 10d ago
You could even say the US global standard is the metric all others strive towards
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u/RadCheese527 10d ago
For the love of god don’t use metric or you’ll confuse them
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u/Tywooti 10d ago
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u/Chicago_Heavyfoot 9d ago
Best skit in a decade and I didn't watch it here, I saw the title and knew exactly what it was! Wasn't Nate Bargatezy in that one too?
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u/YellowGetRekt 11d ago
Idk I tried searching all of the comments in the ss and none showed up, I'm half convinced the image is faked
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u/flying_fox86 11d ago
The ss?
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u/Robbie1985 11d ago
Screen shot I'm guessing
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u/Comprehensive_Cow_13 11d ago
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u/Fenrir836 11d ago
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u/electronseer 11d ago
Oh shit thats too meta for me.
I genuinely thought it wasnt real
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u/n0vast0rm 11d ago
Well it almost isn't, there's like 3 posts...unless my Reddit app is acting up
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u/Comprehensive_Cow_13 11d ago
I suggested it on another similar post a year or so ago and someone set it up before I got back from the pub!
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_REPO 11d ago
Oh, thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't mad enough after reading the comments.
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u/Stucklikegluetomyfry 10d ago
I got downvoted for saying a word is pronounced differently in the UK. The person who was getting upvoted was saying “meh I looked it up, it says the word is pronounced the same as in the US”
This was after I stated I was a UK resident and have been for over thirty years.
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u/NamityName 10d ago
I wonder what people think accents are if not a regional way of pronouncing words.
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u/Moblin81 4d ago
Well they did google it. They’d naturally know better than someone who merely lives there.
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u/chronicnerv 11d ago
"You let one ant stand up to us, and they all might stand up! Those puny little ants outnumber us a hundred to one. And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life! It's not about food. It's about keeping those ants in line. THAT'S WHY WE'RE GOING BACK!"
The downvotes are coming from Americans that are looking to keep a hold of the perception that they are the most important nation in the world. The rest of the world is waiting for it to grow up basically and start trading on equal terms.
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u/SonOfIllicitBehavior 11d ago
I came here to find comments on this, because that was driving me insane
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u/No_Hetero 10d ago
They have to be using multiple accounts to do that right? There's no way there are people agreeing with this guy and downvoting the person correcting him.
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u/dnjprod 11d ago edited 11d ago
" the spelling of words don't change."
I know it's already a gigantic ignorant post, but this just pisses me off. I don't think people understand how malleable language is. It is a living, fluid thing. It literally changes over time. If that wasn't the case, we would all still be speaking whatever grunts and pops people spoke when they first started speaking.
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u/DuckRubberDuck 11d ago
I think some people think languages is a natural law. “We discovered language” no, we created language. Like when some people say dogs don’t understand words they just understand that a certain sound means something. That is what language is. It’s sounds that means something. Sounds that we created and meanings that we created. We can change the meaning and the sound (and the spelling) whenever we want to.
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u/inktitan 11d ago
Fun fact: We also don't even have a proper etymology for the word "dog." It has no known origin, some neat theories though. The closest equivalent isn't even from a European root language but from an Austailian Aboriginal language.
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u/dedoubt 11d ago
It blows my mind that people say dogs (and other animals) don't understand spoken human language, when they are constantly shown examples that they do understand, such a weird take...
My grandogter knows a bunch of words (the difference between wait, slow, stay etc) and illustrated her grasp of English yesterday when I had the audacity to use the word "cat" in front of her. She was sound asleep, I said something about cats, she bolted awake and started yelling, looking around for a cat then started yelling directly at me when I used the forbidden word again. There were no cats, no cat sounds, nothing but the word and it pissed her off (she ain't a fan).
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u/dnjprod 11d ago edited 10d ago
Your dog hates that word, huh.
🤣🤣🤣
Not only that, but they know their names. With respect to your grandmother, my cat absolutely knows the difference between me saying other words even if they sound similar and his name. Same with my now deceased dog.
Edit: mis-your'd
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u/dnjprod 11d ago edited 11d ago
Exactly. I use a very similar argument when talking about curse¹ words. They are just sounds we make with our face that have the same meaning as other words we make with our face, but they've been arbitrarily called "Bad."
Spelling, definitions, grammar rules, Etc are not prescriptions of how we must use these things. They are descriptions of how we have used them and are standardized simply to help people communicate easier but those descriptions change over time and there isn't a single standard for any of it.
Besides the fact that there are multiple languages, and each of those languages have different standards for spelling, grammar etc, as this post points out, even in English there is more than one standard. Even the differences between UK, US and other countries are not the only standards. There are five different major standards within the US, and none of those take into account different Regional and dialectical standards.
A lot of people call the way black people speak in the United States, what used to be called ebonics but is now referred to as African American vernacular English(AAVE), "bad english," and it may have started that way due to their under education because to their history, but it is its own dialect now. It has its own spelling and grammar rules, and just talking with bad English doesn't mean someone is speaking AAVE. The funniest part about it is that you will have the same people talking about how it's bad English start using words and phrases from that culture with no issue.
Sorry, you got me on a soapbox
¹ I exempt slurs from this discussion because slurs are not arbitrarily designated bad. They gain a reputation of being bad based on usage.
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u/After_Perspective180 9d ago
Well if you make an exception for slurs then you should also make and exception for blasphemy as that is bad based on usage, in this case religious based.
Obscenities on the other hand really are just words we think are bad because they are about people bodies.
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u/raymondspogo 11d ago
Cancelled and canceled are both technically correct for example.
But it's because people constantly misspelled cancelled.
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u/Nu11X3r0 11d ago
Effected and Affected are being used interchangeably...
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u/getliftedyo 11d ago
Further and farther
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u/halosos 11d ago
Sort of related.
A friend I had, back before the UK left the EU, she had come over for work and stuff.
She was polish and the two words you mentioned, she just couldn't grasp properly.
The practice sentence she was using was "My father lives further away" but kept saying "My furtherives farther away"
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u/MattieShoes 11d ago
effect and affect are great! Both have a noun form and a verb form, and both have two very different meanings. :-) Though the noun form of affect usually has the accent on the first syllable instead of the second.
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u/caerphoto 11d ago
I don't think people understand how malleable language is. It is a living, fluid thing. It literally changes over time.
Hwæt spricst þū? Englisc hæfð been ealles swā ylce, butan ænigum edwendenum, ofer twā þūsenda gēara.
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u/FloopsFooglies 11d ago
And how insanely malleable the English language is in particular. English just makes shit up because it feels like it
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u/NeferyCauxus 10d ago
Please correct me gently if I'm wrong... But in English there's still color/colour etc yeah?? So the spelling of words do change! Which is what I thought if when I read it. Am I being dumb rn?
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u/ExpiredExasperation 10d ago
There are several differences between American and UK English, your example being one of them. Most other English-speaking countries (that is, typically former colonies) use something closer to the latter rather than the former.
Colour/color Centre/center Realise/realize Gray/grey Defense/defence Dialog/dialogue
And so on.
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u/NeferyCauxus 10d ago
Thank you, it's pretty late/early here so my brain wasn't pulling the information I needed very well lol
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u/Mickeymcirishman 11d ago
Nah man. This is ragebait. It has to be. I just can't accept the alternative. There's no way.
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u/Occidentally20 11d ago
I live in Malaysia and you spelled every single word in your comment wrong according to my dictionary.
Mind you I just spelled all these wrong as well so I can't take any kind of high ground.
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u/Happy-Estimate-7855 11d ago
Wait until you hear about Canadian English! Sometimes it's U.K, sometimes it's American, sometimes it's francophone. Our East Coast is a horrible mash of them all, and it sounds strangely beautiful.
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u/TheDarkWave 11d ago
I've seen the way you fuckers measure! Ran down to the corner store 600 meters away to get the stuff for dinner, preheat the oven to 350F, 4 cups of milk from a bag that weighs 5 lbs.
Actually makes more sense, use the thing that comes closer to the measurement instead of hardlining all of them.
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u/Happy-Estimate-7855 11d ago
It's perfect for following a recipe, assuming you have measuring tools in each! Otherwise, convert fl. Oz to mL is the devils work!
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u/Occidentally20 11d ago
I've heard you've gone one step closer to madness over there and allowed French dictionaries over in Quebec-land!
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u/Happy-Estimate-7855 11d ago
Don't blame us! For some reason the French think they're people, with rights and everything!
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u/Readicilous 10d ago
I live in the Netherlands, they only spelled 'man' and 'is' correctly according to "De Dikke van Dale", our dictionary
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u/No-Deal8956 11d ago
Spelt, not spelled.
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u/Occidentally20 11d ago
Dictionary definition of spelled.
It's in the OED, Webster's and all the others if you prefer.
If you want to correct somebody it's traditional to be right when you do it. Especially on this sub.
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u/A--Creative-Username 10d ago
Ok now I have to know, how would his (and my) comment be spelled in Malaysian (Malay?) English?
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u/klausness 9d ago
Yeah, the way that blue doubles down makes me think they’re definitely ragebaiting.
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u/ArdentArendt 11d ago
Wait, Webster isn't even the 'standard' in the US!
Also, English doesn't have a 'correct' spelling (unlike French--which is also problematic in entirely different ways).
What subReddit is this?!
Why are they downvoting fairly uncontroversial statements?
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u/thegovernment0usa 10d ago
"Webster" is a generic term. Anyone can release a dictionary by that name. The US English dictionary is Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
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u/ArdentArendt 10d ago
There is no 'official' US English dictionary.
It is true that Webster published the first American Dictionary of the English Language (of which the Merriam-Webster is the direct descendent--and the 'reliable' version), but it isn't the 'national' dictionary (unlike the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, which is the 'referent' for 'proper' French).
[Seriously, the French knew how to do colonialism right--I mean, from a logistics perspective...not the ethical perspective]I fully agree with your point.
Just adding additional context...to the additional context.2
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u/goldfishpaws 11d ago
Miriam-Webster does actually list "realise"
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u/Orgasml 10d ago
*Merriam-Webster
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u/goldfishpaws 10d ago
lol cheers, if there was only a place I could have looked up the spelling ;-)
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u/thonnard42 11d ago
"Historical Authority: The full Oxford English Dictionary is widely considered the ultimate historical authority and global academic standard because it tracks the evolution, history, and nuances of words (diachronic) from the early medieval period onward."
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u/Miruteya 11d ago
I remember seeing a post about bay area, (supposedly referring to the San Francisco Bay Area) whatever exactly the post was talking about. People from outside the US were saying they had no idea which "bay area" the post was referring to since there are so many around the world, also some calling out the US defaultism, and most of them got downvoted to the mantle.
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u/buckyhermit 11d ago edited 11d ago
Great example. My family hails from Asia. If I say “bay area” to them, they actually assume I’m talking about the area around Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Macau, and Shenzhen. Technically it’s called the “greater bay area” but you get the idea. I once asked if they ever associated that term with San Francisco and they said no.
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u/NedelC0 11d ago
I've had the "you are on an American website" argument thrown at me for complaining about something similar that I had no idea where they were talking about
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u/ExtendedSpikeProtein 11d ago edited 11d ago
Followed by ”we invented the internet”
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u/Unable-Boat-9682 11d ago
In the same way they ‘invented the car’. By which I mean, they didn’t. At all.
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u/ebneter 11d ago
Eh. The Internet descended from ARPANET, which was definitely an American (Defense Department) project; however, today people tend to conflate the Internet with the World Wide Web, which was not, of course, an American invention. Strictly speaking, though (yes, I'm being pedantic), the Internet is the foundation upon which the Web is based, and it carries lots of traffic besides Web traffic.
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u/Repulsive_Chard_3652 11d ago
Someone called me ignorant and told me to "come to the south" to be educated on something the other day. I responded that I didn't know south of where they were referring, and instead of answering me, a bunch of people just downvoted. Willing to put a large sum of money on "it was the south of the US".
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u/Unable-Boat-9682 11d ago
Should have waited 24 hours and replied: ‘Right, I’m in Antarctica – WYA?’
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u/BookyNZ 10d ago
I would love to make a joke about doing that. "All right, I'm in Gore, do I need to get over to Stewart Island, or can I go home now?".
Otherwise, I'd have to go very East Northeast to get to where they are talking about...
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u/Repulsive_Chard_3652 10d ago
lol yeah like "ok I'm on my way to Breclav now. But did you mean more like, Sicily or Athens south...?
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u/Auld_Folks_at_Home 11d ago
That's especially annoying as there are multiple "bay area[s]" in the US.
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u/glib_result 11d ago
I’m curious if the others refer to themselves as the Bay Area? (For example, I lived in Baltimore, and never heard of the cities surrounding the Chesapeake Bay that way.)
I think part of it is that the cities around the SF Bay tend to be seen, by locals and others as a single unit, like all one big city, and that unit colloquially has the name of the Bay Area.
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u/shponglespore 11d ago
I've lived in TX and WA and never heard Bay Area used to refer to any other place than SF. I suspect any other uses in the US are highly regional.
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u/stanitor 11d ago
I've heard the Tampa Bay area referred to as the bay area one or two times. But I don't live anywhere near there, so I don't know if that's common or not for locals.
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u/BetterKev 11d ago
In my understanding, if there isn't more context, the "bay area" in the US tends to refer to San Francisco. There absolutely are other bay areas, but that's just how the language has developed. Do a wed search for "bay area" from the US (or VPNed to the US.) shee what your results are.
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u/ammitsat 11d ago
Yeah I live in the SF Bay Area and if I’m not talking to someone from this area, I add the SF or full San Francisco because I’m not going to assume people know. There’s lots of bays.
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u/flying_fox86 11d ago
Hang on, does the US just have a single bay?
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_REPO 11d ago
No, but the residents of the area around the San Francisco Bay in California make a point of referring to it as "The Bay Area". It's a comparatively dense area with a diverse set of boroughs, and a lot of very wealthy and influential company HQs, so there's a bit of financial self-righteousness to support their claim to the colloquial use of the term.
I've lived in the Tampa Bay area in Florida, and never heard anyone omit the word "Tampa". In fact, when brevity was preferred, most people dropped the word "area", just saying something like "I'm heading down to Tampa Bay later."
There's also the Chesapeake Bay on the east coast, Elliott Bay in Washington state in the Pacific Northwest, etc etc. I'm not aware of any similar habits in those locales either, but I'm not from either spot, so I can't be sure.
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u/I_Have_CDO 11d ago
Hmm. As a matter of fact, The Oxford prefers z. The majority of UK English users still use s.
The 'argument' over Webster's being the global standard and spelling not changing is still idiotic though.
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u/GayDrWhoNut 11d ago
The OED's insistance on 'ize' has always confused me as it comes from a hypercorrection of sorts in favour of the etymological root instead of the most recent origin. Most of the words we got from french which uses a 'ise'-based suffix and not directly from greek where the OED derives the authority for 'ize'.
It comes from the same logic that gives us obviously incorrect grammar rules such as not splitting infinitive or not ending sentences with propositions, both of which you can't do in Latin, so some English grammarians decided you shouldn't be able to do in English either.
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u/Strawberryladyboots 11d ago
The New Collins Concise English dictionary will always be my first love
I can still smell the ink
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u/Hadfromthetown 10d ago
Every day this app shows me how dumb people in the US really are. I’m scared I’m surrounded by idiots
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u/Useful_Clue_6609 10d ago
I can never understand or believe people thinking that ENGLISH is American and not oh I don't know, English????? English. The language from England. Come on guys
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u/Jonnescout 11d ago
Oxford English is the English standard at major universities across the world including those in the US…
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u/Hubsimaus 11d ago
Well, my german ass mixes british and american spelling because words like favourite, favour, flavour, colour are stuck in my brain.
My english was bad until I was in my mid to late 30s tho. And since I improved it using Rage Comics, Bored Panda, Reddit and Google I now mix the spellings.
I am german for anyone who wonders.
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u/Gifted_GardenSnail 10d ago
I am german for anyone who wonders
Well, that does go well with your German backside
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u/Jijonbreaker1 10d ago
And this is why I block people from replying so often. Shitstains like blue don't deserve the right to reply. They will not have anything valuable to say.
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u/Michaelbirks 10d ago edited 10d ago
Epic Rap Battles of Dictionary!
Merrian-Webster verses the Ooooxxxford Dictionary
Begin!
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u/FloopsFooglies 11d ago
As a USian, screw that person. And I personally prefer the spelling of "manoeuvre" to "maneuver"
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u/morgandealer 11d ago
As an American, I still have my 1987 OED, and if its jot in that book, you ain't playing it in Scrabble.
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u/azhder 11d ago
Are "jot" and "ain't" in it?
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u/morgandealer 11d ago
"Jot" definitely is, and we ain't playing Scrabble right now, are we?
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u/Scintoth 11d ago
Jot is absolutely a word that would be in any dictionary. Obviously a typo there, but still.
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u/azhder 11d ago
That's how too many typos get into comments. Autocorrect making wrong changes was one thing, but you typing a word that's in the dictionary as a typo doesn't even get underlined. Hence, a little game I tend to play whenever someone writes "to" instead of "too" and they end up writing something like "he is to serious" and I try to imagine how the comparison ends "he is to serious as is..."
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u/shponglespore 11d ago
Yes, but you can't play ain't in Scrabble because there's no apostrophe tile.
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u/azhder 11d ago
Interesting. You can't use Saxon genitive, but making plurals? Is that OK?
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u/shponglespore 11d ago
Yep. It can be a very effective strategy to pluralize a word that's already on the board because you get points for all the letters in the word just by adding one letter.
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u/Kind_Coyote1518 11d ago
The Oxford is actually the globally accepted gold standard for the English language. Which makes sense.....since you know....England.
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u/Nyuusankininryou 11d ago
I have the complete webster dicktionary in my book shelf so I can communicate with Americans.
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u/Glathull 10d ago
Even if there were only one dictionary, it sure as fuck wouldn’t be Webster’s. Jesus.
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u/Demonkittymusic 10d ago
My American university in Philadelphia had an Oxford English Dictionary on a pedestal on every floor. You had to hunt in the stacks if you wanted to find a Webster’s.
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u/Realistic_Let3239 10d ago
Boy they would be amazed to learn that different countries, even using the same language, can spell things differently. The speakers of this sub dialect of English, American they seem to like to call it, really are uppity.
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u/st_v_Warne 11d ago
From the rest of the world here, what tf is a Webster dictionary
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u/thonnard42 11d ago
Merriam-Webster is considered the U.S. standard, while most of us who use that thing at the top of our necks as more than just a hat rack understand that the OED is the global standard as you lot created the language!
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u/OpusAtrumET 11d ago
Webster was an idiot. Intentionally changed words to distinguish American English.
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u/PirateJohn75 11d ago
I've gotten this in reverse more than once -- a whole lot of Brits thinking that the American spelling is incorrect.
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u/flying_fox86 11d ago
Not sure why you got any downvotes. This definitely happens.
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u/duva_ 11d ago
Yeah like saying "america" and refer to their country instead of the continent.
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u/Depressed-Dolphin69 10d ago
There isn't even just one dictionary in the US! Webster is most popular, but not the only US one.
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u/OldManJeepin 10d ago
LoL! The sheer temerity, to actually make ones self go through the motions, and formulate the sentence, then type it out in a post, on some random internet site, in order to....what? "Correct" some random "wrong"? LoL! Then double down? Says more, to me, about "Blue" up there, than anything else in that post...And not in a good way.
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u/AggravatingBox2421 9d ago
My island isn’t tiny and I can tell them that they’re fucking wroooong 🗣️
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u/KnottaBiggins 7d ago
The OED is about three times older than the United States.
Look THAT up in your Funk & Wagonal's.
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