Subject: Re: localization formats proposal
From: Ron Ross (ronross@colba.net)
Date: Wed Jul 18 2001 - 00:39:34 CDT
Patrick Lam <plam@plam.lcs.mit.edu> writes:
> On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Andrew Dunbar wrote:
>
> > > Do Canadians use standard English?
> >
> > They use Canadian English but most spellings are
> > British. They use "colour" with a "u". They do use
> > "tire" instead of "tyre". This is all from memory as
> > I haven't been in Canada for a few years now. Any
> > Canadians on this list??
>
> That's correct.
>
> Of course we use standard English. What else is there? ;)
Actually, it's a little more complicated, and Canadian English isn't
that standard. One reason I use WP is that it ships with the best
Canadian (English and French) spell checker that I've come across
(figures, since Corel is a Canadian company). We also "organize" rather
than "organise." But we of course "exercise" our "judgment" more than we
do our "judgement." And our "practice" (noun) is to "practise" (verb)
the delicate balance between British and American influences. Such is
the Canadian standard... and more than a few Canadians are either
confused (as I, before having arduously tamed my innate and always
latent dislexia) or staunchly faithful to either imperial heritage.
I went searching for Canadian ispell hash files recently. I didn't find
any, but I did find a word list package by Kevin Atkinson:
"VarCon (Variant Conversion Info) contains tables to convert between
American, British, and Canadian spellings and vocabulary as well as a
table listing the equivalent forms of other variants"
which can be found at http://wordlist.sourceforge.net/. It seems to be
made for Aspell. I haven't actually done anything with this package yet
(can the lists be converted to hash files?), but looking through the
lists, it seems pretty reliable.
Cheers,
Ron
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