All this is really saying is that we need a global agreement on English spelling.

The spoken word preceded the written word. We listened carefully to the spoken word and we tried to detect distinct sounds which we allocated a symbol to. It was only as good as what we heard.

Proper English spelling is not written in stone. Try reading a book printed in London two centuruies ago.

I am now using the American "z" rather than the English "s" if the word sounds that it has a "z" in it. Fair enough?

"Are we happy with this? What does it say about our society, our culture, our identity and our language? Do we care?"

You might try putting such questions to our 'leaders' ... the 'people's representatives', of the L-A-B-O-R Party.

Good luck!

Interesting views. Louise, but I believe a far greater concern is the mindless use of buzzwords such as 'ongoing', 'going forward' and 'outcomes'. That poses a bigger threat to our language and its comprehension.

I, for one, DO care. The "Americanisation" (sorry, Americanization) of Australian English largely reflects ignorance on the part of many of us.
It sounds right, looks right, so should be right. We adopt slavishly the lifestyle, speech and thus spelling fashions of a country which has huge cultural impacts on the world.
But that does not mean we should go along with it meekly.
We are Australians, not Yanks, and should at least know and understand the rudiments of our language.
Allegedly we are also sport-obsessed....does that mean that when playing cricket, we should try for fast runs between first and second base?
Ah lerv y'orl.

Hi Louise,

You are absolutely right - this is a disturbing trend. But a trend, I believe, that has been around much longer than recent years. In Australia I would guess (although I wasn't here at the time) since World War 2. In more recent times mass communication and the deluge of Septic (and here I preserve my Oz/Cockney rhyming slang) television; of which Sesame Street was perhaps the most invidious.

I'm not too concerned about the -ise / -ize debate, as the latter is arguably correct based on classical Greek, and may well have been the form used by the English peasantry and bar sinister offspring who colonised North America.

My objection is to the simplification of spelling! Color and nite are just two of the most egregious examples. And worse we as a nation are slipping further into American pronunciation.

However my special hate is reserved for the use of accents - by which I mean those marks above or below letters which change their sound in languages such as French. For many years we have survived using French loan words in English without the need for accents. But now, presumably because we can (and because with certain setting spellcheckers insist on it) we are using accents where there were none before. Also they are generally misused! "Resume" (as in CV) is the classic: there should be acute accents on each e, but almost invariably it is only put on the last. "Entree" is another beauty: the accute accent is on the penultimate e, but very often slips to the last.

I hope that this is not a lone battle!

Ah, Luize, good on yer, girl.

Yeah, sign me up, luv. Together we will storm the bastions of advertising agencies, editors offices, and secretaries cubby holes(I refuse to to acronym them as P.As. Makes them sound like tin horns high up on the walls of country Town Halls)from whence, in the main, such horrors emanate, and hold them to ransom.

We shall demand, in return for their release, nothing less than the purification of all texts, great and small, within our proud Australasian shores.( You know, the ones that are girt by sea.)

We may be only the green-inked minority but we shall render a service for which future Aussies will render grateful thanx.

Yes, I am well aware also that not many people give tuppence (or even a brass razoo)about such niceties but, if they are indifferent, why not let those of us who burn with passion for the written word have our autocratic way?

My objections (which, until reading this article, I was sure were merely personal ones)also center (e before r)around the history of language. I find it totally fascinating that the silent k in knee remains, if only to remind us of our Indo-Germanic origins and the fact that it, like the k in knife, were once pronounced. Why not keep the u in colour to humble us when we remember that the quaint region of Normandy was once powerful enough to defeat all of England? And while we are thus reminiscing lets embrace the word housewife to remind us that actually Duke William was Swedish, and that the Viking word for a householder was actually wif?

Bang the drum, sound the bells and post a petition. I may not be able to send you a cheque (a poignent reminder of the crusading zeal which led our forebears all the way to Persia)but I'll sign on with a very French flourish.