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.

I agree with the sentiments of this article entirely, but for the sake of pedantic one-upmanship would point out that the “~ize” word ending form has long been preferred by some English purists, including Oxford University Press. Or, if you want to be really pedantic, use “~ize” for word that came into English from the Greek, and “~ise” if it came from the French.

Paul L. has adopted such spelling, unless he's an American. I guess he thinks Australian English spelling is too anti-American.

* The Oxford actually prefers "-ize" (read the frontmatter)
* The "-or" ending was never a result of an "Americanization" process. The "-our" was a later English affectation (it was "Frenchified")
* The "-re" rather than "-er" was another Frechification: the US kept the original spelling from Latin.
* I'm for etymological clarity - letters should reflect derivation.
** Labor, color, (rubor, dolor, calor, tumor : -our just looks wrong to any biomedical student)
** Skeptic
** Connexion (as used by Gibbon in 18th century, cognate with nexus)
** Night (shows link to Scot nicht and German nacht)
** Hippopotamos (so I can say hippopotamoi which trips off the tongue, and the Latin -us after two Greek roots is just plain ugly)
** Archaeic (not archaic), Paediatric (not pediatric, which could be about feet)

When spelling reflects derivation, it is much easier for foreigners to read, and much easier to guess at meaning of new words in your own tongue, and much easier to guess at words in other languages. Now, if we can only get the Germans to put a few hyphens into their words so they can be nutted out!

Louise I’m, like, sooo with you on this one. The bastardisation of Australian English has been going on for decades but the trickle has become a torrent. As you pointed out, spellchecks and internet pages are likely to have played a role but in the end it is ignorance, carelessness and occasional improvisation that drive changes to language. It’s always evolving. It’s simply a pity it becomes more beige every day.

Readin’ and writin’ are out of fashion. SMS ‘spelling’ rulz. Talking often consists of a string of preconstructed phrases devoid of colour or meaning or emphasis. The written word is less important than it was, which is a pity since poor grammar means poor communication. English is unique in that it has more words than any other major language, with many shades of meaning derived from many different languages. It is so colourful.

The French have tried to limit the effect of foreign languages on their own, with limited success. Occasionally they give way to the sheer force of numbers and deign some foreign alternative acceptable. The point is they take pride in their language but at the cost of widespread ridicule.

So how do you make people, well, CARE? Geez Louise, how would I know?

Hmm... maybe I'm mistaken Romany, but I always thought that 'centre' was the Australian/English version, and center was the American one.

Nice article Louise, and no, you're not alone. I suppose my objection to adopting American spelling stems from the fact that the rest of the English speaking world, by and large, has settled on the British version - which is also the Australian one.

It's just the Americans who are the odd ones out, with their 'z' spelling style and propensity for dropping essential albeit silent 'u's'.

If they want their own version, fair enough, but if there's one version to spread, I hardly see why the rest of the world should change. I can recall with some chagrin, writing a post on a blog and having someone correct my spelling to 'defense' while telling me 'it's okay, a lot of people make that mistake.'

Hmph. I think not.

I think Balneus got it right. My vague memory is that much of what Louise defends is in fact French affectation (or rather upper class English people adopting such an affectation in the 18th Century?) and that the American spelling of words like color was in fact the "original" English one.

We are all creatures of habit and I much prefer the affectation to the original, not because either is inherently superior but because I grew up with that way of spelling and I feel comfortable with it. Hardly grounds for a revolution, especially one that wants to defend the younger upper class version over the older version.

When English evolved in Britain, there were dozens of different spellings for common words. Over time, this was standardis(z?)ed thanks to the printing press and spread of literature.

The internet is the new printing press which will cause some spellings to change globally. Two hundred years from now, much of the English speaking world will lose the "S" for the "Z".

The beauty and strength of English is its adaptability and nuances.

Unfortunately, thanks to text messaging, our written language will start 2 b lik this. LOL. :)

Wouldn't Americans lose the Z for the S? They also are only one of a couple of nations to still use the asinine Imperial measurement system.

The quiet American (shades of G G) says: "Unfortunately, thanks to text messaging, our written language will start 2 b lik this. LOL. :)"

Nooooooooooo!!

Language is evolving, as others have said, but in insidious ways:

I have as my bugbear the use of the word 'so' as a qualifier in the expression:

"Thankyou SO much!",

Prior to not that long ago the expression of thanks was "Thankyou" or 'thanks' or for special thanks "Thankyou very much".

Where did the SO come from?

And anyway, different states of Australia have different words for the one item: In some places swimming costumes are 'cossies' and in others 'swimmers' or perhaps 'trunks'.

Athletic shoes can be trainers, runners or joggers.

And pronunciation is different as well, which may eventually be reflected in spelling: I, for one, am looking forward to the name of the code of football originally known as 'Melbourne Rules', colloquially known as 'fooddy' be spelt like that to differentiate it from the other codes of ball games played on foot.

But in terms of spelling reform: In english virtually every Q is followed by a U, which would indicate that the U is actually redundant, so why don't we get rid of the U, the only people who may object are spelling purists and scrabble players.

At least, in the cross cultural context, we haven't taken up the US form of writing the date (yet) even though we still consider the attack on the World Trade Centre to have taken place on 9/11 (9th November?) rather than the actual date of 11/9 (11th September).

I'd reckon the increasing trend to Americanisation of spelling etc generally comes about due to the pervasiveness of the internet and TV. Mr Gates has a big hand in it (spellcheckers set to US English and users too lazy to change) and so too do teachers- I am sick of correcting my child (who watches little TV) when she says "zee" for "zed". Judging by the output from British web users the trend is similar there. Americanisation of spelling is well-advanced in New Zealand, where they even use the rather ignorant looking "fiord" officially rather than the more usual "fjord" which denotes the word's recent Norwegian origin.

I don't agree that "color" is a "reversion" to an older spelling, rather, it's one of Noah Webster's many "reforms", which were only sporadically applied, and Mr Webster himself clung to many archaic spellings.

One aspect of modern spelling I find particularly annoying, and one which cannot necessarilly be blamed on the Americans, is the widespread misuse of the poor old apostrophe (including by many posters on this forum and others). "It's" and "its" are often confused, and apostrophes left out when needed in possessives while applied liberally in plurals, especially those ending in a vowel ("Suzuki's"). This comes down to sheer ignorance and laziness, and is prevalent too in shopkeepers' signs to the extent that it's rare to find a professionally written sign these days without at least one spelling error or misplaced apostrophe.

A recent trend is to split compound nouns, several were in evidence in a recently written novel I finished only today. "In the mean time" may not mean the same as "in the meantime". "Red head" means something entirely different to "redhead". This error is not picked up by spellcheckers and is another example of laziness.

As for the "-ise" and "ize" endings, I agree with previous posters in that the latter is not necessarilly American in origin and is closer to the Greek etymology; however, the -ise ending has long been preferred in this country. The hard and soft "esses" denoted by "s" and "z" in many words are not rigidly applied (at least for the "esses"), and Americans who call us "ossies" should learn it's pronounced "Ozzies".

While disliking Americanisations intensely, it's my opinion that they will inevitably become all-pervasive. The internet has opened up written discussion to millions of people who would previously have limited their writing to their name on a cheque or in a short letter to their mum. Since the majority of web users in the English language are Americans, their bad habits in all areas, including spelling, will spread. The fact that the average American is less well-educated than the average Aussie or Pom only exacerbates the problem.

Spelling is a personal thing. The Z annoys me too but Australia has its own frustrating lingo like gaol. Jail is better. Then there are all those Frenchified English words like programme, enough to send anyone off the program.

A cousin of mine is dylexic and she spells everything phonetically. Her letters are quite legible and amusing too. English is in process. If its alive it will always be surprising if not a little annoying at times. Best to switch off the spell checker and leave in all the mistakes. This is better than trying to impress how clever you are at writing a bastard language.

Shakefpeare couldn't fpell. No-one bothered in hif day because they were all making up their own wordf and fpelling them as they pleafed.
But those of us that could read got the message.

Barfenzie, "gaol" is hardly an affectation, but a form of the spelling which comes from Norman French, and therefore 1066, in English. It is "jail" which is the affectation, coming from the usual American ignorance which gave us "airplane" since aeroplane was soooo confusing for your average septic. Gaol is still in official use in this country even if the web and Monopoly have eroded its use.

As for "Shakefpeare" you are kidding, aren't you? What you have taken for an "f" is the Early Modern English form of the letter "s" (lower case long 's"). I suppose you also say "yee" for "ye"? It's actually "thee" since the letter "y" represents a letter no longer used in the alphabet (lower case thorn) (doesn't stop ignoramuses calling themselves "Ye Olde Shoppe").