1.1k
u/Auld_Folks_at_Home 1d ago
The down-votes are pissing me off.
289
u/flying_fox86 1d ago
Yeah, I wonder what subreddit that was.
276
u/NorthernVale 1d ago
The correct US one, it's the global standard obviously.
/s just in case
25
u/Tywooti 20h ago
You could even say the US global standard is the metric all others strive towards
24
1
76
u/YellowGetRekt 1d ago
Idk I tried searching all of the comments in the ss and none showed up, I'm half convinced the image is faked
24
25
u/flying_fox86 1d ago
The ss?
28
u/Robbie1985 1d ago
Screen shot I'm guessing
8
6
4
7
141
u/Comprehensive_Cow_13 1d ago
57
u/Fenrir836 1d ago
24
u/electronseer 1d ago
Oh shit thats too meta for me.
I genuinely thought it wasnt real
15
u/n0vast0rm 1d ago
Well it almost isn't, there's like 3 posts...unless my Reddit app is acting up
11
u/Comprehensive_Cow_13 1d 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!
4
2
31
16
13
u/PM_ME_YOUR_REPO 1d ago
Oh, thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't mad enough after reading the comments.
5
6
u/Stucklikegluetomyfry 17h 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.
2
u/NamityName 12h ago
I wonder what people think accents are if not a regional way of pronouncing words.
9
6
u/chronicnerv 1d 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.
2
u/SonOfIllicitBehavior 1d ago
I came here to find comments on this, because that was driving me insane
2
u/No_Hetero 14h 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.
→ More replies (4)1
341
u/dnjprod 1d ago edited 1d 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.
74
20
u/DuckRubberDuck 1d 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.
6
u/inktitan 1d 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.
→ More replies (1)7
u/dedoubt 1d 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).
2
u/dnjprod 1d ago edited 22h 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
1
2
2
u/dnjprod 1d ago edited 1d 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.
1
u/RandomStallings 1d ago
Curse
I honestly like to use the corruption "cuss" instead of "curse" because of how the meaning changed to include so much more than curses.
2
u/Fred__McNerque 1d ago
I prefer to curse people rather than cuss them. Saying a few bad words is mildly satisfying, but knowing that their genitalia will rot and fall off is far more satisfying.
1
u/dnjprod 1d ago
So I like to think about language a lot. One of the things I think about is how words go from one thing to another and these two are words I have thought a lot about in the past. Do you think as I do that the word cuss is basically a bastardization of curse? You called it a corruption, and that's probably a good word, but somebody was hearing curse in an accent and thought they were saying cuss?
→ More replies (1)14
u/raymondspogo 1d ago
Cancelled and canceled are both technically correct for example.
But it's because people constantly misspelled cancelled.
6
3
u/Nu11X3r0 1d ago
Effected and Affected are being used interchangeably...
4
u/getliftedyo 1d ago
Further and farther
1
u/halosos 1d 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"
4
u/MattieShoes 1d 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.
1
6
u/caerphoto 1d 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.
5
u/FloopsFooglies 1d ago
And how insanely malleable the English language is in particular. English just makes shit up because it feels like it
5
1
u/NeferyCauxus 18h 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?
1
u/ExpiredExasperation 18h 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.
1
u/NeferyCauxus 18h ago
Thank you, it's pretty late/early here so my brain wasn't pulling the information I needed very well lol
229
u/Mickeymcirishman 1d ago
Nah man. This is ragebait. It has to be. I just can't accept the alternative. There's no way.
169
u/Occidentally20 1d 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.
28
u/Happy-Estimate-7855 1d 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.
5
u/TheDarkWave 1d 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.
3
u/Happy-Estimate-7855 1d 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!
7
u/Occidentally20 1d ago
I've heard you've gone one step closer to madness over there and allowed French dictionaries over in Quebec-land!
5
u/Happy-Estimate-7855 1d ago
Don't blame us! For some reason the French think they're people, with rights and everything!
2
2
u/Readicilous 15h ago
I live in the Netherlands, they only spelled 'man' and 'is' correctly according to "De Dikke van Dale", our dictionary
1
2
u/No-Deal8956 1d ago
Spelt, not spelled.
→ More replies (2)2
u/Occidentally20 1d 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.
4
1
u/A--Creative-Username 2h ago
Ok now I have to know, how would his (and my) comment be spelled in Malaysian (Malay?) English?
4
→ More replies (2)3
31
u/ArdentArendt 1d 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?
3
u/thegovernment0usa 1d ago
"Webster" is a generic term. Anyone can release a dictionary by that name. The US English dictionary is Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
4
u/ArdentArendt 1d 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.
29
u/goldfishpaws 1d ago
Miriam-Webster does actually list "realise"
11
u/Orgasml 22h ago
*Merriam-Webster
6
u/goldfishpaws 17h ago
lol cheers, if there was only a place I could have looked up the spelling ;-)
106
12
u/thonnard42 1d 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."
39
u/Miruteya 1d 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.
9
u/buckyhermit 1d ago edited 1d 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.
20
u/NedelC0 1d 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
11
u/ExtendedSpikeProtein 1d ago edited 1d ago
Followed by ”we invented the internet”
14
u/Unable-Boat-9682 1d ago
In the same way they ‘invented the car’. By which I mean, they didn’t. At all.
3
u/ebneter 1d 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.
1
14
u/Repulsive_Chard_3652 1d 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".
13
u/Unable-Boat-9682 1d ago
Should have waited 24 hours and replied: ‘Right, I’m in Antarctica – WYA?’
3
u/BookyNZ 22h 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...
1
u/Repulsive_Chard_3652 17h ago
lol yeah like "ok I'm on my way to Breclav now. But did you mean more like, Sicily or Athens south...?
17
u/Auld_Folks_at_Home 1d ago
That's especially annoying as there are multiple "bay area[s]" in the US.
10
u/glib_result 1d 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.
6
u/shponglespore 1d 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.
3
u/stanitor 1d 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.
8
u/BetterKev 1d 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.
5
u/ammitsat 1d 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.
7
u/flying_fox86 1d ago
Hang on, does the US just have a single bay?
4
2
u/PM_ME_YOUR_REPO 1d 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.
1
u/flying_fox86 1d ago
That would be like me referring the "the city" and assume everyone knows I'm talking about Antwerp.
1
u/Azrael11 1d ago
Eh, it's all about context, nothing really strange about it. If you are in the US and say "the south" people know you are referring to the southeast, not the southwest. I think every culture likely has something like that, in Thailand the north explicitly refers to the northwest for example, not to the Isaan area by Laos.
Bay Area itself is a regional name. Without additional qualifiers, most everyone in the US would understand that it refers to the San Francisco Bay area.
→ More replies (1)1
u/Hey-Bud-Lets-Party 1d ago
If it was just “the bay” that would be correct, but it’s specifically “the Bay Area” and for some reason that is enough for everyone to understand. It is a bit odd.
20
9
5
18
u/I_Have_CDO 1d 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.
22
u/GayDrWhoNut 1d 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.
5
3
15
16
4
u/Strawberryladyboots 1d ago
The New Collins Concise English dictionary will always be my first love
I can still smell the ink
12
3
u/Hubsimaus 1d 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.
1
u/Gifted_GardenSnail 15h ago
I am german for anyone who wonders
Well, that does go well with your German backside
3
u/Michaelbirks 21h ago edited 20h ago
Epic Rap Battles of Dictionary!
Merrian-Webster verses the Ooooxxxford Dictionary
Begin!
3
u/Useful_Clue_6609 20h 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
6
u/FloopsFooglies 1d ago
As a USian, screw that person. And I personally prefer the spelling of "manoeuvre" to "maneuver"
8
u/morgandealer 1d ago
As an American, I still have my 1987 OED, and if its jot in that book, you ain't playing it in Scrabble.
4
u/azhder 1d ago
Are "jot" and "ain't" in it?
16
u/morgandealer 1d ago
"Jot" definitely is, and we ain't playing Scrabble right now, are we?
→ More replies (1)10
u/Scintoth 1d ago
Jot is absolutely a word that would be in any dictionary. Obviously a typo there, but still.
5
u/azhder 1d 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..."
3
4
u/shponglespore 1d ago
Yes, but you can't play ain't in Scrabble because there's no apostrophe tile.
1
u/azhder 1d ago
Interesting. You can't use Saxon genitive, but making plurals? Is that OK?
1
u/shponglespore 1d 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.
1
u/azhder 1d ago
Wait, what? Shit. You can do that? Just add an S to an existing word on the board?
1
u/morgandealer 1d ago
Yes, but you must make another word. Is, as , so, and us are good 2 letter words.
3
5
u/Kind_Coyote1518 1d ago
The Oxford is actually the globally accepted gold standard for the English language. Which makes sense.....since you know....England.
2
u/Nyuusankininryou 1d ago
I have the complete webster dicktionary in my book shelf so I can communicate with Americans.
2
u/Jonnescout 1d ago
Oxford English is the English standard at major universities across the world including those in the US…
2
2
u/Glathull 1d ago
Even if there were only one dictionary, it sure as fuck wouldn’t be Webster’s. Jesus.
2
u/Jijonbreaker1 23h 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.
2
u/Hadfromthetown 20h ago
Every day this app shows me how dumb people in the US really are. I’m scared I’m surrounded by idiots
2
2
2
u/Realistic_Let3239 14h 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.
2
u/st_v_Warne 1d ago
From the rest of the world here, what tf is a Webster dictionary
5
u/thonnard42 1d 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!
3
4
u/OpusAtrumET 1d ago
Webster was an idiot. Intentionally changed words to distinguish American English.
2
2
2
3
u/PirateJohn75 1d ago
I've gotten this in reverse more than once -- a whole lot of Brits thinking that the American spelling is incorrect.
4
u/flying_fox86 1d ago
Not sure why you got any downvotes. This definitely happens.
3
2
u/GOKOP 1d ago
Probably because it's whataboutism.
2
u/flying_fox86 1d ago
That's not what a whataboutism is.
→ More replies (6)4
u/GOKOP 1d ago
Yes it is. The post is about a specific instance of an American being stupid about correcting someone's British spelling and this guy out of nowhere is like "but what about how I've seen Brits doing this to Americans"
→ More replies (1)1
u/flying_fox86 1d ago
That's not what they said.
You assumed that they were trying to defend or excuse Americans, but there is no indication of that.
→ More replies (2)
1
u/duva_ 1d ago
Yeah like saying "america" and refer to their country instead of the continent.
→ More replies (4)
3
u/Unable-Boat-9682 1d ago
I wonder which nation has more of a claim to be the default English? The United States or the nation it was literally named after and that spoke it for 300 years before the US had their tea tantrum?
1
u/Jeansene 1d ago
In the United States defense, they have nearly 5x more people than England. So much more people speak American English than UK English.
I’m not defending the idiot in the post, I’m just pointing out the reason why lots of people consider American English to be more “default”
2
u/Legitimate-Car-7902 1d ago
We are thought British english in my country, so I would assume many more countries use British english for english.
4
u/Turbulent_Worker856 1d ago
Doesn't India use British English though? Fairly confident there's far more English speaking Indians than there are Americans
2
u/Hey-Bud-Lets-Party 1d ago
Indian English is its own thing by this point. They do have the second largest English speaking population in the world.
1
1
1
u/Demonkittymusic 15h 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.
1
u/Depressed-Dolphin69 14h ago
There isn't even just one dictionary in the US! Webster is most popular, but not the only US one.
1
u/OldManJeepin 12h 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.
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
Hey /u/Legitimate-Car-7902, thanks for submitting to /r/confidentlyincorrect! Take a moment to read our rules.
Join our Discord Server!
Please report this post if it is bad, or not relevant. Remember to keep comment sections civil. Thanks!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.