European Commission launches developer survey

MJ Ray markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk
Fri Mar 1 11:35:52 UTC 2002


Jaime:
> On Thu, Feb 28, 2002 at 12:19:58PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> > ...and, once more, the use of EU money to fund US English. 
> Howdy, It is not US English. It was written by a Spanish-speaking person
> and I bet he doesn't know the difference between US English and British
> English [...]

Oh, I'm sure it's not deliberate.  This is why it is usually recommended to
get native speakers to translate into their own languages.  It is just
getting a little depressing seeing our *own* language being eroded by our
European cousins because of the continual Americanisation of European
internet culture, so I mention it in passing.

Of course, your message will check out in a native English dictionary, as
many of the Americanisms are actually descended from an older form of the
language, pre-independence.  At most, they are flagged with "US" in italics
or some such, but it doesn't make them part of modern native English.  They
forked our language and are now trying to merge the changes by resolving all
conflicts in their favour ;-)

Shall we take this off-list, though?  It was only a side issue.
-- 
MJR



More information about the Discussion mailing list