1 |
Shyam Mani wrote: |
2 |
|
3 |
>Jack Dark wrote: |
4 |
> |
5 |
> |
6 |
>>While browsing the docs in search of general spelling errors, I |
7 |
>>noticed that a few documents had internationalized spelling of certain |
8 |
>>words. Are the docs generally supposed to be written in American |
9 |
>>English--as most of the English ones seem to be--or is that |
10 |
>>unimportant? I have no particular preference either way; the addition |
11 |
>> |
12 |
>> |
13 |
> |
14 |
>I think that as long as we get the point across and the word/sentence is |
15 |
>correct english, it doesn't matter. |
16 |
> |
17 |
> |
18 |
|
19 |
I think there's no such thing as "correct" English, as that would |
20 |
require a complete and consistent body of rules analogous to that of |
21 |
algebra, which is impossible in such a varied, complex field [1]. We |
22 |
should instead aim at idiomatic English, or even "proper" usage if you |
23 |
prefer. My opinion is that, to the extent to which one can generalise |
24 |
usefully, Americans try to establish a rigorous framework for whatever |
25 |
they do, including writing, whereas the British preference is to use |
26 |
judgment to interpret guidance - a very different approach. I spent two |
27 |
years in Minneapolis, and discovered that, in many subtle ways, the |
28 |
citizens of the so-called land of the free are in practice less free |
29 |
than we are in the UK. I don't mean this as a troll, just to illustrate |
30 |
the evident fact of different styles in UK and US. |
31 |
|
32 |
As an aside, education in the UK has suffered grievously from the |
33 |
attitude that adherence to norms doesn't matter, ever since the 1970s. I |
34 |
know you aren't discussing education, but I think it is nevertheless |
35 |
valuable to strive for high standards of expression. |
36 |
|
37 |
>>or subtraction of a few letters from the odd word doesn't bother me. I |
38 |
>>was just wondering if doc writers are supposed to adhere to one |
39 |
>>consistent spelling scheme even though it might be outside of their |
40 |
>>region. |
41 |
>> |
42 |
>> |
43 |
|
44 |
Here's an example: in English (not American) "outside of" is a noun |
45 |
phrase denoting a region: "the outside of" some boundary. The adverb we |
46 |
should use in your sentence is "outside". |
47 |
|
48 |
The UK and US versions of English differ in far more than spelling; on |
49 |
the contrary, I think it's just about the most trivial difference. Word |
50 |
order is a more important difference, and blind insistence on the Oxford |
51 |
comma is particularly confusing and therefore misguided. This is a good |
52 |
example of the preference for rigid rules that I mentioned above. |
53 |
|
54 |
I won't go into other pervasive influences such as the contribution of |
55 |
other languages on each side of the Atlantic. Not here, anyway. |
56 |
|
57 |
>>For example, do the doc writers from the UK have to spell using |
58 |
>>American English (or Australian English), even though it's not what |
59 |
>>they're familiar with, or are the guidelines much more relaxed and |
60 |
>>permit one's native lexicon to be used? |
61 |
>> |
62 |
>> |
63 |
>Anyway, AFAIK, we have no rules on that, and I think it is darn too |
64 |
>trivial to sit and actually bother about. If the sentence |
65 |
>formation/spelling is good, we're okay. As an example, I recently |
66 |
>removed sections of a patch that changed correct British English to |
67 |
>American English like localisation to localization because it is |
68 |
>unnecessary to correct something that is already correct :) |
69 |
> |
70 |
> |
71 |
|
72 |
I know of three approaches to the s/z problem: the American, which |
73 |
always uses Z, and two British usages of which one uses S and the other |
74 |
Z. This example is not a question of correctness but of personal preference. |
75 |
|
76 |
Lecture over... :-! |
77 |
|
78 |
I'd like to know what support there would be for splitting the two |
79 |
languages, so that original documents would be written using either the |
80 |
en_GB or the en_US locale and then be translated to the other. I'd be |
81 |
happy to contribute to such a translation effort. |
82 |
|
83 |
[1] "Time flies like an arrow; blue flies like a banana." "He broke the |
84 |
window with a stone; she broke the window with a curtain." I believe the |
85 |
AI community use couplets like these to illustrate the difficulty of |
86 |
extracting meaning from natural language. It is just not possible, in my |
87 |
opinion, to formulate a complete, consistent set of rules for |
88 |
application to the whole of any natural language. Or, more-or-less |
89 |
equivalently, if that ever were achieved, the result would be more |
90 |
difficult to apply than just getting on with using the language as we do |
91 |
already. |
92 |
|
93 |
-- |
94 |
Rgds |
95 |
Peter Humphrey |
96 |
Linux Counter 5290, Aug 93. |
97 |
|
98 |
-- |
99 |
gentoo-doc@g.o mailing list |