These are all excellent and well-reasoned explanations of the linguistic issues, but unfortunately what you are having to explain in reality is cultural chauvinism. You know, from the French. This, it seems to me, requires an entirely different set of explanations.
So the point I was trying to convey was that Australians were spelling words without the 'u' since the 17th century* just like the rest of the anglophone world. When Britain standardized on including the 'u,' Australia tended to follow, but (so far as I can tell) not universally. Thus, when American soldiers flooded into Australia in WWII, they weren't introducing a foreign usage so much as resurrecting usage that had been in decline under the influence of the UK's imperial authority. Meanwhile, there were a fair amount of genuinely American words and phrases introduced, but most of those died out. I would tend to suspect they died out because they didn't 'fit' Australian English and alternate spellings have persisted because they were Australian in the first place. That's a hard theory for a layman like myself to test, but my reading of historical linguistics (I particularly recommend McWhorter's "The Power of Babel") convinces me that language and dialect is far more durable than most people give it credit for. In Australia's case it had meant that a great deal of official effort to expunge historically common usages had indifferent success, yet no official efforts were necessary to 'defend' from foreign introductions.
*Okay, in the 17th century it would be the ancestors of white Australians, but my point is that there were the multiple contemporary "correct" usages existing in unbroken continuity up until government-sponsored universal education narrowed the range of acceptable usages on a per-nation basis in the mid 19th through mid-20th centuries.
You might be right, I don't know, I don't live in, and have never lived in Australia.
It doesn't really matter who likes what, and while you may think it is idle to claim something, I personally believe the British spelling is correctly, and since I live in an ex-British colony I am intitled to follow my belief that British English is the correct spelling. And personally I found it insulting and lazy when schools here started accepting American spelling of words as correct.
Now, I can understand how that is concerning.
Ex-British colonies of Malaysia and Singapore maintain British English as the standard. However the general level of English ability has gone down as local language instruction took over from colonial teachers. The English-literate in their 40s to 60s tend to speak vastly better English than those younger than 30. Even though English has been taught in schools for the past 50 years.
To me, Australia settled on Australian English around the 1980's and never looked back, Australian English is considered the standard there, and in 8 years living there I never quite saw any significant differences from British English.
All this does not mean any particular English is the "correct English", by any stretch of the imagination.
It used to be in the ex-British colonies in Asia and the Pacific having good English meant better opportunities. Now, it's having multiple language skills like knowing Hindi, Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.
Ex-British colonies of Malaysia and Singapore maintain British English as the standard. However the general level of English ability has gone down as local language instruction took over from colonial teachers. The English-literate in their 40s to 60s tend to speak vastly better English than those younger than 30. Even though English has been taught in schools for the past 50 years.
To me, Australia settled on Australian English around the 1980's and never looked back, Australian English is considered the standard there, and in 8 years living there I never quite saw any significant differences from British English.
All this does not mean any particular English is the "correct English", by any stretch of the imagination.
It used to be in the ex-British colonies in Asia and the Pacific having good English meant better opportunities. Now, it's having multiple language skills like knowing Hindi, Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.
I dunno. The people I know from Singapore and Malaysia speak English incredibly well, enough that I would have taken them for having grown up in the US. Granted, this is not at all a random sample because it's entirely people who eventually settled in the US, but the difference between them and people from Taiwan, Vietnam and Korea is striking.
I dunno. The people I know from Singapore and Malaysia speak English incredibly well, enough that I would have taken them for having grown up in the US. Granted, this is not at all a random sample because it's entirely people who eventually settled in the US, but the difference between them and people from Taiwan, Vietnam and Korea is striking.
It's exactly those people that have all left Malaysia and Singapore! Smart, talented, with good English, they've all left here for a better life overseas.
Thankfully in general for the last 20 years Malaysians have generally better English than Taiwan, Vietnam and Korea because of Malaysia being an ex-British colony and that English is a de facto 2nd national language after Malay (though this will be challenged by Cantonese and Mandarin over the next several years)... Also, it is a common 2nd medium for interaction between the various races.
Singapore should always be ahead, because their medium of instruction for K-12 and tertiary education is English with Mandarin as a second language.
Malaysia experimented for a few years in having some secondary subjects in English and Malay but dropped it recently. Tertiary education is split between Malay for public universities (which preference the ethnic Malay majority) and English at private universities (open to anyone).
In any case as I mention though China's influence in South East Asia is not to be underestimated. It has led to a resurgence in Chinese language (Mandarin and Cantonese) use for Chinese-ethnic Asians in South East Asia; especially for the younger generation that don't see themselves moving to a Western country because of lack of interest or funds.
Comments
So the point I was trying to convey was that Australians were spelling words without the 'u' since the 17th century* just like the rest of the anglophone world. When Britain standardized on including the 'u,' Australia tended to follow, but (so far as I can tell) not universally. Thus, when American soldiers flooded into Australia in WWII, they weren't introducing a foreign usage so much as resurrecting usage that had been in decline under the influence of the UK's imperial authority. Meanwhile, there were a fair amount of genuinely American words and phrases introduced, but most of those died out. I would tend to suspect they died out because they didn't 'fit' Australian English and alternate spellings have persisted because they were Australian in the first place. That's a hard theory for a layman like myself to test, but my reading of historical linguistics (I particularly recommend McWhorter's "The Power of Babel") convinces me that language and dialect is far more durable than most people give it credit for. In Australia's case it had meant that a great deal of official effort to expunge historically common usages had indifferent success, yet no official efforts were necessary to 'defend' from foreign introductions.
*Okay, in the 17th century it would be the ancestors of white Australians, but my point is that there were the multiple contemporary "correct" usages existing in unbroken continuity up until government-sponsored universal education narrowed the range of acceptable usages on a per-nation basis in the mid 19th through mid-20th centuries.
You might be right, I don't know, I don't live in, and have never lived in Australia.
It doesn't really matter who likes what, and while you may think it is idle to claim something, I personally believe the British spelling is correctly, and since I live in an ex-British colony I am intitled to follow my belief that British English is the correct spelling. And personally I found it insulting and lazy when schools here started accepting American spelling of words as correct.
Now, I can understand how that is concerning.
Ex-British colonies of Malaysia and Singapore maintain British English as the standard. However the general level of English ability has gone down as local language instruction took over from colonial teachers. The English-literate in their 40s to 60s tend to speak vastly better English than those younger than 30. Even though English has been taught in schools for the past 50 years.
To me, Australia settled on Australian English around the 1980's and never looked back, Australian English is considered the standard there, and in 8 years living there I never quite saw any significant differences from British English.
All this does not mean any particular English is the "correct English", by any stretch of the imagination.
It used to be in the ex-British colonies in Asia and the Pacific having good English meant better opportunities. Now, it's having multiple language skills like knowing Hindi, Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.
Now, I can understand how that is concerning.
Ex-British colonies of Malaysia and Singapore maintain British English as the standard. However the general level of English ability has gone down as local language instruction took over from colonial teachers. The English-literate in their 40s to 60s tend to speak vastly better English than those younger than 30. Even though English has been taught in schools for the past 50 years.
To me, Australia settled on Australian English around the 1980's and never looked back, Australian English is considered the standard there, and in 8 years living there I never quite saw any significant differences from British English.
All this does not mean any particular English is the "correct English", by any stretch of the imagination.
It used to be in the ex-British colonies in Asia and the Pacific having good English meant better opportunities. Now, it's having multiple language skills like knowing Hindi, Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.
I dunno. The people I know from Singapore and Malaysia speak English incredibly well, enough that I would have taken them for having grown up in the US. Granted, this is not at all a random sample because it's entirely people who eventually settled in the US, but the difference between them and people from Taiwan, Vietnam and Korea is striking.
I dunno. The people I know from Singapore and Malaysia speak English incredibly well, enough that I would have taken them for having grown up in the US. Granted, this is not at all a random sample because it's entirely people who eventually settled in the US, but the difference between them and people from Taiwan, Vietnam and Korea is striking.
It's exactly those people that have all left Malaysia and Singapore! Smart, talented, with good English, they've all left here for a better life overseas.
Thankfully in general for the last 20 years Malaysians have generally better English than Taiwan, Vietnam and Korea because of Malaysia being an ex-British colony and that English is a de facto 2nd national language after Malay (though this will be challenged by Cantonese and Mandarin over the next several years)... Also, it is a common 2nd medium for interaction between the various races.
Singapore should always be ahead, because their medium of instruction for K-12 and tertiary education is English with Mandarin as a second language.
Malaysia experimented for a few years in having some secondary subjects in English and Malay but dropped it recently. Tertiary education is split between Malay for public universities (which preference the ethnic Malay majority) and English at private universities (open to anyone).
In any case as I mention though China's influence in South East Asia is not to be underestimated. It has led to a resurgence in Chinese language (Mandarin and Cantonese) use for Chinese-ethnic Asians in South East Asia; especially for the younger generation that don't see themselves moving to a Western country because of lack of interest or funds.