Worldwide drift to American | UK news | The Guardian Turn autoplay off Turn autoplay on Please activate cookies in order to turn autoplay off Jump to content [s] Jump to site navigation [0] Jump to search [4] Terms and conditions [8] Edition: UK US Sign in Mobile Your profile Your details Your comments Your clippings Your lists Sign out Mobile About us About us Contact us Press office Guardian Print Centre Guardian readers' editor Observer readers' editor Terms of service Privacy policy Advertising guide Digital archive Digital edition Guardian Weekly Buy Guardian and Observer photos Today's paper The Guardian G2 features Comment and debate Editorials, letters and corrections Obituaries Other lives Sport Subscribe Subscribe Subscribe to the Guardian iPhone app iPad edition Kindle Extra Guardian Weekly Digital edition All our services The Guardian UK and World news User comments News Sport Comment Culture Business Money Life & style Travel Environment Tech TV Video Dating Offers Jobs News UK news Worldwide drift to American Share Tweet this Email Guardian staff and agencies The Guardian , Tuesday 21 December 1999 01.58 GMT The rise of the internet is threatening to Americanise the English language. Widespread use of the world wide web is leading to more and more Britons substituting "center" for centre, "program" for programme, and "color" for colour, according to John Simpson, chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. "As we approach the new millennium there is a clear drift towards a use of American English. The internet has certainly played a big part. "Email and the web have led to a huge increase in the written word, but much of what people read on it is from the United States, so it is inevitable that they adopt some American words and spellings." In New Zealand English teachers have said they were considering accepting US spellings. A memo circulated to secondary schools this month by the New Zealand council of the Association of Teachers said many pupils were already using American variations. It said that as the internet became more pervasive, American spellings would be come more common and some children might struggle to reconcile the discrepancies - particularly as computer spellchecks often rejected British spellings. The memo also claimed that American spellings were more logical and phonetic. 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