Worldwide drift to American

  • The Guardian,
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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