Not Sure How I Feel About This
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Noah Webster, after whom Webster Dictionaries are named, were made not for the purpose of being "correct" like normal dictionaries but to be "wrong" in a new "American way" that was, in fact, designed by Webster himself. It was Noah Webster, for example, intentionally misspelling common words like colour (as color) and theatre (as theater) that made the American English spellings that exist today and what, even after hundreds of years, left the rest of the world confused and believing that Americans are complete idiots because no one is aware that we actually are taught to spell differently than the entire rest of the English writing world. Even in Toronto, which sits right on the border and deals with the US every day, Canadians actually believe all Americans are illiterate. Thanks Noah.
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Websters actually institutionalized the "taking pride in ignorance" problem that often plagues America. And that the school systems decided to teach his fake language instead of the real one in a ubiquitous rebellion against high learning and culture solidified the American cultural underpinnings that exist today.
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This leads right into a conspiracy theory I heard about a few years ago. From what I recall the bases was that the government (or simply those in power) wants to keep the masses uneducated, because an uneducated populous is easier to control and manipulate to your will.
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I feel really stupid now.
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@Dashrender Look back to the turn of the last century, public schools were designed that way intentionally in order to have a workforce for the modern industrial movement.
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Bill, how did you come to that conclusion from that link?
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@Dashrender said:
This leads right into a conspiracy theory I heard about a few years ago. From what I recall the bases was that the government (or simply those in power) wants to keep the masses uneducated, because an uneducated populous is easier to control and manipulate to your will.
If you categorize common knowledge as conspiracy.
Actually I've always heard it more that public education is designed to make factory workers.
Webster was not a conspiracy. Just a guy who associated ignorance with nationalism.
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@Dashrender said:
Bill, how did you come to that conclusion from that link?
No idea about the link but I was taught this in school.
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And I've actually taken a study of sociology of factory workers
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@Dashrender said:
Bill, how did you come to that conclusion from that link?
Talk to enough homeschoolers / opponents of Common Core and you will hear reference to it often. The way our education system was setup was to teach you what to think and not how to think. John Taylor Gatto's books detail what's wrong, from a teacher's perspective who actually quit the public school system in disgust.
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@Dashrender said:
Bill, how did you come to that conclusion from that link?
It was also about the "keeping the masses uneducated so they are easier to manipulate" statement that made me think about it.
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Gotcha.. both of ya's..
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@scottalanmiller said:
Canadians actually believe all Americans are illiterate. Thanks Noah.
This made me giggle. It also made me realize (realise) what a pain in the butt teaching spelling is going to be. "sigh* I'm aware of a lot of the common English vs. 'Merican spelling differences, but there are plenty that are under my spelldar. If we were planning to just live in the USA it would be one thing, but since we are planning to live all over the world, it matters.
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@Dominica It matters for any career, like IT, where one is exposed to people from other places and increasingly as we face the "world is flat" situation more and more careers are continuously exposed to people educated in places with stricter English rules than the US such as England, Ireland, Scotland (if the vote passes in a few weeks), Wales, India, Australia, Canada, Nigeria, Belize, Pakistan, Hong Kong and others. Any interaction with anyone from any of those places or anyone educated in any of those places puts 'Merican English writers at a disadvantage.
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@scottalanmiller Okay, okay. I'll stop whining and just teach both.
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American English is so common in the UK and Hong Kong that I sometimes use it myself over proper English. I doubt anyone would be at a disadvantage using American English in the UK, and definitely not in Hong Kong. Most of the people I work with can't spell anyway, so wouldn't even notice.
The fact is, American English is the standard language of the world. Even my kids use it as they watch so much American telly. I'm constantly having to tell my kids not to use the word 'lame' because it's so American.
It did annoy me slightly when a couple of people on Spiceworks suggested we should all start spelling virtualisation with a 'z' because that was the standard spelling though. Countries have gone to war over less!
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@Carnival-Boy said:
American English is so common in the UK and Hong Kong that I sometimes use it myself over proper English. I doubt anyone would be at a disadvantage using American English in the UK, and definitely not in Hong Kong. Most of the people I work with can't spell anyway, so wouldn't even notice.
The fact is, American English is the standard language of the world. Even my kids use it as they watch so much American telly. I'm constantly having to tell my kids not to use the word 'lame' because it's so American.
It did annoy me slightly when a couple of people on Spiceworks suggested we should all start spelling virtualisation with a 'z' because that was the standard spelling though. Countries have gone to war over less!
only recently has my spell check started suggesting "s" over "z". Phonetically it sounds different, at least to me.
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Did you switch which spell check you were using?
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I am also on a mission to train myself to properly use the complete alphabet rather than just the 26 letters that they teach in elementary school in the US. Like ash æ and œ which are actually semi-common English letters.
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@scottalanmiller Examples?
