What do you think? Spelling?

Question

Do you think Americans spell these words correctly or the rest of the english speaking world.

Color, colour.

Mom, mum.

And also how they pronounce 'Z' It's 'Zed' Not 'Zee'

And Y'all or Yous

What do you think?

Answer 1

now there's nothing right or wrong about language.

the new view is that language is basically for communication. so if you've got your point across, if the others have understood what you are trying to say, then its fine.

it is almost a credit to English that is has become a universal, language due its versatility & adaptability - even within countries, there are varied nuances - dialects, slangs, multilingual words, etc..

however, one should stick to one form within a paper - ie, if you start with Queen's english then continue with it throughout the entire write-up. it doesn't read well if you keep switching spellings or sentence-structures at will or according your fancy.

Answer 2

It doesn't matter because those of us who speak other varieties of English know what you mean, and as an Australian I'm not going lecture you, because we've made our own modifications, and the principal function of language is communication anyway.

Answer 3

Never judge one American as representative of all Americans.

In the US alone, there are hundreds of accents and dialects.

You named a few.

I don't think about this much at all, unless I am trying to write a dialect or accent in a story... then I have to know where that character is from and really be familiar with how they talk in that region of the country.

Isn't whatever country you're in the same way regarding this?

Answer 4

Color/colour are both correct spelling (American/British).

Mom, mum are very informal, spoken English.

Quite honestly, accents never bother me, as long as one speaks and writes grammatically correct English, that's good.

Believe me, in future, there'll be very little importance given to spelling. As long as the word meaning is clear, nobody would care about spellings :-)

Answer 5

I think mom and mum are just two different words, like mother and ma or whatever. I think for colour and the other ones like that the correct way is with the U...the british way because that's where english was invented. Zed.

I think Y'all is distinctly an American word and they are sort of comparable like mum and mom.

I'm Canadian. :)

Answer 6

okay this is coming from a guy born in america and raised by americans, but who went to a french school for 7 years.  Color, mom, zee, yous

Answer 7

Your language is a part of your culture.  I'm sure there is an "original" way of spelling and speaking the English language, but all languages go through transitions and modifications for that period of time.  English has spread all over the world and as long as people continue to learn it, words will be added and taken away from it as well as pronounced differently and used differently.  Does that make it correct?  Nope. It's just the way it is.  (But I will say, it does make it harder to teach it.)