Specifically, transatlantic spelling.
It always amazes me just how up in arms a certain quarter of the world can get about American versus British spelling. As a Canadian I tend to favour a fair number of British spellings, yes (although you'll never catch me using tyre or gaol since it's not the usual thing around here) and I suppose it's partly a patriotic no-I'm-not-American-thanks feeling as much as anything (and to any of my two fans who happen to be American: no, I'm not anti-American. I'm just not American, and I'm very fond of the little differences between our two countries that make them unique entities), but there's no way that I would get all huffy if someone around here decided to use an American spelling.
Um, let's modify that slightly. I get a bit huffy if one of our staff members uses center rather than centre, but that's mostly because this place has centre as part of its name. It doesn't matter in that case that the actual word is the same no matter the spelling; it's a NAME. It'd be like if you took either my first or last name -- which both, sadly, have a multitude of spellings -- and arbitrarily decided to use one of the alternate spellings because they both sound the same so it doesn't matter. Yes, it does. One spelling would be my name, and any others wouldn't. Same goes for centre when you're referring to a building. If the people who run the building call it a centre, then it's a centre. Full stop.
Having made that exception, I'll say again that I'm not going to get all huffy if someone chooses to use American spellings in their day-to-day existence. There certainly are a lot of people out there who would, though. And there's probably just as many who get their knickers in a twist over British archaisms and extra letters.
It's all pretty stupid.
No, really. It is.
On the one hand it's just an excuse for misplaced snobbery (um... is there a place for placed snobbery?) and we-created-the-language-ism, and on the other it's progress and get-your-head-out-of-the-sixteenth-century-ites. Both sides are ignoring the fact that languages naturally evolve, and English has had a fairly long time to evolve in many different places. Of course there will be changes when language is used in different locales. Different cultures, different educations, different day-to-day lives all lead to different ways to use a language. And if the language doesn't change, then it becomes useless.
So, to any well-educated Englishman who snots about the American use of ass instead of arse being a mistake, let me say stuff it. Americans say ass. The average American ear hears the generalised RP speaker saying ass too, not hearing the elided R and the difference in vowel. Hell, half the time I miss it, and I'm an admitted anglophile. American English has evolved to the point where the word for donkey sounds like the word for bottom. And That's. Not. Evil. Or ignorant. Or anything else but different, really.
And while we're on asses, any of my two fans who are British might be interested to know that in general it's a shock to most of us in North America that when the word fanny is used you're thinking of a very different thing than we are...
Anyway. I'd like to go on and give a stupid example or two from the American English-people-think-they're-sooo-smart side of things to even up the point of view a little, but I really should get back to work. No doubt it'll come up again anyway, because you can't be on the internet without noticing silly stuff like this.
Or at least I can't.
I'd probably get a bit more done if I could, really.
