> On Fri, 21 Aug 1998, Vlad Lungu wrote:
>
> > > :o) English isn't latin. The nearest equivalent would be SerboCroat or
> > > Romanian. Yes well, I hope this thread ends ;)
>
> Cheers,
> Alex.
I'll throw in some info, then promise to shut up.
When the United States declared independence from Britain in
1776, one of the first things the Continental Congress did
was empower Noah Webster (1758-1843) to make a dictionary of
"common language". This was necessary because nobody knew if
we'd ever be on speaking terms with the British again.
Further, since the invention of movable type printing
(Benjamin Franklin was a Printer), there had been an
increasing problem with Printers inventing their own
language. For instance, Printers decided that the "s" was
sufficiently like the "f" so that they could use the same
letters interchangeably. Not good if you want to spell
profession (profeffion) and similar common words.
One of the reasons the common spellings of words like
realise were changed to realize was to prevent printers from
spelling it like realife as they cheated to minimize
(minimife) the number of movable type.
About the same time, Britain's Oxford University decided to
codify their fast-changing language also. Since Britain
didn't have Franklin's Printers to worry about (stiff upper
lip here), they didn't worry about how you would control a
machine that actually wrote these words down. For this
reason, combined letters such as "ae" and "fl" continued in
British English up until the First World War when type-
writers came into vogue. Typewriters forced a considerable
change in British English spelling, although early British
Typewriters had the "ae" letter, one of the diphthongs.
The "Colonies" had already suffered through these spelling
changes by the time the Typewriter was invented.
British Grammar is often different than the American
counterpart. This, too, was the result of the invention and
use of mechanical printing. There were no double-quotes on
the keyboards of early British Typewriters because keys had
to be reserved for common diphthongs. Therefore, the British
use single quotes (') instead of double quotes (") in
sentence structure.
In conclusion, both the British and the 'Colonies' did about
the best they could to keep their languages expanding with
the technology. Not bad. Now if the French would only.....
Cheers,
Dick Johnson
***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
Presidents take credit for good events during their
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