why is this not one way or the other?
addendum: wow, thanks everyone. I truly never knew it was a British vs. American spelling thing.
Gray is a color, while grey is a colour.
Gray is the color of aluminum, grey is the colour of aluminium
Fantastic!
I like mixing American and British spells to piss assholes off who have nothing better to do then attack people for their spelling choices.
Its very fun.
Than*
It’s not British or American to just use the wildly-wrong word… That’s just misusing words.
piss assholes off
piss off assholes
;-)
Split infinitive? To boldly go or to go boldly? If it’s intelligible I’d let it slide - second languages and all that.
*arseholes
Seems you succeeded, keep up the good work!
*essholas
E is the European version, A is the American version. This sounds trite, but is true, and makes it simple to know which one to use
E is English. A is American.
This makes the Scottish very mad
I’m sorry.
But the Scottish want to claim something English as theirs? When did that start?
Are you being like pedantic or just trying to make it more simple?
(Otherwise North America and specially the United States has the majority of English speakers in the world, so there is a realistic distinction between U.K. / European English and American English and both are equally correct evolutions of their English roots )
Edit: downvote all you want, but I was just asking for clarity
English as in England, the country
Sadly because of learning materials and the media, a lot of mainland Europeans that learn English often learn American English mannerisms. I remember in college there was a girl everyone thought was American to begin with but she just happened to be Spanish.
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted either.
To answer your question it’s neither and both. I can appreciate it might seem pedantic from an American point of view, but not from ours. It’s our language, created here and named after us, it doesn’t require the British/European prefix. It is simply English.
American, Canadian and Australian English should have suffixes as simplified variations of the default.
Only if we’re very inclusive in our definition of “English”.
. . . Unless you’re in the majority of the English speaking world, which includes India, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Of course, grey is the appropriate spelling for all of those but Canada, which uses both.
Canadas english is weird
Especially when it comes to measurements (weight, volume, mass, temperature)
What’s wrong with Canada’s weights and measures?
Everything is in SI units.
Unless you’re cooking, where heat is in Fahrenheit, solid measures are in cups teaspoons and tablespoons (but liquids are in litres and weights are in grams).
Or in construction, where you work in feet and yards. Or measuring a person’s height.
But while someone might be 6’ tall, their stride length will be in metres, as will their arm span.
So yeah; simple. It’s not like Canada has tons of people weighing in tonnes.
A “Pint” of beer served commercially in Canada must be 20 imperial (UK) ounces (aka ~568 mL), with a 2.5% margin of error permitted within the law, unlike a US pint (16 US fl oz ~473mL).
Just for fun, “Une pinte” of alcohol in French served commercially is “a quart” of alcohol in English which is double that value.
My in-laws in Quebec get weighed in pounds
Canada said fuck it we use what makes the most sense for the scope and scale at hand. And then cherry picked everything.
Unironically if you get your head out of your fucking ass for two seconds and stop being a fan boy for measurement systems.
Canada has arguably the best worst solution! Its fantastic! And awful! I love it.
Whats the temp outside? -20C eh? Good thing its a nice comfy 80 F in here eh
What is weird outside is Celsius but cooking is Fahrenheit.
No need to downvote this comment
Even canadians agree that we have a weird mix of different systems in play
Hey at least you’re not still measuring weight in stone. Nothing makes me roll my eyes quicker. Oh you’re ten stone? How neat im 2 boulder and 3 pebble.
Canada, which uses both.
Is it Caneda then, or Cenada?
;-)
Americans spell it whatever way they want.
Yup. Their freedom bone twitches otherwise.
It is spelled grey in correct English. In the USA, they like spelling it gray.
All language is made up. There is no ‘correct’.
Standardisation of language is not pointless. Shared standards serve concrete functions:
- When 8 billion people write “colour” the same way, you don’t pause to decode variants
- Technical manuals, legal documents, medical instructions need precision: ambiguity costs lives
- Cross-generational understanding: Shakespeare’s English is already hard without adding modern variation to the mix
- Standardized spelling keeps homophones distinct (their/there/they’re)
Standardisation of language isn’t about one version being inherently right. It’s about shared agreement that enables function at scale.
And it’s agreed that both Grey and Gray are acceptable variants, and they will be right up until they aren’t for one arbitrary reason or another.
Here to give you a boost away from the downvotes.
Lawsuits are won and lost over grammar and spellings. Constitutional crisis happen over the question: is the text to be understood in the time period of writing or reading (because the meaning of words shifts over time)
Bullshit. Yes there is.
I think it’s a USA vs European English thing.
I prefer the ‘grey’ spelling though, even though ‘gray’ is most common in the states.
Yes
I know it’s an American vs other English speaking countries thing, but as an American I can honestly never remember which one we are. I always used to look it up, but now I just shoot from the hip and assume I’m right, which feels the most American way to approach it.
I think that’s what most Americans do. I don’t think I’ve thought about how to spell it in decades. I just spell it both ways depending on the day.
When I was in high school, a girl passed me a note:
Are you g
ray?Never forgot the spelling ;)
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Gray in the US. Grey elsewhere.
Yes
It’s pronounced gay ya twats
I know that this is “no stupid questions” but it boggles the mind that people post in forums when the answer is either yes/no, or a single sentence explanation available in a web search.
we should just not have Lemmy at all and only read news articles, wikipedia and talk to ourselves
I’m glad you asked. This is something I never realized how often I have brief flashes of curiosity about before I yolo it and never bothered looking up. As soon as I saw the title I was looking forward to reading what people had to say.
I would argue that the purpose of Lemmy comments is dialogue, not for other users to be someone’s dictionary
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Yes
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Gray in the U.S. presumably because a was cheaper than e for typesetting
Why would a be cheaper than e
They’re both vowels lol
Source: I made it up.
‘Grey’ refers to the colour.
But ‘grey’ and ‘gray’ can also be surnames.
