At least in my experience in early 2000s BC we still used British spelling in grade school and all over Vancouver, the Lower Mainland, and the island (eg. Harbour Centre)
> "So far, bless him, he has not resorted to 'gaol' for 'jail.'"
Some parts of Canada inexplicably used "gaol" for "jail" until fairly recently. For example, the "Headingley Gaol" near Winnipeg. The jail has been renamed to Headingley Correctional Center, but the road to it is still Gaol Road, preserving the linguistic curiosity.
I've never heard anything about a change to British spelling. Sounds like nonsense.
Carney is the most popular politician Canada has had in decades. The opposition party is starting to fall apart (two members defected, which means Carney's party is one seat away from a majority).
Whole thing sounds like an attempt to manufacture an 'Obama beige suit' moment.
The opposition party is falling apart because, despite being a Liberal government, the Liberal party is being a better Conservative party than the Conservatives were while the Conservatives have no platform or plan other than 'Liberals bad, lol' (or, somehow, 'Trudeau bad, lol').
This is as stupid as starting a war over cracking the big end or little end of an egg. Or, using whatever book was about that subject as a spelling style guide.
Getting in bed with Trump was a bad idea. Seeing the right wing in Canada scramble to appear patriotic while everyone knows the conservatives would start a Vichy government.
I agree that Carney should use Canadian English. However, this does not seem like a major enough issue to me, to worry about much, nor is it important enough to fine or sue anyone or anything else like that.
«Use» and «utilise» are not always interchangeable. «The burglar utilised the door to escape» would sound comical at best, or it would have the domain knowledge intrinsic to the forensics.
But «utilise» is almost always interchangeable with «employ», which almost always has the same meaning.
It's a wonder he doesn't use American spelling. Carney went to Harvard undergrad, as did his rival in the Liberal leadership contest to succeed Trudeau earlier this year before the election.
Put another way, neither Carney nor Freeland has a post-high school degree of any kind from a Canadian school.
He spent 7 years (2013-2020) in London running the Bank of England though - as the first foreign head in its 300+ year existence - he would have been very careful to avoid using Canadian/American spellings in official documents - has he just got used to it?
One persistent problem is that there isn't a Canadian English spelling option in most software with spellchecking functionality. Often we are forced to choose between US English and British English spelling defaults, when neither is quite right. I suspect that this was a stylistic choice not of Carney himself, but whoever proofread the document. There has been considerable erosion in Canadian orthography in of late, which has only been made worse with the widespread adoption of UFLI English language learning materials in our schools' elementary curricula, which emphasizes American spelling and pronunciation.
I'm British and I have sometimes chosen Canadian English as my OS language so that it will not constantly try to correct my usage of z in words like this.
Due to my somewhat international career, I had to learn to code-switch between American and British English. My default is American but can do British as needed. Spelling, vocabulary, dialect to some extent, etc.
For a global audience, I find American is the best default. Nonetheless, actual Americans barely notice if you use British English-isms in American contexts. They may notice but no one cares. Everyone knows what you mean. Using British dialect may confuse them occasionally but even then no one cares. Canadians should do what is natural for Canadians.
It boggles my mind that someone from a Commonwealth country using British spelling would even warrant a news article. Why is anyone talking about this?
Where I grew up in the US, in grade school, our neighborhood school in the small city had teachers from both Quebec and Ireland. So we learned non-US spelling first. That caused a pain when I and my friends ended up in high school and had to use US spelling.
But to me, who cares, there was a time ages ago people spelt a word the way they wanted and no one cared. Just look at old documents from the 18th century in the US.
Even decades later, once in a great while, I end up using colour instead of color :)
Pfft. Spelling differences is minor league stuff. Try code-switching on silence.
Pointed out to me by a Kiwi, that Americans take silence after a statement to mean general agreement, but in Britain silence implicitly asks, "Are you _really sure_ you want to be doing that?"
Well you start as the governor of the Bank of Canada for 5 years, then the governor of the Bank of England for another 7. After that you spend about 5 years in private finance. In parallel you spend that time acting as an economic advisor to multiple governments. Then the day comes where a major party needs a new leader, all the existing senior leadership either doesnt want it or is some manner of "problematic" and anyways, its not like they're going to win. Then whaddaya know, turns out Canadians like the idea of someone whose spent their whole life in macroeconomics at a time when global economics are all kinds of fucked up.
So it wasn't overnight, but it was a case of just the right person at just the right time.
He did work in Britain for decades, if I was him I’d just completely own it and say something like “if this is the weak stuff they are trying to get me on I must be doing a great job with things that actually matter. Everyone, especially the people whinging about this, also make mistakes!”
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 77.1 ms ] threadSome parts of Canada inexplicably used "gaol" for "jail" until fairly recently. For example, the "Headingley Gaol" near Winnipeg. The jail has been renamed to Headingley Correctional Center, but the road to it is still Gaol Road, preserving the linguistic curiosity.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headingley_Correctional_Instit... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Gaol+Rd,+Headingley,+MB,+C...
Carney is the most popular politician Canada has had in decades. The opposition party is starting to fall apart (two members defected, which means Carney's party is one seat away from a majority).
Whole thing sounds like an attempt to manufacture an 'Obama beige suit' moment.
This is as stupid as starting a war over cracking the big end or little end of an egg. Or, using whatever book was about that subject as a spelling style guide.
I'd never heard about that until now. Crazy what gets attention. Who cares what color his suit is?
Liberals didn't win majority and it was a close race, I'm not sure where you are getting your data from.
TRUMP managed to change the election results but it was close.
But «utilise» is almost always interchangeable with «employ», which almost always has the same meaning.
Put another way, neither Carney nor Freeland has a post-high school degree of any kind from a Canadian school.
Due to my somewhat international career, I had to learn to code-switch between American and British English. My default is American but can do British as needed. Spelling, vocabulary, dialect to some extent, etc.
For a global audience, I find American is the best default. Nonetheless, actual Americans barely notice if you use British English-isms in American contexts. They may notice but no one cares. Everyone knows what you mean. Using British dialect may confuse them occasionally but even then no one cares. Canadians should do what is natural for Canadians.
It boggles my mind that someone from a Commonwealth country using British spelling would even warrant a news article. Why is anyone talking about this?
But to me, who cares, there was a time ages ago people spelt a word the way they wanted and no one cared. Just look at old documents from the 18th century in the US.
Even decades later, once in a great while, I end up using colour instead of color :)
A "news" article was written, doesn't mean any real people actually care.
Pointed out to me by a Kiwi, that Americans take silence after a statement to mean general agreement, but in Britain silence implicitly asks, "Are you _really sure_ you want to be doing that?"
Try this in rural communities with people who dropped out of college.
Saying "note" instead of "bill" will be noticed.
Same with "petrol" instead of "gas".
Probably a whole list of others.
So it wasn't overnight, but it was a case of just the right person at just the right time.