US Spelling and Dates

Along with the dismantling of our heritage by our own government, we have to contend with the bellicose, egotistical, economic and cultural bully of the US. This is nowhere more evident than in the use of American spellings in Canada. Let’s get this straight. American spellings are only correct in the US. In Canada, we use international English spellings. We spell words with a “U” because that’s how we pronounce them. We mispronounced words like they do in the US then maybe not using a “U” would be an option.

Americans think they can just slap on a Canadian cover to an American magazine and sell it in Canada. Why aren’t they required to convert their spelling to Canadian usage? This isn’t to protect the publishing companies but out culture. It’s the same as having to translate everything on a cereal box into French. Let them translate their broken English into Canadian English.

I once worked for a company that was a call centre for a US cable company. We were given a manual to learn but it was all in US spellings. One of the people learning this stuff mentioned the bad spelling. The instructor was American and snippily said that the spellings were correct. Not in Canada they’re not! In fact, no where outside the US and its empire are they correct. They are US spellings and that’s where they should stay. After only three days , I left that company in utter disgust.

In an attempt to stem the tide of invading US culture, I’ve taken to pronouncing US spelled words in a different way to emphasise that they are not correct. For example, instead of pronouncing “center” as “senter”, I say “kenter”. “Honor” becomes “Hoe-nor”. “Labor” becomes “Lab-or”. If it’s spelled correctly, of course, I pronounce it correctly.

I also object to the backwards American month-day-year method of writing dates. The Canadian government standard is year-month-day. Personally, I prefer day-month-year because that’s what I have to use in my work and it makes sense in a progressive kind of way. It really confuses me to see dates like 02/06/2005. Does this mean the 6^th of February or the 2^nd of June? It depends on where you are and to whom you talk. Filling out forms for jobs, credit cards and so on I encounter lots of variation. There deems to be no standard in Canada. In the US, it is always the mixed up looking month-day-year. In Europe and Middle East, the format is always the simpler day-month-year. As long as it’s different from the US, I’m for it. Anything to distinguish ourselves from them is good.

While we’re at it can we please get rid of the baroque telephone format (780) 555-1212 in favour of something simpler? Since we have to use ten digit dialling now, it would make sense to write the phone number as 780.555.1212, 780-555-1212 or even the European way of 780 555 1212. The brackets are another American imposition and should be expunged.