Mould or Mold ?

[Autocon]

One is a mold for creating plastic crack, the other is a harmful mould seen on the walls of houses.

Did i get it right?

[dirge]

Mould is “commonwealth” (Including Australian) English.

Mold is American English.

[Autocon]

Ah so the one word means both terms!:o

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

I think 'mould' in Commonwealth English is the verb, not the noun. Except the gross wall-stuff noun that is. For the 'makes-Transformer-bits-when-you-pour-plastic-into-it' I'm pretty sure it's 'mold'.

I could be wrong though.

[dirge]

I think 'mould' in Commonwealth English is the verb, not the noun. Except the gross wall-stuff noun that is. For the 'makes-Transformer-bits-when-you-pour-plastic-into-it' I'm pretty sure it's 'mold'.

I could be wrong though.

Noun/verb is the same in the USA and "commonwealth". It's mould for all contexts here, mold for all contexts in the USA. Akin to colour & color.

[Thurmus]

If you speak English it is Mould. If you speak American it is Mold. Same as Colour. Surprised the Yanks haven't decided to mess with Parkour yet.

[GoktimusPrime]

Confirming what others have said "mould" is English and "mold" is 'Murican.

It's because words like mould and colour came to English via French* so normal English speakers use French based spelling. But French is a Romance language which evolved from Latin, so the Americans use the Latin based spelling. Although strangely enough, we normal English speakers still use the Latin based ~ise and ~isation suffixes which the Yanks have rejected for the Greek based ~ize and ~ization suffixes (which the Romans took from the Greeks).

-------------------------------------------
*During the Norman Conquest when French was practically the official language of England for nearly 3 centuries -- longer than Australians have been speaking English! Consequently over 50% of words in Modern English are of French origin (and many of those French words are of Latin origin). All because some bastard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Conqueror) decided to traipse over and claim the English throne. :)

[BigTransformerTrev]

OK, is it 'grey' or 'gray'? I always get tripped up with that one. I tend to go 'grey' for preference

[Galvatran]

OK, is it 'grey' or 'gray'? I always get tripped up with that one. I tend to go 'grey' for preference
There's a broad spectrum. Like 50 shades.

[BigTransformerTrev]

There's a broad spectrum. Like 50 shades.

Hahahaha!!! Ok, I gotta pay that one :D

[dirge]

OK, is it 'grey' or 'gray'? I always get tripped up with that one. I tend to go 'grey' for preference

Grey is commonwealth. Gray is American.

Surnames aside of course.

[DELTAprime]

I hate the regional differences in English. Screw America and their butchering of the English language.

[GoktimusPrime]

'Strayan = grey
'Murican = gray

[Jetfire in the sky]

I hate the regional differences in English. Screw America and their butchering of the English language.

The simplification of English spelling was a deliberate act by the US, I think it was a good idea imho.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Spelling_Board

[GoktimusPrime]

JitS is correct. 2nd US President John Adams commissioned Noah Webster and other linguists and educators in creating American English. They were determined to speak English better than the English. Part of their reforms included:

Removing clipped vowels and pronouncing all syllables. Hence "library" would become "lye-breh-ree" instead of "lye-bree."
Spelling of some words would more accurately reflect their origins.
e.g. we use the French spelling of "colour" and "honour," but these words originally come from Latin which don't spell them with "u," and so the Americans restored the original Latin spellings as "color" and "honor" (etc.). We use the Latin based -ise/-isation ending in words like organise and civilisation, but this suffix originated from Greek and s so the Americans restored the original Greek "z" spelling, and thus they write "organize" and "civilization" etc.
The Americans also restored the pronunciation of "r" in words, thus the use of Unreceived Pronunciation (which also exists in some English and Celtic accents). English used to be Unreceived but then later shifted to Received. Hence the difference in the way that Aussies and Americans pronounce words like "car."
The Yanks also restored some words back to their English origins if other words in the same category were of English origin. e.g. summer, winter and spring are of English origin but autumn is Latin. It used to be "fall," and so the Americans reverted back to calling it "fall." If we wanted to name all the seasons in Latin then it would be aestivum, hiemal (where we get the word "hibernation" from), vernal and autumn.

I personally don't like American English, and there are parts of their changes that don't make sense to me. Like how they made a lot of different words spell the same but then how do they tell the difference in meaning? :confused:
e.g.
story vs storey; one is a tale, the other is the number of floors in your home
tire vs tyre; fatigued or an inflated rubber tube on a wheel
metre vs meter; unit of length or a device used for measuring things

I also prefer our Franco-Latin based spelling because although many of these words did come from Greco-Latin origins, the historical fact is that they arrived in English via French since French was basically the official language of England for nearly 300 years. Yes, "color" is spelt that way in Latin, but we didn't get this word from the Romans. Not many Latin words entered English during the Roman occupation of Terra Anglica or Brittania -- it was really when the Normans conquered England and there were French speaking kings sitting on the English throne for 3 centuries that French words flooded into the English language (today 50% of English words are from Norman French).

But for me Australian English is also part of my identity so... yeah... refuse to use 'Murican English. Besides, Normal English is more widely used across most Anglophone countries other than the USA whereas American English is only used in the USA. One thing that I found interesting when Beast Wars came out was noticing that they used Normal English spelling in the credits, not American English. Obviously being a Canadian production they used normal spelling for words like "modeller" and "modelling" (whereas Americans write "modeler" and "modeling") etc. In fact, when I was living in Japan and home tutoring English part time to Japanese kids, a Canadian exchange student that I knew showed me how he would take a pen and cross out all the 'incorrectly' spelt American words and corrected them to Standard English! :D And he would explicitly teach his kids to spell words like "color" as "colour" etc. :) I obviously copied his idea. When my students asked me why, I pointed at the cover of their book that would be called 英語 (English). There's a different word in Japanese for Americanese (which would be 米語). I told them that they hired me to teach them English, not Americanese. If they wanted to learn Americanese then they needed to go buy a book that said 米語, not 英語 ;)

[Jetfire in the sky]

e.g.
story vs storey; one is a tale, the other is the number of floors in your home
tire vs tyre; fatigued or an inflated rubber tube on a wheel
metre vs meter; unit of length or a device used for measuring things



This is a really good point, and one I have never thought of; it would especially be hard for people with a NESB to learn. I guess it's a little like live (life) and live (telecast). The fist live breaks the rule of changing the middle vowel sound much like give, but hive then keeps the rule. English and I have never really got along, and I'm actually one of those people who don't mind getting pulled up for repeated mistakes.

[GoktimusPrime]

Fun video: What if English were phonetically consistent? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8zWWp0akUU) ;)

But believe it or not, while that would undoubtedly be a tricky part to learning English, it's not the hardest. Results indicate that for most ESL learners the more difficult parts are Latin and Greek loan words. We find that ESL students pick up words of English (Germanic) origin quite rapidly, but learning Greco-Latin words to be much more difficult. If you ever watch The Great Australian Spelling Bee, you'll find that over 90% of the words are of foreign origin, predominantly Latin. But the fact is that English has become so dependent on the use of non-English words that ESL learners must learn not only English, but a whole bunch of other words from French, Latin and Greek (etc) just to function in English! :eek: Especially if they want to access higher education.

Here's what the opening text for Star Wars: A New Hope looks like with all foreign words "corrected" to English.

A long time ago, in a galaxy^star-set far, far, away...

STAR WARS^WYES

EPISODE IV^FOUR: A NEW HOPE

It is a period^tide of civil war^brothers-wye. Rebel^Upriser space^room'thships,
striking from a hidden base^holdout, have won their first
victory^sye against the evil Galactic Empire^Star-set Rich.

During^Bewhile the battle^hild, Rebel spies^Upriser sleuths managed^were able to to steal
secret plans^dern layouts to the Empire's ultimate^Rich's greatest weapon, the
DEATH STAR, an armoured space station^shielded starhold with enough
power^might to destroy an entire planet^fornaught a whole world.

Pursued^Sought after by the Empire's sinister agents^Rich's evil henchmen, Princess^Firsten
Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian^keeper of
the stolen plans^layouts that can save^spare her people^folk and
restore^bring back freedom to the galaxy^starset...

Click here (http://anglish.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Wyes) to read the entire script for A New Hope in 'pure English.'