Will American & English eventually join up?

[2 sMoKiN bArReLs]

Prompted by another thread about TV licence.

The time that most people see the word licence is when they agree to App T&C. These mostly refer to license.

You can easily see why people get their spelling wrong.

Do you reckon eventually we will join up? It's probably already started (flammable/inflammable, definition of a billion etc)

In many ways the American spelling makes more sense I reckon.

[DaveTheRave87]

Probably not as both languages are evolving.

British English is moving towards the current American English but the Americans are moving too, seeming towards something that can be picked up best by social media algorithms.

[2 sMoKiN bArReLs]

DaveTheRave87 said:

Probably not as both languages are evolving.

British English is moving towards the current American English but the Americans are moving too, seeming towards something that can be picked up best by social media algorithms.

But, are they evolving towards each other?

[tr7v8]

I work for a major American company and even some of our UK people use Murican.
I see adverts on Ebay, FB etc. where cars have tires, breaks etc Not sure if people know better, use US English spell checkers or are just 'fick!

[2 sMoKiN bArReLs]

tr7v8 said:

I work for a major American company and even some of our UK people use Murican.
I see adverts on Ebay, FB etc. where cars have tires, breaks etc Not sure if people know better, use US English spell checkers or are just 'fick!

I don't fink it's people being fick.

If you see the word licence spelled as license on a regular basis (for example) it's easy to think that that is correct.

[JimJobs81]

2 sMoKiN bArReLs said:

Do you reckon eventually we will join up? It's probably already started (flammable/inflammable, definition of a billion etc)

All global English speakers are now communicating with each other million/billions of times an hour- i.e. social media posts. And with the youngsters, mostly on TikTok.

So there is no future American English or UK English, there is only a universal english in which all words that are similar descriptors compete with each other to dominate and exclude the rest.

The new word of the year was announced today by Oxford English Dictionary as Rizz. Which is a shortened version of Charisma used on TikTok to describe men who are smooth at charming women.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/03/arts/rizz-oxfor...

[hidetheelephants]

tr7v8 said:

I work for a major American company and even some of our UK people use Murican.
I see adverts on Ebay, FB etc. where cars have tires, breaks etc Not sure if people know better, use US English spell checkers or are just 'fick!

"Breaks" is wrong on both sides of the Atlantic.

[tr7v8]

hidetheelephants said:

tr7v8 said:

I work for a major American company and even some of our UK people use Murican.
I see adverts on Ebay, FB etc. where cars have tires, breaks etc Not sure if people know better, use US English spell checkers or are just 'fick!

"Breaks" is wrong on both sides of the Atlantic.

I totally agree but I was more demonstrating the scale of the problem.