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.
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.
> Canadian English has been the standard in government communications for decades. But eagle-eyed linguists and editors have spotted British spellings — like "globalisation" and "catalyse" — in documents from the Carney government, including the budget.
Apparently it was acceptable to use s or z in words like catalyse or analyze in British English until Microsoft Word came out with a British English spellchecker that picked the s spelling as its standard. Whether this is just myth or fact seems to be a point of controversy.
In popular writing, the s forms dominate - I've not heard the MS Word explanation before, but the most popular UK-produced word processors and spellcheckers in the 1980s (eg. Locoscript/Locospell, Protext/Prospell, 1st Word) tended to come from companies in the Cambridge area or which were founded by Cambridge grads, so would naturally have used the s spellings by default.
I'm British, but when submitting papers for blind review, always use American spelling for obvious reasons. I suppose I could change it after acceptance, but that would just be pretentious.
I learned British English starting in the 80s and using s whereas z was used in American English, together with tre instead of ter (eg. theatre), was a big difference. And I can tell you that MS Word back then was just not there so this sounds like an urban legend but let the British people in HN chime in.
No, see (even the new) Fowler's Modern English Usage. British usage is -yse, but right-and-proper Oxford spelling uses -ize, not -ise, for words with a Greek root.
It's not a line that's crossed. It's just the standard in Canada.
In Britain, aeroplanes are made of aluminium and they have tyres. The Ministry of Defence sends them out on manoeuvres in theatres of combat, where the pilots have generally excelled due to regular practice.
In America, airplanes are made of aluminum and they have tires. The Department of Defense sends them out on maneuvers in theaters of combat, where the pilots have generally exceled due to regular practise.
In Canada, airplanes are made of aluminum and they have tires. The Department of National Defence sends them out on manoeuvres in theatres of combat, where the pilots have generally excelled due to regular practice.
"Period" tends to be used in day-to-day speech when referring to the punctuation; you'll hear "full stop" if it's meant to emphasize a previous statement (though not universally), like with "you'll do the dishes, full stop."
Generally, the correct spelling of a word is determined by those that use it. Canadians have used 'colour' for a long time. If enough people start using 'color', that will eventually be the correct spelling in Canada.
Heh, it’s -11C here right now and my thermostat is set to drop to 65F overnight.
Also, with respect to the metric/imperial systems of measurement… officially the government is all metric, but due to the history of it all there will be a bunch of regulations that say things like “the toilet must be at least 228.6mm away from the wall” because the pre-metric standard was 9 inches.
And a final one for the prairies: in the 1800s there was the Dominion Land Survey, which carved us up into 1 mile x 1 mile squares. They did a truly impressive job of it. However, the edges of these squares is where the road allowances are, which means that despite the speed limit being in km/h, you are almost certainly going to be travelling N miles down the highway to get to your destination.
Oh! Didn't know! Is there regional variation in that?
I was forced to unlearn centre when we moved to America in my second grade. But everyone–from Virginia to New Jersey to California–was cool with me keeping analyse and defence.
Nope, he was a Democrat and Republicans and their propaganda outlets like Fox news use the disinfo technique "accusation in a mirror" to discredit complaints about things they plan to do by poisoning discourse early. So they can point back to their bad faith complaints and say "they're copying me" and then the rest of the media just goes "ho hum he said she said." because corporate media doesn't care to actually separate fact from fiction when they can just make boatloads of money from ad views.
So they complained about Obama "destroying presidential norms"
> Carney is the most popular politician Canada has had in decades.
All thanks to Trump's silly tariffs. There's a silver lining to everything. I hope that the association makes protectionism politically taboo for decades to come.
Not in the US, at least. Every administration since at least Bush jr slapped tariffs on a few things here and there, and mostly kept the previous admin's ad hoc tariffs in place.
In more practical places, like Singapore where I live, you'd be right: tariffs are by and large unthinkable.
The tariffs were just half of it, the attacks on national sovereignty were the other, and Pierre being his usual shallow and despicable self on the campaign trail were the third.
If Carney (or almost anyone but PP, really) were the head of the CPC, they'd have had a majority today. But looking at where the party's going, it's doubtful that the CPC will ever again elect a leader who can both read and write.
> I hope that the association makes protectionism politically taboo for decades to come.
That is waaaay too black and white. Trump's actions != protectionism, Trump's actions ⊂ protectionism (and have been stupid). Free trade and globalization has failed most of the world in pretty serious ways (though it's been great for the much of the elite, floating on top of big piles of capital). Protectionism is important, it just needs to be conducted in a smarter way (instead of indiscriminately tariffing everyone all the sudden)
> Free trade and globalization has failed most of the world in pretty serious ways (though it's been great for the much of the elite, floating on top of big piles of capital).
Globalization benefits capital in rich countries and labor in poor countries. As someone who is from a poor and corrupt country, I have seen many people around me come out of poverty due to globalization.
I can agree that globalization can be bad for labor in rich countries.
Edit: Ironically your comment is also waaaay too black and white.
> I have seen many people around me come out of poverty due to globalization.
This is definitely true and Phil Knight of Nike fame even said that without the opportunity to join his slave workforce in Vietnam, those people would be worse off.
> without the opportunity to join his slave workforce in Vietnam, those people would be worse off.
I am not sure if you are being sarcastic here. But without Amazon many people in my country will be worse off, however bad the working conditions maybe.
Yes it is tongue-in-cheek. I know it's a good proposition for the poor people of that country. But it is pretty widely viewed as exploitative through a wider world lens.
I remember Planet Money doing a pretty good story on this where they spoke with sweatshop workers in Bangladesh.
Relative to the labor wage of employees in the US, they were earning absolute pennies.
Relative to the places they came from? They doubled their income and were functionally free from concerns about things like famine and infected drinkable water.
Exploitation of labor is a complicated topic (and really, the meta-fight is, as is so often the case, not between nations; it's between labor and capital. Offshoring is just another form of scabbing, but the world is not yet small enough that one should expect a fresh-off-the-farm factory worker who just had their prospects opened up to join a global strike because people in the US want to make $15/hr).
(Related: As is so often the case, if you want things better for your folks back home, lift everyone out of poverty and make everyone safe. People are less likley to take "slave-wage" jobs if the alternative is not subsistence and high risk of unpredictable outcome due to localized supply disruption, disease outbreak, or war).
Bangladesh is a fascinating case story. They had a few decades of solid growth largely due to the textile industries, yes.
They went from dirt poor to merely poor. That's to be celebrated, and I hope we see Bangladeshis continue making themselves richer through their own hard work.
> (Related: As is so often the case, if you want things better for your folks back home, lift everyone out of poverty and make everyone safe. People are less likley to take "slave-wage" jobs if the alternative is not subsistence and high risk of unpredictable outcome due to localized supply disruption, disease outbreak, or war).
I assume by 'folks back home' you are referring to people who live in rich countries? Having people in Bangladesh and Vietnam become richer is definitely good from a moral point of view, but it has only second order effects on the 'folks back home'. To a first approximation, it doesn't matter economically how well off or poor foreigners are. As a second order effect, if an economy is booming next door (ie they are getting richer), some positive effects often spill over, and global security probably goes up, too.
> Exploitation of labor is a complicated topic (and really, the meta-fight is, as is so often the case, not between nations; it's between labor and capital. Offshoring is just another form of scabbing, but the world is not yet small enough that one should expect a fresh-off-the-farm factory worker who just had their prospects opened up to join a global strike because people in the US want to make $15/hr).
I'm not sure what you mean by exploitation? In any case, labour and capital are working together, you need both to produce anything in a modern economy. In fact, you need labour, capital and land working together.
If you want to get worked up about anything, it's not labour vs capital. But it's labour+capital vs land. In recent decades in the US the share of GDP going to labour has dipped a bit, capital's share has stayed stable, and the share of land went up.
Many economic analyses mix up land into capital. But that's misleading at best. We can produce more capital to compete with the old capital. We can't make more Land. (Well, not until we are building space habitats.)
(By Land with a capital L, I'm including the oceans. The Netherlands (or even more Singapore) reclaiming big swaths of land just means they are converting ocean floor Land to dry Land.)
It's ironic that USA lost 60-some thousand troops in Vietnam trying to prevent a communist takeover, only for American companies just to enslave them all anyway. I wonder how different the dynamic with Vietnam would have turned out if it had been more of a Korea situation. USA certainly never enslaved South Korea.
Huh? What do you mean by 'enslave'? If you mean that people work for low wages in the export sector, well then I have news for you on South Korea.
The reason South Korea graduated to higher wages quicker than Vietnam seems to be doing, is partially because South Korea is more capitalist, so they see more economic growth quicker.
> Globalization benefits capital in rich countries and labor in poor countries.
Globalization is about benefiting capital in rich countries, any benefits to people poor countries is an unintended side-effect.
> I can agree that globalization can be bad for labor in rich countries.
It may seem that way if you restrict your view to say, China, but it's more complicated than that, and there's more to the world than the "developed world" than Asia.
For instance: IIRC, Africa has had problems with local producers getting run out of business by Chinese knock-offs (e.g. https://www.dw.com/en/how-nigeria-lost-its-textile-market-to...), without the "benefit" of foreign sweatshop employment you've seen in Asia.
My understanding is protectionism would probably be better for Africa, as cheap imports block development of local industry and agriculture, trapping it a low level of development.
> China is now competing head-on not just against other advanced economies but the most vulnerable ones. In effect, it is blocking the ladder to prosperity for countries in the Global South.
> Indonesia lost 250,000 jobs in its backbone textile industry between 2022 and 2024 because of a deluge of Chinese imports, according to the Indonesia Fiber and Filament Yarn Producer Association — and another half-million may now be at risk....
> In Thailand, the Chinese export tsunami has precipitated a crisis among smaller firms making car parts, electrical equipment, and consumer goods, stoking fears of deindustrialization. Village-based cottage industries are particularly at risk; for example, makers of hand-painted ceramic “rooster” bowls have been idled en masse by Chinese fakes that sell for one fifth of the price.
> China’s exports to Southeast Asia are now larger than those to the US. Malaysia’s semiconductor industry, a key growth-engine, is feeling the pressure. Electronics manufacturers in the Philippines are struggling. Vietnam has erected tariff barriers to Chinese hot-rolled coil steel products....
> Yet China keeps piling on the trade pressure. Africa is the new hotspot for Chinese exports: In September, Chinese shipments to the continent surged 56% year-on-year. In the same month, shipments to Latin America were up 15.2%. Some of China’s exports to emerging economies, particularly in Asia, are being rerouted to the US to get around US tariffs, but they also compete with local manufacturers in those firms’ home markets, while displacing their overseas sales.
> My understanding is protectionism would probably be better for Africa, as cheap imports block development of local industry and agriculture, trapping it a low level of development.
It's not like protectionism and the government directing economies hasn't been tried in Africa..
>> I hope that the association makes protectionism politically taboo for decades to come.
> That is waaaay too black and white.
We're talking about Trump here: of course it's black and white.
> Free trade and globalization has failed most of the world in pretty serious ways (though it's been great for the much of the elite, floating on top of big piles of capital).
I don't know: extreme poverty has been driven down quite effectively AFAICT:
Wealth inequality dropped after the Gilded Age and post-WW2 until the 1970s (in the US); nothing said it couldn't have been kept down (say, if Reagan was not elected). There's nothing inherent to free trade and globalization that should lead to it if are willing to redistribution (e.g., through taxation and social programs).
> We're talking about Trump here: of course it's black and white.
Trump might portrait things that way, but that doesn't mean we need to analyse anything involving him that way.
> Wealth inequality dropped after the Gilded Age and post-WW2 until the 1970s (in the US); [...]
Well, if you take on a more global perspective: global inequality absolutely skyrocketed until the 1970s and has only gradually been climbing down since then. Numerically, the biggest contributor was Mao strangling the Chinese economy (and people) until his death, and then Deng Xiaoping took over and relaxed the grip around their throats. But outsourcing and container shipping and lower tariffs helped a lot, too. Not just in relation with China, but for everyone on the globe.
I'm sick of portraying the era until the 1970s as some kind of golden age. It was the nadir for most people on the globe in terms of equality, not the zenith.
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').
The first conservative MP to defect said that the caucus has a "frat party atmosphere"[1]. The last MP to defect used to be CIO at Royal Bank of Canada. My suspicion is that the conservatives are being run internally like a boys' club revolving around PP and the Liberals are having no difficulty peeling off MPs who went in expecting a professional workplace. Disaster.
Yes. Additionally, Poilievre's attitude is tone deaf. Canadians are fearful of and anxious about Trump's foreign policy. Most Canadian politicians have been savvy enough to know voters crave a reassuring, united front. Poilievre's combativeness is a bad fit for the current moment.
Peak approval for Trudeau was over 64% - Carney hasn't hit that high water mark yet. Now peak to trough - I think Trudeau probably had the biggest fall.
Using nearly the exact same rhetoric and party platform, with the exception of austerity measures. Only difference really seems to be that he knows how to pass a budget, but hasn't really offered anything substantial in terms of hope to the working age population
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.
Jean Chrétien is the most recent Canadian Prime Minister that I remember a wide spectrum of Canadians liking (and by 2000, not as much). Justin Trudeau appealed many American journalists, but only to some Canadians.
If I missed an obvious politician, I will happily concede.
By gut feeling I’d agree on Chrétien, and there is some polling on this (which I think backs that up). This article compares favourability after first election for PMs going back quite a ways and Carney looks similar but slightly worse off than Trudeau or Harper.
Well then, I concede! To stick to my guns would require us to trade competing survey results from different pollsters. That's no fun, and unsatisfying, in any case.
That is reasonable, and why I conceded the point. Unfortunately, I cannot remember where the notion got into my head, and it's a bigger pain then it might seem trawling search results to find current articles with peak approval for both men.
It's a huge drag to debate this issue because multiple pollsters have published polls of both Justin Trudeau and Carney, and the results are seldom identical. Consequently, there's a lot of research involved both of polls and pollsters, and the end result won't be conclusive.
It is worth noting, polls aside, that the Carney election both finished off the NDP, and resulted in Conservative Poilievre losing his seat. And recently, Conservatives have started crossing the floor to join Carney. Justin Trudeau was popular with Liberals. Carney is generally popular.
Justin Trudeau actually appealed to many younger Canadians as well, until he severely didn't, but that's how he got elected afaik. I don't think the numbers are out yet, but it was largely boomers who voted Carney in, everyone else that I've spoken to under the age of 40 is like "meh", and some regret voting him in after the Liberals' predictable reaction to the Air Canada strike.
Much like the rest of the g7, we have an aging population and a mega generational class divide. Our youth unemployment rate is high, jobs have dried up, it's a shitshow, and Carney hasn't tried to address this much.
So whether he's popular or not needs more context. He'd certainly be most popular with the richest and most populated generation ever, and potentially business owners, but we'll see.
Considering how much government spending goes to the elderly, either directly via programs like OAS and tax benefits or indirectly via healthcare, and it was only a matter of time before young people question their position in it all (higher schooling tuition/debt, bad job market, expensive housing, etc). OAS doesn't even start getting clawed back until personal income is over $90K and is only fully clawed back at $150K! And it's double that for a couple!
The timing of the last election was perfect for Carney when there was a window where the whole country was going WTF with Trump and PP was still railing against various "woke" grievances and mentioning Trudeau by name. The fact that he wasn't turfed after not only losing the election that was his to win, but also losing his seat, is everything wrong with the myopic federal Conservative Party (whose core members refuse to "compromise" with the rest of the country).
There is a real generational tilt happening and young Canadians no longer defaulting to left leaning ways of thinking (not that they ever were as much as people thought).
Yep agreed on all points. I like that there are a few local orgs (GenerationSqueeze, Missing Middle) bringing light to things like the portion of the federal budget allocated to OAS and how it's structured, and generally being real about present day inequities.
Carney will (hopefully) have to reckon with those in the coming year, while Pierre seriously missed a (the?) boat. It does feel like something big is shifting slowly.
> There is a real generational tilt happening and young Canadians no longer defaulting to left leaning ways of thinking (not that they ever were as much as people thought).
It's my impression that the balance between economic prosperity and social good needs to be constantly curated and revered as an inherent virtue of a democracy with strong social safety nets. It's much easier to get working age people to compensate for the ails of generations past if there's no doubt in their mind they'll have a roof over their head next year.
Progressive, often barely tangible issues, necessarily become internalized as luxurious if the people who could support them can't even pay for food.
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?
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?"
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 :)
I never grew up in a British family, or had any sort of close proximity to British things. But I still somehow ended up using "grey", "colour", and "behaviour". They just look more correct.
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.
The reality is quite complicated. Canadian English is a version of North American English, with a distinctive pronunciation and sub-dialect, but still has vestiges of British English that are lost in America.
I feel like Canada is of two minds, awkwardly and indecisively straddling North American English and British English. It wasn’t until I worked overseas that I realized North America has a very distinctive English that imprints on people, even if they lived there a few years. As in Londoners who spent a few years in North America as toddlers have obvious North American tonality, which is baffling to me.
I have native relatives in Canada and the UK and I find the language dynamics across the anglosphere fascinating.
> The reality is quite complicated. Canadian English is a version of North American English, with a distinctive pronunciation and sub-dialect, but still has vestiges of British English that are lost in America.
Does Canadian English still use "gotten"? IIRC, that's a vestige of British English that's been lost in Britain.
What I'm most interested is not usage of "gotten", but whether somewhere in the English-speaking world, using "I've" standalone (without a follow-on got, been, had etc) is normal.
I see it from time to time online, and immediately assume they're a non-native speaker who doesn't understand the nonsensical nuances of the language.
Eg people will say something like "I've 3 apples", which is just "I have 3 apples", which is perfectly gramattical. But, for some reason, we use "I've got 3 apples". But I think we'd also say "I have 3 apples" and not "I have got 3 apples".
New Englander here. Gotten is normal vocabulary. If it's not used in British English, then it's probably a feature of North American English, since most North American linguistic differences are snapshots of common features of 16th-17th century British English that somehow ossified over here.
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.
> "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.
According to Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gaol), gaol and geôle have a common shared ancestor in Old French/Latin. It's not the result of Canada's multilingual nature.
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?
I think they have slightly different meanings where “use” is more direct like a tool and “utilize” is more indirect like a system but that could be more about context than meaning. The words “usage” and “utilization” show this more where I would expect “usage” to be binary or integer and “utilization” to be fractional or percentage. That context and expectation is important for clear writing.
I agree that utilize is distinct from use, in that it makes something useful in a novel way; you might utilize a flat stone to dig, where you would otherwise use a shovel.
But I also agree with GP that many words like this are chosen just to sound more impressive, in the same way that people say 'at this time' instead of 'now.'
This helped me understand what I was getting at so I’ll try explaining again now with that.
The words are typically used in two different contexts, one more professional (utilize) and one more casual (use). The words can be chosen to hint at which context we’re in or shift the context locally if needed.
For example, a story about a group of drunk guys could say that one of them utilized a flat stone to dig, to add humour since we’re clearly not in that professional context.
I'm sure a lot of people would like this to be true, but it's right there in the definition of use: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/use. Anywhere you can use "utilize" you can also equally use "use." One subsumes the other.
Personally, anytime I see the word "utilize" it makes me think the writer is just trying to sound smart or "put on airs." For me it has the opposite effect that the writer is trying to achieve.
As an ESL immigrant, as it happens, I agree with this! Agree with sticking to a "Canadian" spelling. You'll prise the "u" in things like "colour" out of my cold, dead fingers, but just as Canada is a cultural melting pot, so is the language and spelling and the "z" in "utilize" belongs there. We're not British here, we're not 'murricans. This is Canada.
As a native spanish speaker, the "utiliZe" spelling makes it easier for us to learn the word, as it's almost the same as the spanish version "utilizar"
I use American spellings wherever they make sense and don't gratuitously mess with the Latin roots.
Such as "behavior", "neighbor".
But: "centre" and not "center" (it's from Latin "centrum": the R goes after the T, and there is no need whatsoever to revise that.)
The shift to Z in the -ise Latin-derived suffix is not just in American English. European languages are split about it. For instance, let's look at "to synthesize"
German: synthetisieren
French: synthétiser
Dutch: syntetisere
But:
Polish: syntetyzować
Hungarian: szintetizálni
Italian: sintetizzare
Romanian: sintetiza
I think the sound is Z in all of them? It's partly a question of whether the orthography of the language uses S for a Z sound or not. If they don't have that feature in their orthography then they don't have the choice of retaining an S spelling with a Z sound.
> I think the sound is Z in all of them? It's partly a question of whether the orthography of the language uses S for a Z sound or not.
I'm confused here. What you call "the Z sound" in "synthetisieren" or "synthétiser" does not sound the same as "the Z sound" in "sintetizzare", for instance. The letters Z and S both exist in those languages, but they pronounced differently.
> (it's from Latin "centrum": the R goes after the T, and there is no need whatsoever to revise that.)
Why does it matter how it was spelled in Latin? English is not Latin.
In the era of ubiquitous access to dictionaries, I'm not sure the benefits of having spelling reflect etymology rather than pronunciation outweigh the cost.
The first part of my argument is this: the word centrum still has a cognate in numerous modern languages, which use the TR letter order:
French: centre
Italian: centro
Czech: centrum # identical to Latin!
Swedish: centrum
[... numerous others ...]
The "TR" order of the letters in the "centrum" cognate is still alive in modern languages and their orthography, and so is even the "centrum" word itself.
The second part of my argument is that some contemporary dialects of English itself, like British and Canadian, use "centre"; using the "centre" spelling is a contemporary practice, and not a retrogression toward Latin.
The third part of my my argument is that changing "centre" to "center" is a gratuitous change that brings no benefit; it has no redeeming value.
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.
Once there were like 3 police cars and a swarm of people in a neighbours driveway. Someone got shot, I thought, are we turning into America? Turns out a raccoon got stuck in a trash can and they were helping it out.
As a Canadian, we should work on improving our productivity and incorporate more automation and tooling. Whatever impacts our GDP in times of tariffs and economic uncertainty.
Not collectively waste time on the useless debates on how to spell things.
Once got taken to a Canadian shopping mall for books in Canada. There discovered the history of Canada in early-2000's. Now, reading the amusing headline of technology–editing software. This seems there they are now accepting this person; given their change once more? Colour spelled color is fun to discover.
in edits: losing different spellings; loses more than simply identity, helpful parts of language. In 2025, AI* LLM** sure does sound amazing.
* Artificial Intelligence Software ** Large Language Models
Style over substance seems to be the order of the day.
It would be refreshing to see people debate of substantive issues, ones that make a difference. It's a symptom of the broader crises in competence. Our leaders are chosen because they aren't good at anything, so we can only argue about their spelling and word choice.
Come to think of it, why is this in HN and why am I commenting on it? The outrage trap gets me when I let my guard down. It's even come for me here on HN.
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!”
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.
Incidentally, both 'utilize' and 'utilise' are 'code smells' in writing. One can almost always go with 'use' instead which is an older and simpler word.
I worked in Canada for 18 years still have Canadian clients 3 years after coming back to the US, no one bats an eye over whether you use American or British spelling in documents. No one. Ever.
This is more manufactured outrage. I wish the media was not incentivized to amplify nonsense all the time.
I am also based in London. When I work for American companies I attempt to use American spellings in code and documentation, because consistency matters. For general communication I use British English because I won't get American English right, humans and search mechanisms can cope with the difference and I can express myself most effectively that way.
Incidentally, isn't "based out of" mostly an American idiom? I usually use "based on" or "based in" and find "based out of" and "based off" conjure images of poorly constructed buildings. (Don't get me started on "based off of".)
Nice catch! It never made sense to me either, to say "out of" when actually it is "in", quite the opposite. I guess I worked mostly with American companies, while educated in British English.
I think "based out of" refers to the work communication going "out of" where the person is "based in". But still, it is far cry from the natural "in".
If you're Canadian, working in Canada, just use Canadian English. The Americans probably won't even notice, and if the Brits complain, then just point out that you're using the proper English for the country you're in now.
This assumes your company doesn't have an official policy on the matter.
Canada was supposed to have British Culture, French Cuisine and American Technology. Instead we ended with British Cuisine, American Culture and French Technology.
Probably because there's a bunch of English speakers on here from Canada, the US and the UK. TBH I think it made it to the front page because of interesting discussion in the comments, not because of the content of the article itself
as a canadian, i always thought the official canadian spelling was to arbitrarily switch between the british or american spelling of words whenever you felt like it, including interchangeably in the same writing.
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)
My teachers called it British and I kept with it. BC back then was also much more "British" than much of Eastern Canada tbh - most of my classmates either had grandparents or parents who immigrated from the UK or UK dependencies (eg. the Hong Kong exodus after 1998).
As an old-stock Canadian (one side of my family settled in Upper Canada in 1782 because of the revolution, so I have very thick British loyalist roots)...I use British spelling. I explicitly reject the use of American English.
The Official Languages Act doesn't specify which spelling or dialect you need to use for either French or English. There might be internal federal directives on which to use but its not a legal issue.
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.
Everyone should use Canadian spelling as it's the intermediary between both British and USA spelling it makes the most sense for the Americans and Brits to adopt it.
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.
(Yeah, but somebody doesn’t know that.)
Bro don't even joke about that
> Canadian English has been the standard in government communications for decades. But eagle-eyed linguists and editors have spotted British spellings — like "globalisation" and "catalyse" — in documents from the Carney government, including the budget.
My assumption is that any instances of British spelling in the document(s) were accidental.
The petition, otoh, implies that Carney's office has adopted a policy of using British spelling.
The 'new policy' explanation is more surprising than mine.
It makes a difference.
If the conventional explanation is the right one, then this fuss is over a few minor spelling mistakes, as opposed to Carney exercising poor judgment.
In popular writing, the s forms dominate - I've not heard the MS Word explanation before, but the most popular UK-produced word processors and spellcheckers in the 1980s (eg. Locoscript/Locospell, Protext/Prospell, 1st Word) tended to come from companies in the Cambridge area or which were founded by Cambridge grads, so would naturally have used the s spellings by default.
'z' forms are generally used for writing for an international audience, it hasn't really caught on more generally than that.
In Britain, aeroplanes are made of aluminium and they have tyres. The Ministry of Defence sends them out on manoeuvres in theatres of combat, where the pilots have generally excelled due to regular practice.
In America, airplanes are made of aluminum and they have tires. The Department of Defense sends them out on maneuvers in theaters of combat, where the pilots have generally exceled due to regular practise.
In Canada, airplanes are made of aluminum and they have tires. The Department of National Defence sends them out on manoeuvres in theatres of combat, where the pilots have generally excelled due to regular practice.
I've been here for more than a decade and can never figure out the formatting syntax.
See Formatting Options: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
"Period" tends to be used in day-to-day speech when referring to the punctuation; you'll hear "full stop" if it's meant to emphasize a previous statement (though not universally), like with "you'll do the dishes, full stop."
Generally, the correct spelling of a word is determined by those that use it. Canadians have used 'colour' for a long time. If enough people start using 'color', that will eventually be the correct spelling in Canada.
You set the thermometer in C (usually), and cook in F. You can measure in cm or inches.
Also, with respect to the metric/imperial systems of measurement… officially the government is all metric, but due to the history of it all there will be a bunch of regulations that say things like “the toilet must be at least 228.6mm away from the wall” because the pre-metric standard was 9 inches.
And a final one for the prairies: in the 1800s there was the Dominion Land Survey, which carved us up into 1 mile x 1 mile squares. They did a truly impressive job of it. However, the edges of these squares is where the road allowances are, which means that despite the speed limit being in km/h, you are almost certainly going to be travelling N miles down the highway to get to your destination.
Oh! Didn't know! Is there regional variation in that?
I was forced to unlearn centre when we moved to America in my second grade. But everyone–from Virginia to New Jersey to California–was cool with me keeping analyse and defence.
I'd never heard about that until now. Crazy what gets attention. Who cares what color his suit is?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_tan_suit_controve...
So they complained about Obama "destroying presidential norms"
All thanks to Trump's silly tariffs. There's a silver lining to everything. I hope that the association makes protectionism politically taboo for decades to come.
I thought it already was, before Trump. I still can't believe they ended de minimus and tariffed everything.
Not in the US, at least. Every administration since at least Bush jr slapped tariffs on a few things here and there, and mostly kept the previous admin's ad hoc tariffs in place.
In more practical places, like Singapore where I live, you'd be right: tariffs are by and large unthinkable.
The tariffs were just half of it, the attacks on national sovereignty were the other, and Pierre being his usual shallow and despicable self on the campaign trail were the third.
If Carney (or almost anyone but PP, really) were the head of the CPC, they'd have had a majority today. But looking at where the party's going, it's doubtful that the CPC will ever again elect a leader who can both read and write.
That is waaaay too black and white. Trump's actions != protectionism, Trump's actions ⊂ protectionism (and have been stupid). Free trade and globalization has failed most of the world in pretty serious ways (though it's been great for the much of the elite, floating on top of big piles of capital). Protectionism is important, it just needs to be conducted in a smarter way (instead of indiscriminately tariffing everyone all the sudden)
Globalization benefits capital in rich countries and labor in poor countries. As someone who is from a poor and corrupt country, I have seen many people around me come out of poverty due to globalization.
I can agree that globalization can be bad for labor in rich countries.
Edit: Ironically your comment is also waaaay too black and white.
This is definitely true and Phil Knight of Nike fame even said that without the opportunity to join his slave workforce in Vietnam, those people would be worse off.
I am not sure if you are being sarcastic here. But without Amazon many people in my country will be worse off, however bad the working conditions maybe.
If so, I hope we get exploited even more :)
Relative to the labor wage of employees in the US, they were earning absolute pennies.
Relative to the places they came from? They doubled their income and were functionally free from concerns about things like famine and infected drinkable water.
Exploitation of labor is a complicated topic (and really, the meta-fight is, as is so often the case, not between nations; it's between labor and capital. Offshoring is just another form of scabbing, but the world is not yet small enough that one should expect a fresh-off-the-farm factory worker who just had their prospects opened up to join a global strike because people in the US want to make $15/hr).
(Related: As is so often the case, if you want things better for your folks back home, lift everyone out of poverty and make everyone safe. People are less likley to take "slave-wage" jobs if the alternative is not subsistence and high risk of unpredictable outcome due to localized supply disruption, disease outbreak, or war).
They went from dirt poor to merely poor. That's to be celebrated, and I hope we see Bangladeshis continue making themselves richer through their own hard work.
> (Related: As is so often the case, if you want things better for your folks back home, lift everyone out of poverty and make everyone safe. People are less likley to take "slave-wage" jobs if the alternative is not subsistence and high risk of unpredictable outcome due to localized supply disruption, disease outbreak, or war).
I assume by 'folks back home' you are referring to people who live in rich countries? Having people in Bangladesh and Vietnam become richer is definitely good from a moral point of view, but it has only second order effects on the 'folks back home'. To a first approximation, it doesn't matter economically how well off or poor foreigners are. As a second order effect, if an economy is booming next door (ie they are getting richer), some positive effects often spill over, and global security probably goes up, too.
> Exploitation of labor is a complicated topic (and really, the meta-fight is, as is so often the case, not between nations; it's between labor and capital. Offshoring is just another form of scabbing, but the world is not yet small enough that one should expect a fresh-off-the-farm factory worker who just had their prospects opened up to join a global strike because people in the US want to make $15/hr).
I'm not sure what you mean by exploitation? In any case, labour and capital are working together, you need both to produce anything in a modern economy. In fact, you need labour, capital and land working together.
If you want to get worked up about anything, it's not labour vs capital. But it's labour+capital vs land. In recent decades in the US the share of GDP going to labour has dipped a bit, capital's share has stayed stable, and the share of land went up.
Many economic analyses mix up land into capital. But that's misleading at best. We can produce more capital to compete with the old capital. We can't make more Land. (Well, not until we are building space habitats.)
(By Land with a capital L, I'm including the oceans. The Netherlands (or even more Singapore) reclaiming big swaths of land just means they are converting ocean floor Land to dry Land.)
See https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG for the US labour share. I'm not sure if Fred has a graph that drills into the non-labour share and tells you what goes to capital and what goes to Land. But see eg https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_r...
The reason South Korea graduated to higher wages quicker than Vietnam seems to be doing, is partially because South Korea is more capitalist, so they see more economic growth quicker.
Nothing ironic about any of that.
Globalization is about benefiting capital in rich countries, any benefits to people poor countries is an unintended side-effect.
> I can agree that globalization can be bad for labor in rich countries.
It may seem that way if you restrict your view to say, China, but it's more complicated than that, and there's more to the world than the "developed world" than Asia.
For instance: IIRC, Africa has had problems with local producers getting run out of business by Chinese knock-offs (e.g. https://www.dw.com/en/how-nigeria-lost-its-textile-market-to...), without the "benefit" of foreign sweatshop employment you've seen in Asia.
My understanding is protectionism would probably be better for Africa, as cheap imports block development of local industry and agriculture, trapping it a low level of development.
Edit: And maybe the problem is worse than I understood: https://www.semafor.com/article/11/13/2025/chinas-everything...:
> China is now competing head-on not just against other advanced economies but the most vulnerable ones. In effect, it is blocking the ladder to prosperity for countries in the Global South.
> Indonesia lost 250,000 jobs in its backbone textile industry between 2022 and 2024 because of a deluge of Chinese imports, according to the Indonesia Fiber and Filament Yarn Producer Association — and another half-million may now be at risk....
> In Thailand, the Chinese export tsunami has precipitated a crisis among smaller firms making car parts, electrical equipment, and consumer goods, stoking fears of deindustrialization. Village-based cottage industries are particularly at risk; for example, makers of hand-painted ceramic “rooster” bowls have been idled en masse by Chinese fakes that sell for one fifth of the price.
> China’s exports to Southeast Asia are now larger than those to the US. Malaysia’s semiconductor industry, a key growth-engine, is feeling the pressure. Electronics manufacturers in the Philippines are struggling. Vietnam has erected tariff barriers to Chinese hot-rolled coil steel products....
> Yet China keeps piling on the trade pressure. Africa is the new hotspot for Chinese exports: In September, Chinese shipments to the continent surged 56% year-on-year. In the same month, shipments to Latin America were up 15.2%. Some of China’s exports to emerging economies, particularly in Asia, are being rerouted to the US to get around US tariffs, but they also compete with local manufacturers in those firms’ home markets, while displacing their overseas sales.
It's not like protectionism and the government directing economies hasn't been tried in Africa..
> That is waaaay too black and white.
We're talking about Trump here: of course it's black and white.
> Free trade and globalization has failed most of the world in pretty serious ways (though it's been great for the much of the elite, floating on top of big piles of capital).
I don't know: extreme poverty has been driven down quite effectively AFAICT:
* https://www.gapminder.org/questions/gms1-3/
* https://www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/epovrate/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China
Wealth inequality dropped after the Gilded Age and post-WW2 until the 1970s (in the US); nothing said it couldn't have been kept down (say, if Reagan was not elected). There's nothing inherent to free trade and globalization that should lead to it if are willing to redistribution (e.g., through taxation and social programs).
Trump might portrait things that way, but that doesn't mean we need to analyse anything involving him that way.
> Wealth inequality dropped after the Gilded Age and post-WW2 until the 1970s (in the US); [...]
Well, if you take on a more global perspective: global inequality absolutely skyrocketed until the 1970s and has only gradually been climbing down since then. Numerically, the biggest contributor was Mao strangling the Chinese economy (and people) until his death, and then Deng Xiaoping took over and relaxed the grip around their throats. But outsourcing and container shipping and lower tariffs helped a lot, too. Not just in relation with China, but for everyone on the globe.
I'm sick of portraying the era until the 1970s as some kind of golden age. It was the nadir for most people on the globe in terms of equality, not the zenith.
1: https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/is-pierre...
Conservatives have had best showing at a federal election in decades. 41.3% of the popular vote. Over 3.1 million CPC voters in Ontario alone.
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.
That's just blatantly untrue?
Jean Chrétien is the most recent Canadian Prime Minister that I remember a wide spectrum of Canadians liking (and by 2000, not as much). Justin Trudeau appealed many American journalists, but only to some Canadians.
If I missed an obvious politician, I will happily concede.
https://angusreid.org/prime-minister-mark-carney-first-month...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_prime_m...
I'm not an expert on Canadian pollsters, and poll numbers are not a subject of debate for which I have much enthusiasm.
It is worth noting, polls aside, that the Carney election both finished off the NDP, and resulted in Conservative Poilievre losing his seat. And recently, Conservatives have started crossing the floor to join Carney. Justin Trudeau was popular with Liberals. Carney is generally popular.
Much like the rest of the g7, we have an aging population and a mega generational class divide. Our youth unemployment rate is high, jobs have dried up, it's a shitshow, and Carney hasn't tried to address this much.
So whether he's popular or not needs more context. He'd certainly be most popular with the richest and most populated generation ever, and potentially business owners, but we'll see.
The timing of the last election was perfect for Carney when there was a window where the whole country was going WTF with Trump and PP was still railing against various "woke" grievances and mentioning Trudeau by name. The fact that he wasn't turfed after not only losing the election that was his to win, but also losing his seat, is everything wrong with the myopic federal Conservative Party (whose core members refuse to "compromise" with the rest of the country).
There is a real generational tilt happening and young Canadians no longer defaulting to left leaning ways of thinking (not that they ever were as much as people thought).
Carney will (hopefully) have to reckon with those in the coming year, while Pierre seriously missed a (the?) boat. It does feel like something big is shifting slowly.
> There is a real generational tilt happening and young Canadians no longer defaulting to left leaning ways of thinking (not that they ever were as much as people thought).
It's my impression that the balance between economic prosperity and social good needs to be constantly curated and revered as an inherent virtue of a democracy with strong social safety nets. It's much easier to get working age people to compensate for the ails of generations past if there's no doubt in their mind they'll have a roof over their head next year.
Progressive, often barely tangible issues, necessarily become internalized as luxurious if the people who could support them can't even pay for food.
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?
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.
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.
I feel like Canada is of two minds, awkwardly and indecisively straddling North American English and British English. It wasn’t until I worked overseas that I realized North America has a very distinctive English that imprints on people, even if they lived there a few years. As in Londoners who spent a few years in North America as toddlers have obvious North American tonality, which is baffling to me.
I have native relatives in Canada and the UK and I find the language dynamics across the anglosphere fascinating.
Does Canadian English still use "gotten"? IIRC, that's a vestige of British English that's been lost in Britain.
I see it from time to time online, and immediately assume they're a non-native speaker who doesn't understand the nonsensical nuances of the language.
Eg people will say something like "I've 3 apples", which is just "I have 3 apples", which is perfectly gramattical. But, for some reason, we use "I've got 3 apples". But I think we'd also say "I have 3 apples" and not "I have got 3 apples".
Language is weird.
Edit: It appears my conjecture was correct: https://www.sarahwoodbury.com/on-the-use-of-the-word-gotten/
or it's got it's own dialect, which has inherited features from both british and american english but is now evolving on its own.
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headingley_Correctional_Instit... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Gaol+Rd,+Headingley,+MB,+C...
Why is that inexplicable? It would have originally been called that with that spelling.
Fellow Winnipeger here! I remember driving by that sign as a kid and being baffled by that word.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Jail_Hostel
This being said, I would suspect the english word gaol comes from the french word geôle.
But I also agree with GP that many words like this are chosen just to sound more impressive, in the same way that people say 'at this time' instead of 'now.'
The words are typically used in two different contexts, one more professional (utilize) and one more casual (use). The words can be chosen to hint at which context we’re in or shift the context locally if needed.
For example, a story about a group of drunk guys could say that one of them utilized a flat stone to dig, to add humour since we’re clearly not in that professional context.
Personally, anytime I see the word "utilize" it makes me think the writer is just trying to sound smart or "put on airs." For me it has the opposite effect that the writer is trying to achieve.
As a native spanish speaker, the "utiliZe" spelling makes it easier for us to learn the word, as it's almost the same as the spanish version "utilizar"
I use American spellings wherever they make sense and don't gratuitously mess with the Latin roots.
Such as "behavior", "neighbor".
But: "centre" and not "center" (it's from Latin "centrum": the R goes after the T, and there is no need whatsoever to revise that.)
The shift to Z in the -ise Latin-derived suffix is not just in American English. European languages are split about it. For instance, let's look at "to synthesize"
German: synthetisieren
French: synthétiser
Dutch: syntetisere
But:
Polish: syntetyzować
Hungarian: szintetizálni
Italian: sintetizzare
Romanian: sintetiza
I think the sound is Z in all of them? It's partly a question of whether the orthography of the language uses S for a Z sound or not. If they don't have that feature in their orthography then they don't have the choice of retaining an S spelling with a Z sound.
I'm confused here. What you call "the Z sound" in "synthetisieren" or "synthétiser" does not sound the same as "the Z sound" in "sintetizzare", for instance. The letters Z and S both exist in those languages, but they pronounced differently.
Why does it matter how it was spelled in Latin? English is not Latin.
In the era of ubiquitous access to dictionaries, I'm not sure the benefits of having spelling reflect etymology rather than pronunciation outweigh the cost.
French: centre
Italian: centro
Czech: centrum # identical to Latin!
Swedish: centrum
[... numerous others ...]
The "TR" order of the letters in the "centrum" cognate is still alive in modern languages and their orthography, and so is even the "centrum" word itself.
The second part of my argument is that some contemporary dialects of English itself, like British and Canadian, use "centre"; using the "centre" spelling is a contemporary practice, and not a retrogression toward Latin.
The third part of my my argument is that changing "centre" to "center" is a gratuitous change that brings no benefit; it has no redeeming value.
I was a fun bit of trolling that most people didn't notice, could still stay on topic ... but man it triggered some folks.
Not collectively waste time on the useless debates on how to spell things.
So it wasn't overnight, but it was a case of just the right person at just the right time.
This is more manufactured outrage. I wish the media was not incentivized to amplify nonsense all the time.
Incidentally, isn't "based out of" mostly an American idiom? I usually use "based on" or "based in" and find "based out of" and "based off" conjure images of poorly constructed buildings. (Don't get me started on "based off of".)
I think "based out of" refers to the work communication going "out of" where the person is "based in". But still, it is far cry from the natural "in".
This assumes your company doesn't have an official policy on the matter.
Canada was supposed to have British Culture, French Cuisine and American Technology. Instead we ended with British Cuisine, American Culture and French Technology.
A bit touchy, aren't we?
There are much better things to be proud about than using "z" instead of "s" in a few words.
But... this is just the next chapter in Canadian media (ha! it mostly belongs to the southern dictatorship) having a go at non-Trumpish politicians.
Life continues.
This is a nothing burger.
Reading this, I wonder how this became an issue to become big enough to have an article written about it.
Then hearing the justifications about why it might be, in turn, pitting a few characters in text on the canadianness of a politician, or not.
If you can imagine a word processor somewhere writing this, maybe it didn't have it's language set to English (Canada)?
Some folks here have said sometimes it can feel like there might be folks trying to grasp at straws.
Whos face is on the Canadian 20 dollar note?
Put another way, neither Carney nor Freeland has a post-high school degree of any kind from a Canadian school.
British spelling, USA spelling... just pick one and move on.
Ideally all English-speaking countries would go for something more phonetic, but economic power and inertia trumps simplicity.