I approve the registration of en-GB-oed (English, Oxford English
Dictionary spelling)
Michael Everson
everson at evertype.com
Sat Jun 21 19:05:53 CEST 2003
LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM
Name of requester : Michael Everson
E-mail address of requester: everson at evertype.com
Tag to be registered : en-GB-oed
English name of language : English, Oxford English Dictionary spelling
Native name of language (transcribed into ASCII): English, Oxford
English Dictionary spelling
Reference to published description of the language (book or article):
The orthographies of en-GB and en-US differ in a number of ways,
largely due to reforms introduced by Webster. The kinds of
differences are summarized here:
en-US artifact, center, color, esophagus, esthetic, rationalize
en-GB artefact, centre, colour, oesophagus, aesthetic, rationalise
The spelling used in the editorial practice of the Oxford English
Dictionary, however, differs from other en-GB spellings in its
preference for -ize (and deriviatives -ized, -izes, -izing, -ization)
to -ise for words making use of this productive Greek suffix.
The tag en-GB-oed can be used to mark text which, for instance,
should be spell-checked against an Oxford-specific spelling
dictionary, rather than a generic "British" one.
References
From Pearsall, Judy, ed. 2001. The new Oxford dictionary of English.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860441-6:
"The form -ize has been in use in English since the 16th century;
although it is widely used in American English, it is not an
Americanism. The alternative spelling -ise (reflecting a French
influence) is in common use, especially in British English."
From Simpson, J. A., and E. S. C. Weiner, eds. 1994. The Oxford
English dictionary. Second edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press:
"... the suffix itself,whatever the element to which it is added, is
in its origin the Greek -izein, Latin -izare, and, as the
pronunciation is also with z, there is no reason why in opposition to
that which is at once etymological and phonetic. In this dictionary
the termination is written uniformly -ize."
From Friedrichson, G. W. S. 1975. The shorter Oxford dictionary on
historical principles. Third edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN
0-19-861126-9:
"The suffix, whatever the element to which it is added, is in its
origin the Gr. -izein, L. -izare; and, as the pronunciation is also
with z, there is no reason why in English the special French spelling
-iser should ever be followed. Hence here the termination is
uniformly written -ize."
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