“Theater” vs. “Theatre”: The Great New York Times Language Swap(meta.bitfilter.net) |
“Theater” vs. “Theatre”: The Great New York Times Language Swap(meta.bitfilter.net) |
Edit:
Another: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Archaeology.archeology
A very early switch: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Toward.towards
Another: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=catalogue.catalog
And another: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=centre.center
A weaker one: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=fibre.fiber
"Muslim" replaced "moslem" in about 1988: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=moslem.muslim [Apparently for good reason: http://hnn.us/article/524 ]
"Peking" was replaced by "Peiping" in 1930, but it was back to "Peking" in 1962, and then finally changed to "Beijing" in 1985: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=peking.beijing.peiping
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Beijing
See also [1]: Bosat Man, Backhill/Peking/Beijing (1990), which is not currently included as a reference in the above wikipedia article.
[1] http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp019_peking_beijing....
Burma vs Myanmar is messier http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=burma.myanmar
http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=calibre.caliber (1936)
http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=manoeuvre.maneuver (1943)
http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=sombre.somber (1929)
Slightly less clear cut but still strong:
http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=goitre.goiter&format=c... (1935)
http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=lustre.luster (1935)
http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=meagre.meager (1927)
Might be interesting to graph all these next to editor or leadership changes, as well as style guide revisions. Or actually, current events, now that I look at some of the years where it's been sharpest.
http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=program.programme
And programme seems to be having a very slight resurgence since 2012.
I imagine that it's simply some NYT writer(s) using the British-English spelling, rather than a wider cultural trend, unless somebody is aware of any other examples?
This was by edict
"The international name Constantinople also remained in use until the Turkish Postal Service Law of March 28, 1930, according to which all foreign countries were asked to solely use the name Istanbul also in their languages and their postal service networks."
I can't run the nytlabs thing because a) windows phone, and b) when I try to enter æ I get another character... (potentially see (a))
http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=cooperation.co-operati...
I thought the change happened somewhere around the 80-90's. Guess it depends on the country also.
AmE: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cooperation%2C...
BrE: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cooperation%2C...
Knuth talks about this in his discussion over "e-mail" v "email": http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/email.html
http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=computer&format=count
Virtually none before 1950 except a strange peak in 1938 of 66. My curiosity piqued I dug deeper to find out it was the name of a horse !
http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=korea.corea.korean.cor...
Some history: "Corea" was more common in the English speaking world for the territory we call Korea today. At some point during the Japanese colonial period, as Japan solidified its ownership of the territory, the preferred spelling in English speaking countries became "Korea". ("Corea" is still used in many other languages and neither the Koreans nor the Japanese use Korea or Corea when talking about the peninsula).
There's a conspiracy theory that one of the cultural suppression activities the Japanese colonial government took part in (along with forcible language conversion and various geomanctic engineering efforts like driving thousands of iron poles into the ground at traditional seats of Korean power and moving entrance gates to palaces to break the flow of Chi) was broadcasting out to the world that "Korea" was the preferred spelling since it put Korea after Japan in alphabetized lists of countries in English speaking territories.
More pragmatically, both spellings were used up until the 20th century. But Korea was relatively unknown in the West outside of mild curiosity. The actual popularization of one spelling over the other seems to be the result of writings on Korea by the U.S. missionary and later consul general at the time, Horace Newton Allen, who exclusively used "Korea" when writing about the country.
This spelling was picked up and at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, the exhibit listed both spellings as correct, but people were generally told that "Korea" was the preferred spelling. Allen was heavily involved in the planning of the exhibit.
On the graph here, you can see that Korea wasn't a topic at all in the NYTs reporting until directly after the exhibition, which seems to have been successful in bringing attention to the country. But the more familiar "Corea" was used until 1897, when it was pretty much dropped in favor or "Korea".
Interest stayed low until the Korean war after which the amount of reporting on the country steadily increased.
http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=2010.2000.1990.1980.19...
There is a little anticipation in the preceding years, then a big explosion in the year itself and then slow decline in the following years.
In the UK, you go to a cinema to see a film. Going to the theatre is understood to mean going to see a play/musical/performing arts.
The text on the page after modification by cutspel is still English - just more rationaly spelt.
"Horrific" was one that always got me in trouble - though, apparently, it is a somewhat new word.
It's somewhat comforting to know that my way of spelling the word isn't wrong and I don't really mind that my country wants to spell it differently.
I searched some other rough synonyms of yesterday, but this had the strongest match.
Comparing some of the social networks is interesting: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=twitter.facebook.myspa...
They didn't change connexion to connection: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=connexion.connection
No pedophile or paedophile before 1986? http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=paedophile.pedophile
I'm vaguely interested about why aluminium has peaks between 1955 and 1970 (although it's always much lower than aluminum) http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=aluminum.aluminium
A couple of words show small peaks from 2010:
It's not as clear as other examples, but you can certainly see a visible trend in the last decade: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Mobile%20phone.Cell%20...
The first time we signed up one of these companies, I asked about the spelling and was given the same history as outlined in the article. With the second company that signed us, we mis-typed theatre and were taken to the woodshed for making the error.
So we are used to spelling it as theatre in the correct use of the word and are surprised the NY Times has not for many years.
It might even be more comforting to know that your way is actually more correct, in a traditionalist sense: the Anglo-French theatre comes directly from Greek théatron (through Latin thĕātrum). Somehow "your country" is bent on morphing the word for whatever reason, similarly to what they are doing to center/centre.
This standardization in the US was greatly influenced by Noah Webster and his dictionary. He tended to go with the spelling variant that fit more with how the word was pronounced. His dictionary was influential enough to make those spellings dominant in the US. Those spellings then came to be seen as Americanisms in the UK (even though they had long been acceptable UK spellings...), and so the UK standardized on the other spellings.
Webster was also an advocate of spelling simplification, and was responsible for dropping the 'k' from 'musick' and 'publick', and those were picked up in the UK.
See: http://www.livescience.com/33844-british-american-word-spell...
(speaking of which, Commonwealth English has a stronger tendency to hypercorrect and create false spellings which actually differ from the imagined root; "foetus" is the classic example, since the Latin root was actually just "fetus")
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/business/international/fun...
EDIT: Another is quoting a report from 1856
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/arts/music/bar-and-bathroo...
On the other hand it's possible OCR is missing some of those ¨ and screwing up the data.
Style guides generally update to represent the editorial team's preferences, to reflect changes in the wider world (e.g. see the comment in this thread about "Constaninople"→"Istanbul", or to make a point (see the New Yorker's continued use of diaresis in coöperation etc.[1])
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_%28diacritic%29#Engl...
"Burma" is an English corruption of the Yangonese word for "Myanmar", but to the Burmese democratic movement--and the many minority tribes--the word represents an ethnicity-neutral name for the entire country.
Even wikipedia still calls the country Burma.
I love this stuff. One thing I miss about no longer working at Microsoft is the site license for OED
Ngrams: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Aesthetik%2C%C...
Random example: http://books.google.com/books?id=7ZpJAAAAMAAJ&printsec=front...