why is this not one way or the other?
addendum: wow, thanks everyone. I truly never knew it was a British vs. American spelling thing.
Depends who you ask.
We know someone named Gray and a different person named Grey!
Yes
Yes
Gray is the correct spelling 🦅🇺🇸🎆🎸🤼♂️🍖
Ironic coming from someone with wombat in their name 🇦🇺
I’ll tell you a secret: I don’t actually feel very 🦅🇺🇸🎆🎸🤼♂️🍖
E is the European version, A is the American version. This sounds trite, but is true, and makes it simple to know which one to use
Americans spell it whatever way they want.
Yup. Their freedom bone twitches otherwise.
. . . Unless you’re in the majority of the English speaking world, which includes India, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Of course, grey is the appropriate spelling for all of those but Canada, which uses both.
Canadas english is weird
Especially when it comes to measurements (weight, volume, mass, temperature)
What’s wrong with Canada’s weights and measures?
Everything is in SI units.
Unless you’re cooking, where heat is in Fahrenheit, solid measures are in cups teaspoons and tablespoons (but liquids are in litres and weights are in grams).
Or in construction, where you work in feet and yards. Or measuring a person’s height.
But while someone might be 6’ tall, their stride length will be in metres, as will their arm span.
So yeah; simple. It’s not like Canada has tons of people weighing in tonnes.
My in-laws in Quebec get weighed in pounds
Canada said fuck it we use what makes the most sense for the scope and scale at hand. And then cherry picked everything.
Unironically if you get your head out of your fucking ass for two seconds and stop being a fan boy for measurement systems.
Canada has arguably the best worst solution! Its fantastic! And awful! I love it.
Whats the temp outside? -20C eh? Good thing its a nice comfy 80 F in here eh
A “Pint” of beer served commercially in Canada must be 20 imperial (UK) ounces (aka ~568 mL), with a 2.5% margin of error permitted within the law, unlike a US pint (16 US fl oz ~473mL).
Just for fun, “Une pinte” of alcohol in French served commercially is “a quart” of alcohol in English which is double that value.
No need to downvote this comment
Even canadians agree that we have a weird mix of different systems in play
Also depends if it’s someone’s last name… 😅
Canada, which uses both.
Is it Caneda then, or Cenada?
;-)
Australia uses both, but grey is “correct”.
Canada, which uses both
græy /s
“Both” in Canada is Gray and Gris
That looks awesome though
E is English. A is American.
Are you being like pedantic or just trying to make it more simple?
(Otherwise North America and specially the United States has the majority of English speakers in the world, so there is a realistic distinction between U.K. / European English and American English and both are equally correct evolutions of their English roots )
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted either.
To answer your question it’s neither and both. I can appreciate it might seem pedantic from an American point of view, but not from ours. It’s our language, created here and named after us, it doesn’t require the British/European prefix. It is simply English.
American, Canadian and Australian English should have suffixes as simplified variations of the default.
English as in England, the country
it’s a mnemonic to help people remember, not pedantry
This makes the Scottish very mad
I’m sorry.
But the Scottish want to claim something English as theirs? When did that start?
But in certain circumstances, the Europeans will still use it with an a. Specifically, when referring to the color of a horse.
Wasn’t aware of that
I think it’s a USA vs European English thing.
I prefer the ‘grey’ spelling though, even though ‘gray’ is most common in the states.
European English
Is this a thing? Isn’t it just “British English”?
Nah, I think that was part of the terms of Brexit, given more people in the EU speak it than in Briton they get to claim the weird spellings… At least they let the Brits keep there combined use of metric and imperial.
/s if it wasn’t obvious
Yes
It’s pronounced gay ya twats
Depends on where you live. There are American and European spellings for some words. IE color vs colour
I know that this is “no stupid questions” but it boggles the mind that people post in forums when the answer is either yes/no, or a single sentence explanation available in a web search.
we should just not have Lemmy at all and only read news articles, wikipedia and talk to ourselves
I would argue that the purpose of Lemmy comments is dialogue, not for other users to be someone’s dictionary
Okay, I get what you mean about some questions. I don’t think it applies to this post. 50 people commented because they thought it was worthwhile in some way. It’s better than Lemmy being dead. To me, there’s an element of humor and levity to nostupidquestions, somewhat like showerthoughts.
I’m glad you asked. This is something I never realized how often I have brief flashes of curiosity about before I yolo it and never bothered looking up. As soon as I saw the title I was looking forward to reading what people had to say.
Either way is correct.
Gray is a color, while grey is a colour.
I like mixing American and British spells to piss assholes off who have nothing better to do then attack people for their spelling choices.
Its very fun.
Than*
It’s not British or American to just use the wildly-wrong word… That’s just misusing words.
Maybe they actually means “then.” As in after they mix American and British spellings to piss people off with nothing better to do, they attack people for their spelling choice.
So now we have a choice. Did Holytimes mean 1) piss off people who attack others (than), or 2) piss off people and attack people (then).
Does your comment even make sense to you…?
It’s pretty clear. Not sure how you could have issues with it.
You seem lonely
Because I can read? Or…?
We all need hobbies.
Seems you succeeded, keep up the good work!
piss assholes off
piss off assholes
;-)
Split infinitive? To boldly go or to go boldly? If it’s intelligible I’d let it slide - second languages and all that.
*arseholes
*essholas
Gray is the color of aluminum, grey is the colour of aluminium
Fantastic!
Gray in the U.S. presumably because a was cheaper than e for typesetting
Why would a be cheaper than e
They’re both vowels lol
Source: I made it up.
Gray in the US. Grey elsewhere.
grey - 🇬🇧 english (traditional)
gray - 🇺🇸 english (simplified)
gray - 🇺🇸 english (simplified)
grey - 🇬🇧 english (traditional)
gr*y - 🇦🇺 english (explicit)
This is correct, but for some reason in my head I think of gray as warm toned (like with yellow or brown undertones) and grey as cool toned (like with blue or purple undertones).
I have no idea why my brain has decided this is the way.
What?! It’s exactly the opposite, obviously!
You say this, and while I have never considered it in these terms before, it is obviously true to me.
deleted by creator
Fun fact: southern Americans speak English more traditionally than anyone else. The British have fucked up the pronunciation so hard at this point. Their spelling is typically more traditional though, yeah.
Due to brain damage
No, it’s evolved unlike American that had to be simplified for the general population.
People say this a lot but it’s just not true
That doesn’t actually say that it isn’t the closest to a classical British accent. It only says it’s diverged from the modern one. Yeah, it isn’t the same as the classical British accent, but I believe it preserves more of the characteristics than other English accents have. They’ve all diverged, but some less than others.
IIRC, there’s an island that’s very isolated in the US who’s accent is as close as possible to a classic British accent, but it’s a population of maybe a few dozen people, if that even at this point.
