
“Theater” vs. “Theatre”: The Great New York Times Language Swap - recycle
http://meta.bitfilter.net/theater-vs-theatre-the-great-new-york-times-language-swap/
======
maxmcd
I think I found another one, and it looks like it swapped twice:
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Aesthetic.esthetic](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Aesthetic.esthetic)

Edit:

Another:
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Archaeology.archeology](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Archaeology.archeology)

A very early switch:
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Toward.towards](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Toward.towards)

Another:
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=catalogue.catalog](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=catalogue.catalog)

And another:
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=centre.center](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=centre.center)

A weaker one:
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=fibre.fiber](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=fibre.fiber)

~~~
snogglethorpe
"Tokyo" replaced "Tokio" in about 1930:
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=tokyo.tokio](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=tokyo.tokio)
["Tokyo" is somewhat closer to the Japanese pronunciation]

"Muslim" replaced "moslem" in about 1988:
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=moslem.muslim](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=moslem.muslim)
[Apparently for good reason:
[http://hnn.us/article/524](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://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=peking.beijing.peiping)

~~~
DanBC
Constantinople vs Istanbul shows a nice clean switch:
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=constantinople.istanbu...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=constantinople.istanbul)

Burma vs Myanmar is messier
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=burma.myanmar](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=burma.myanmar)

~~~
pessimizer
That one is a bit controversial because 'Burma' was changed to 'Myanmar' by
the military dictatorship.

~~~
levosmetalo
Why would that be controversial? State changed it's official name and
newspaper started to call it by its new name.

~~~
cynicalkane
To the Burmese, the word "Myanmar" represents the oppressive and insane
dictator who overthrew a democratic society to institute a communism that
nobody wanted, keeping Burma in the dark ages for decades. One of the
dictatorial general's feats as he rose to power was quashing civil unrest and
rival communist movements among the minority tribes of Burma, and "Myanmar" is
the name of the majority ethnicity. You can understand that people remain a
little sore about the name change.

"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.

------
SixSigma
While searching for my own I tried "computer"

[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=computer&format=count](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 !

------
bane
Corea and Korea

[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=korea.corea.korean.cor...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=korea.corea.korean.corean)

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.

------
itry
Funny, how years get born and then forgotten over time:

[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=2010.2000.1990.1980.19...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=2010.2000.1990.1980.1970.1960.1950.1940.1930.1920.1910.1900.1890.1880.1870.1860.1850)

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.

~~~
acjohnson55
The secondary peaks 2-4 years out are interesting. Or perhaps it's better
conceptualized as troughs the year after. Wonder what the reason is for that?

~~~
jimhefferon
The availability of the substitute "last year" for "2013"?

~~~
itry
Thats clever! The longer a year has gone, the less likely you will say "last
year", "one year ago", "two years ago" and rather go for the years "full name"
like "2014". This could be a reason for the revivals.

------
chestnut-tree
Another difference in usage between British English and American English: In
the US, you go to a movie theater to see a film. Or you go to the theater to
see a play.

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.

~~~
jahewson
In the US you go to a movie theatre to see a _movie_.

------
danieltillett
This is exactly what I have been trying to achieve with my CutSpel Chrome
extension - so far not too much interest, but I might try another submission
in a little while.

[http://www.cutspel.com](http://www.cutspel.com)

~~~
tnorthcutt
I'd argue there's a vast difference between using two different, accepted
spellings of a word, and using a Chrome extension that alters English words,
transforming them into not English words.

~~~
danieltillett
I think you might have misunderstood what cutspel is trying to achieve. This
is the same thing as what NYT did by choosing a different spelling - that is
to reform English spelling through familiarity with a new spelling. It worked
for theater so why not other words.

The text on the page after modification by cutspel is still English - just
more rationaly spelt.

------
JacobEdelman
The word "It" has never appeared in the NY Times.
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=it](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=it)

~~~
maxmcd
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=it.this.that.an.a.thes...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=it.this.that.an.a.these)

------
ghshephard
I could have really used Chronicle in high school english (1987) - I was
constantly getting essays handed back with the accusation that I was making up
words (said evidence being the lack of the words in my English instructor's
somewhat dated dictionary).

"Horrific" was one that always got me in trouble - though, apparently, it is a
somewhat new word.

[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=horrific](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=horrific)

------
marjwyatt
I was just puzzling about this the other day. I live in the USA and I've
always spelled the word as theatre. Only recently, I've noticed that
spellcheck is balking at this.

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.

~~~
toyg
_> It's somewhat comforting to know that my way of spelling the word isn't
wrong_

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_.

~~~
tzs
It's not really accurate to say the US is the one doing the morphing. Before
the early 19th century, both spellings of most of these words were acceptable
in the UK and the US, because these words came into English both from French
and from Latin. It's more accurate to say that the UK and the US, when each
settled on one of the two spellings as standard, chose to settle differently.

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...](http://www.livescience.com/33844-british-american-word-
spelling.html)

------
wyager
These swaps are clearly "non-organic" (i.e. didn't emerge from gradual changes
in colloquial language). Are they the result of a change in editing staff?
Spelling correction software?

~~~
ghshephard
They updated their style guide.

~~~
gpmcadam
Are the style guides updated to reflect the public use of these words? If so,
I imagine if we were to graph the change in use over time in the public would
be a much more gradual and organic one?

~~~
jeffbr13
Yep, as the Google N-Gram view in the article shows, usage of "theater"
overtook "theater" in the late 1970s, but the two had quite similar usage
rates from the 1940s onwards.

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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_%28diacritic%29#English)

------
breakfastKid
In high school chemistry (mid 1990's), I was told that "sulfur" had become
standardised over "sulphur". Seems like this began happening in the mid
70's...
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=sulfur.sulphur](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=sulfur.sulphur)

------
EEGuy
Dropped to 0.02% circa 1878, stayed about there until a slow trend upwards
started in 2012, now at 0.09% in 2014:
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=while.whilst&format=pe...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=while.whilst&format=percent)

------
thelastpizza
Istanbul, of course, used to be Constantinople, but a long time gone is about
1930:
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=istanbul.constantinopl...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=istanbul.constantinople)

------
jacobolus
This was discovered a week ago on Hacker News:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8090272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8090272)

------
wldcordeiro
I've always heard the distinction being that "theater" is general and applies
more to movie theaters whereas "theatre" was more specifically stage plays.

------
itry
"Yesterday" has suffered greatly lately:

[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=yesterday](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=yesterday)

~~~
maxmcd
Looks like saying the specific day is now preffered:
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=yesterday.monday.tuesd...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=yesterday.monday.tuesday.wednesday.thursday.friday.saturday.sunday)

I searched some other rough synonyms of yesterday, but this had the strongest
match.

------
codingdave
While the discussion of language is mildly interesting, I suspect these
changes are editorial decisions, likely caused by staff changes at the paper.

------
dekhn
NY Times used 'cigaret' for 'cigarette' for about a year or so. They switched
back in embarassment.

------
dewiz
on a different angle, "smartphone" first occurrence in 1998, which matches
with wikipedia reporting it in 1997 from Ericsson
blob:[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/d4661696-f25d-47be-8a83-8996420...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/d4661696-f25d-47be-8a83-8996420cb177)

~~~
gpmcadam
Something I've noticed (anecdotally) over the past few years in the USA is the
switch from the term 'cell phone' to 'mobile phone'. Here in the UK we've used
the term 'mobile phone' exclusively I think for the past 20 or 30 years.

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...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Mobile%20phone.Cell%20Phone)

~~~
CamperBob2
Kind of amusing to see the archaic term "wireless" start to recover its
popularity around 1990.

------
JacobEdelman
"He" is and has always been more common than "She".
[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=she.he](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=she.he)

------
Istof
théatre...

------
icantthinkofone
As an aside, my web dev company runs about 10 web sites for theatre companies
and all of them spell their names ending in 're' while the venues they play at
spell their names ending in 'er'.

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.

------
jarnix
booooring

