
The ‘-ize’ have it (2012) - Lammy
http://www.metadyne.co.uk/ize.html
======
vr46
I decided that I would use ‘ize’ endings about 23 years ago, and I was in good
company as many newspapers did so too. Oxford Spelling, as it is known
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling))
has fallen out of favour in domestic use, but is still found in international
use, as my own observation.

On my own choice, I felt that there were not enough ‘Z’s in everyday writing,
and that it was too good a letter to ignore.

It is bloody annoying that device dictionaries do not support this. I have
occasionally switched to US English but this is not quite right. Knowing the
correct suffix is a bit of a minefield.

~~~
MattBlissett
Some of the international use might be because the United Nations uses Oxford
spelling [1]. My employer does too.

GNU Aspell has several variants of "British English", including "British
English (United Kingdom) [-ize suffixes and with accents]". KDE seems to use
the same dictionary, so in KDE applications I have full support for "Oxford
spelling".

There's a Firefox extension which includes -ize endings, but also includes
-ise endings, so it's less useful.

[1] [http://dd.dgacm.org/editorialmanual/ed-
guidelines/style/spel...](http://dd.dgacm.org/editorialmanual/ed-
guidelines/style/spelling.htm)

[2] [http://aspell.net/](http://aspell.net/)

[3] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/british-
engli...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/british-english-
dictionary-2/)

~~~
vr46
Not all of the ise/ize endings are interchangable, so the Firefox extension
might be correct. -ize is only applicable for words with a Greek root, I
believe, which is why choosing Oxford English was hardly a masterstroke on my
part but it does make things more interesting.

I have little experience of Aspell short of seeing it pop up as a dependency
now and then, but I will now try and attempt incorporating it into my Mac's
dictionary, ideally it would work on iOS as well.

~~~
MattBlissett
The Firefox extension includes both versions, so I see a red underline for
advertize (usage is archaic), but not for either realize or realise.

    
    
      aspell -d en_GB-ize-w_accents list < file-to-check

is the command to merely list spelling errors.

------
yantrams
Whenever I come across these quirks, I can't help but think of how extremely
codified the grammar of Sanskrit(and other Indian languages that are
influenced by it) is to handle situations like this.

Visarga Sandhi is one example comes to my mind. It is primarily used to handle
the negative cases. For example, devoid of people is 'Nirjan' which is built
using 'Nih'(No) and 'Jan'(People), whereas 'Nishchal' which means devoid of
motion comes from 'Nih'(No) and 'Chal'(Motion). I'm not exactly sure but the
rule probably goes along the lines of - When amalgamating "Uh" sound with Hard
Sounds(Ka, Cha, Ta, Tha, Pa) you add a 'Sh' sound as in Nishkalmash, Nishchal,
Nishchinth etc whereas when amalgamating with Soft sounds(Ga, Ja, Da, Dha, Ba)
you add a 'Rr' sound as in Nirbhay, Nirday etc.

You have hundreds of these rules that deal with all kinds of transformations,
sometimes simple rules like Ka => Ga, Cha => Ja etc. and sometimes more
complex rules which are conditional on the consonant sounds that precede the
object of transformation(Namah + Te => Namaste). Lot of them feel arbitrarily
imposed but they just feel right when you say them out aloud.

Here are a couple of examples involving vowel transformations.

Mah _aa_ (Great) + _I_ ndra(Lord) => Mah _e_ ndra(Great Lord) (aa(as in car) +
e(as in kick) => ae(as in vent))

Mah _i_ (Earth) + _I_ ndra(Lord) => Mah _i_ ndra(Lord of Earth) (e(as in kick)
+ e(as in kick) => ee(as in screen))

~~~
tankenmate
In fact the -ise ending is pronounced with a 'z' sound because of French
spelling rules, but since most English speaking people don't learn French
spelling rules they don't realise the etymology and hence (not henka) the
spelling. The rule in its most basic form is either an 'i' or an 'e' before or
after and 's' changes the sound to a 'z'. In a similar way and 'i' or an 'e'
before or after a 'c' changes it into an 's' sound; this is why France is
spelt France but Francaise is spelt Française, the cédille is there to remind
you that the base word has a 'e' after the 'c'. So one could say that the
'-ize' ending may have a more Germanic feel to it. In a similar way "metre"
versus "meter".

When I was in primary school I was taught basic French, German, Latin and
Greek spelling and etymology so that spelling in English would make more sense
(not senze!)

~~~
ferzul
> So one could say that the '-ize' ending may have a more Germanic feel to it.
> In a similar way "metre" versus "meter".

although one shouldn't, since West Germanic didn't have a z sound or a letter
to spell it with - it had become r (hence was/were, where “was” originally had
an s sound and were originally had a z sound).

Later, when Germanic languages developed z again, it has mostly been spelt
with s as in “was”, since it comes from s.

In English no matter the origin of the word, z is spelt s in core vocabulary.
Borrowings from Greek have z but they are mostly learned. If there were no
zoos, z would feel entirely odd.

------
m0nty
> On the whole the ‘z’ alternative has nothing whatever to do with America

I was told that using a 'z' is old-fashioned, and using it or an 's' is
optional - just be consistent. Only recently have I noticed a trend to condemn
it as 'American', and if anything is sure to bring out a rather nasty, old-
fashioned snob in some English people, it's being 'American'. Personally I
cringe at this and quite happily use the 'z' form.

On the subject of anti-American snobbery, one of my friends whom I have known
for over 30 years was adopted by a very old-fashioned English couple and (sure
enough) often had a disparaging word about anything American. When he was
about 20, his natural father made contact with him ... from America! After
things had settled down a bit and he had met his 'new' family, I put it to him
that, you know what, you are basically an American now. Foolish to pretend
otherwise. He's changed his view quite a bit since then :)

~~~
TMWNN
>Only recently have I noticed a trend to condemn it as 'American', and if
anything is sure to bring out a rather nasty, old-fashioned snob in some
English people, it's being 'American'.

Similarly, until 1980 "soccer" and "football" were interchangeably used in
Britain ([http://ns.umich.edu/Releases/2014/June14/Its-football-not-
so...](http://ns.umich.edu/Releases/2014/June14/Its-football-not-soccer.pdf)),
when "soccer" became less popular because of a mistaken belief that it is an
Americanism. Not class reasons, as often claimed; this would be news to the
millions who watch _Soccer Saturday_ and _Soccer AM_.

In the English-speaking world
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(word)#National_usage](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_\(word\)#National_usage)
, "football" is only unambiguously association football in Great Britain. In
Ireland, "football" = Gaelic football or rugby union, and "soccer" is
frequently used. In Australia, "football" = rugby, rugby league, or Australian
rules. In New Zealand, "football" = rugby or association football. In South
Africa, association football is called "soccer" as often as in the US. In
Canada, "football" = American or Canadian football. In other words, among
English speakers Brits are outnumbered—whether by population or number of
major English-speaking countries—in terms of how they use "football".

(Italy uses "calcio", which means "kick". Yet, for some strange reason
Italians never ever get criticized for not calling the sport "football" or
some other language's variant of that word, nor do self-loathingly pretentious
Italians feel the need to call the sport by its "correct" name; strange,
that.)

~~~
senkora
That may be true, but try making Italian food with non-standard ingredients
and the pedantry comes out in full force.

~~~
xxpor
Here's a 40k member Facebook group dedicated to just that

[https://www.facebook.com/groups/2110370665911902/?ref=share](https://www.facebook.com/groups/2110370665911902/?ref=share)

------
rbg246
Well this is intensely disappointing. I shall have to find something else to
be snobby about - I feel like I have been living a lie, I have spent countless
hours changing the dictionary in windows or osx to be UK English just so it
didn't correct me on this. What other spelling idiosyncrasies are there that I
can get on my high horse about?

~~~
throw0101a
> What other spelling idiosyncrasies are there that I can get on my high horse
> about?

Long and short number scales?

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales)

Is "billion" a thousand million (10^9) or a million million (10^12)?
Numberphile video:

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-52AI_ojyQ&t=5m30s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-52AI_ojyQ&t=5m30s)

TL;DR: billion = bi-million = two of 10^6 = 10^{6x2} = 10^12. trillion = tri-
million = 10^{6x3} = 10^18, and not 10^12. _quad_ rillion, _pent_ ….

~~~
dehrmann
What's the point of the long scale? The numbers seem impractically large for
anything other than science (which uses scientific notation, anyway). The only
other time I've really seen "quadrillion" actually used is in with the
Zimbabwe dollar.

~~~
zapzupnz
> What's the point of the long scale?

Conversely, plenty of languages continue to use long scale as the standard
numbering system, and it used to be standard in English. Other cultures and
languages use different systems altogether.

So, let's rephrase the question.

What's the point of the short scale?

~~~
ferzul
You have ignored the questioner's question. Why?

The fact that something has always been done is not a reason to do it again.

~~~
zapzupnz
> You have ignored the questioner’s question. Why?

First, I have not ignored the question. My answer to the question is right
there is _in_ my dissection and rephrasing of the question.

Second, the question as asked doesn’t make sense. Number scales are arbitrary;
there is no ‘point’ for any one scale over another. Long, short, Chinese,
Indian — so long as your interlocutor understands what you mean in the
language and culture in which you’re speaking, neither has any more point than
another.

Which is basically what my comment said, and plenty of people have thus far
been able to interpret that without me needing to explain such.

------
echelon
Despite Mark Twain's joke about the notion of simplifying English spelling
[1], I believe a gradually engineered shift in spelling could reduce the
friction when learning English as a second language.

Our spelling rules are obtuse and absurdly disconnected from the underlying
phonemes. A better system for spelling would have a clear 1:1 mapping between
the graphemes and the phonemes with a simple and concise rule set.

[1] [https://www.plainlanguage.gov/resources/humor/spelling-in-
th...](https://www.plainlanguage.gov/resources/humor/spelling-in-the-english-
language/)

~~~
dang
That wasn't Mark Twain. Since that's "an official website of the United States
government", maybe we should email them. (Edit: I emailed. I wonder if they'll
reply.)

The joke originated as "Meihem in Ce Klasrum" [1] in a 1946 issue of
Astounding Science Fiction [2] by the satirically named Dolton Edwards, and
was reworked into a British variation in a 1971 letter to The Economist [3].
How's that for specific! We had a thread about this not too long ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23587507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23587507)

[1]
[http://www.angelfire.com/va3/timshenk/codes/meihem.html](http://www.angelfire.com/va3/timshenk/codes/meihem.html)

[2] [http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?57114](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-
bin/title.cgi?57114)

[3] [https://lettersofnote.com/2012/05/03/iorz-feixfuli-m-j-
yilz/](https://lettersofnote.com/2012/05/03/iorz-feixfuli-m-j-yilz/)

~~~
echelon
Insightful and entertaining post, dang! This fixes a misconception I've held
for awhile, and albeit a rather minor one, it's important to correct.

Good on being proactive with the email, too :)

------
ealexhudson
"Seise" and "televise" don't look right to this UKian either. To a large
extent, I think this is just a reflection of our education system being very
right/wrong focussed, and these rules get put in place just to ensure there is
a right and a wrong. We don't get on well with maybes.

~~~
anonytrary
American here. Does "seize" actually count? AFAIK "se" is not a word that got
ize'd (as in "incentivize"). I can actually stand "televise" because the base
word "television" uses an "s" after the "i". It looks weird on some randomly
ize'd word, for example, if I want to make up a word for "making something
more like an adventure" I'd say like "adventurize", because "adventurise"
looks super weird.

~~~
ealexhudson
I mentioned it just because it's in the article; I would never write seise but
it does appear to be in the dictionary.

I think British people have more issue with turning words into verbs rather
than the precise spelling - eg we'd never say "to alphabetize" or "to
adventurize".

------
giancarlostoro
> It must be admitted that there are words with a ‘z’ in them that are purely
> American, like advertize

This is the first time I've ever seen anyone spell it like that, does anyone
truly use this form of spelling advertise?

------
meditative
Slightly off topic, but since there are linguists here I thought I'd ask. Does
the word winningest seem wrong to other people? It's such a foreign word to me
that feels absolutely wrong. I only really hear it when watching US sports.

I'm from Australia, where we follow en-GB relatively closely for perspective.

~~~
pacaro
It feels ugly to me, but there doesn't seem to be a concise alternative.

It's usually used to refer to a person's record of wins, as in the coach who
has lead a team to more wins than any other coach, at which point they are the
_winningest_.

He's the...

winningest coach

most successful coach when measured by how many wins

coach with the best win-loss ratio

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
cik2e
“Most winning” would be the correct alternative, with the same number of
syllables although to me it does feel more concise. As an American, I also
hate this made up word.

------
sawaruna
I noticed this lately, I think when getting a new OS installed and making the
dictionary UK English instead of Canadian English, thinking there would be
little difference. The main issues have been with words that may end in an
'ism', e.g. criticize, nationalize, like those mentioned in the post. I've
always spelt (purposely ignoring Canadian version, 'spelled' which I grew up
with) these words with the 'ize' ending but the OS' UK English dictionary is
now always flagging these as wrong, preferring the 'ise'.

~~~
mercer
See, to me 'spelt' just feels wrong, but 'ise' does too. I've found that I
generally lean toward US English, but then they're the weird interactions with
my own language (Dutch) that make me uncomfortable with words like 'aluminum'.

~~~
mathieuh
I am not a linguist, but I do speak BrE natively and to me "-t" and "-ed" are
used in different context. The "-t" ending is used for adjectives ("dinner is
burnt", "that child is spoilt", "it's spelt like this"), and "-ed" is used for
conjugations of the verb ("I burned dinner", "you have spoiled your child", "I
spelled it like this").

I honestly don't care either way, it's a bit jarring to me to see American
spellings of things, and I've done work for gov.uk before where the style
guide says to use British spellings, but I think it's just being obtuse if you
have some evangelical adherence to either way.

~~~
stordoff
Also a British English native speaker, and I'd generally use -t for both
cases, though sometimes I'll use -ed. I seem to slightly bias away from
"spelt" though, possibly due to it having another meaning. I suspect it's
regional, and -ed feels slightly more passive to me (similar to 'it burned' vs
'I burnt it').

~~~
ferzul
I have heard it described that -ed is used more often when the speaker is
conceptualising the time it took, but -t is used as a default.

That would mean “it burned” brings to mind images more like “it was burning”
and “I burnt it” brings to mind images of having something that is burnt.

Neither of your examples are passive btw.

------
ojhughes
-ize is better for scrabble players

------
Lammy
I got on this topic tonight while playing with TeX's word hyphenation
patterns, because the text-hyphen RubyGem responds to both :visualise and
:visualize and I was trying to decide what the canonical one should be in my
codebase :p

    
    
      irb(main):079:0> hyphen.visualise('visualize')
      => "visu-al-ize"

------
DonaldFisk
It's really a Greek vs. French difference, rather than an American vs. British
one. I prefer -ize, but either spelling is acceptable to me.

Being a spelling pedant isn't a good idea, because unless you're an
etymologist, you'll often get it wrong. (Sometimes mistakes even become
Standard English, e.g. "ptarmigan", "sovereign", and "burgle" in UK.) Then
there's the issue of Latin and Greek plurals. If you don't know those
languages well enough, with a few exceptions (e.g. "crises", "phenomena") it's
safer to just add -s or -es to the end of the word in English.

------
SeanLuke
This has happened many times: British spelling or pronunciation deviates in
modern times -- often due to classist tensions special to England -- but then
ultimately the British incorrectly suppose the American way is the
"ahistorical" one.

Another famous one is "solder". Until about 1920, the British universally
pronounced it like the Americans did (derived from the French "souder"). Then
the British slowly revised their pronunciation.

------
throw_away
Heh, this is similar to how the British English accent developed after the
American Revolutionary War, and thus the American accent is closer to
Shakespeare's than that of modern Brits':
[https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-
americans-p...](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-
preserved-british-english)

I'm also amused by all the former commonwealth people who call Americans
backwards for refusing the metric system, yet still quote things in pints,
miles, or, heaven forbid, stones.

~~~
zapzupnz
> all the former commonwealth people who call Americans backwards […] yet
> still quote things in pints, miles, or, heaven forbid, stones.

Only Brits seem to do that. The rest of the Commonwealth and former
Commonwealth nations have fully transitioned.

~~~
ferzul
Canada seems to use a lot of traditional measures. Australians from the
country seem to measure in feet and inches - not just peoples heights. And a
foreigner might think an Australian asking for a pint of beer is asking for a
measure of beer, although a pint is just the name of a size of glass (like a
schooner or pot).

------
gnufx
I'm skeptical of anything with connexions to the wrong university. ["the
universities ... both of them" \-- Sir Humphrey Appleby]

------
Digit-Al
Should this have a (2013) suffix? Interesting article.

~~~
Lammy
I thought the title would be too overwhelming with the already-parenthesized
"(UK practice)" v(._. )v

> Updated 20 May 2012

edit: So this comment makes sense now that a mod edited the title, I
originally submitted it as "The ‘-ize’ have it — About the use of -ise or -ize
as an ending (UK practice)" :)

~~~
nextaccountic
Can't you edit the title? Or maybe dang can

------
m4r35n357
Zeds are cool! Ask the Cornish.

------
laurent92
Cultural point about the joke in the title: It’s a pun on “The AYEs have it”,
the sentence said by the speaker of the UK Parliament when the MPs vote AYE in
majority (Aye = yes in old English). If the opposite, the NOes have it.

Often mistaken for “the eyes have it” and “the noses have it” for first-time
viewers.

~~~
worble
>Aye = yes in old English

I know the south likes to pretend we don't exist, but us northerners still say
it every day.

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
I use it daily. Picked it up when living in the UK's midlands. No londoner has
ever commented on it nor gotten confused.

------
_0o6v
> _London Transport invariably used the ‘- ize’ form in posters and other
> public communications_

There's no such thing as London Transport, it's Transport for London, and they
invariably do not use -ize, they use -ise, as per by their editorial style
guide.

I think if TfL started using -ize on their posters there would be a riot in
the UK.

~~~
DanBC
TfL was created in the year 2000. Before that it was called London Transport.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_public_transport_au...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_public_transport_authorities_in_London)

    
    
        2.1 1933-1948: London Passenger Transport Board
        2.2 1948-1963: London Transport Executive
        2.3 1963-1970: London Transport Board
        2.4 1970-1984: London Transport Executive
        2.5 1984-2000: London Regional Transport
        2.6 2000 onwards: Transport for London
    

EDIT: genuinely confusing why this got downvotes.

The article says this:

> Many of the great publishing houses are happy with ‘ -ize’ etc endings, and
> large, influential organizations such as London Transport invariably used
> the ‘- ize’ form in posters and other public communications, though their
> modern PC-originated material leaves much to be desired.

The article is comparing historic material with modern TfL materials.
Historically, it wasn't called Transport for London, it was colloquially known
as London Transport because 1) that was their branding and ii) the names were
variations of London Transport X.

Branding for London Transport:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Transport_(brand)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Transport_\(brand\))

Here's a poster for London Transport:
[https://serendipityproject.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/jan-8-20...](https://serendipityproject.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/jan-8-2012-thirty-
two-advertising-images-from-the-festival-of-britain-souvenir-
programme-1951/festival-of-britain-souvenir-programme-advertising-1951-london-
transport-executive/)

