Spelling and Identity

How do you feel about language?

How do you feel about spelling?

How do you feel about identity? Yours as an individual? Yours as a citizen?

I rarely think about language. And I use it every single day. I speak it. I write it. I listen to it. But I rarely sit down and think about it.

Now spelling. I do think about spelling. Not when I talk or listen, but when I write. I think about it a lot. And not just whether I have spelled something correctly. Although I sometimes think about that quite a lot. For example, if you look at a basic word like ‘the’ for long enough, it starts to look pretty darn strange.

When I most often think about spelling is when I write on international sites like this and even when I write on my own site. I prefer Canadian spelling as it is what I grew up using and I live in Canada. Yet on a site like this, you don’t want to come across as someone who cannot spell. Therefore, the tendency is swing over to American usage.

In Canada, I would argue that American spelling is slowly becoming the new norm. The majority just don’t care. For instance, Canadian books that are being marketed outside the country, you see American spelling, not Canadian. In classrooms you see teachers beginning to spell words like ‘honour’ without the ‘u’. They are teaching the next generation to spell the American way. In a way, that is one small loss of our heritage and our ties to our British roots as a country.

I suppose us Canadians could blame Microsoft Word as the default language for spell check is American. And yes, it is possible to change the language over to Canadian although many people do not know how to change it, plus it never seems to remember that you were serious about Canadian spelling being the new default.

So how about identity? It is said that language is tied to culture and culture to identity. So, am I losing part of my identity? It feels like it. To me, having our own quirks of the language gives me pride. It is a way to distinguish myself from the pack.

I think a great number of Canadians do not care that there is Canadian spelling and do not realize that we are losing it. So what if we stop using all those pesky ‘u’s? What difference will it make?

When I worked as a librarian, I brought in the “Atlas of Disappearing Languages” for the social studies teachers teaching globalization. I’ve been thinking about that book lately. With the globalization of the written word, could Canadian spelling/language now be considered to be disappearing? It sure feels like it.

As for identity, what is the impact of losing our spelling? Will it affect our culture? It’s one of the small things that separates us from American culture.

Will North America become one big box store? Or are we already there?