CompuServe Messages

Dave, I'm a fellow Latin student, also Greek the rmance languages and a bit of German. Did Churchill say we are two peoples divided by a common language? It would be a shame to see the English give way on this. I was taught that the English monarch owned the language and all the ships in the navy. Thats why they say the Queen's English and HMS. BTW, who could officially give up for the English as you have no royal academy. When I read the financial times they use the same spellings and the American edition of the Economist also uses British terms and expressions. The OED lists the American spelling honor, e.g. but refers the reader to the article under the British spelling honour. The OEED notes both spellings were used up to the 1700's and that the 1623 Shakespear Folio uses honor twice as frequent as honour. While British writers were settling into the preferred use of -our ans -re as endings in the end of the 18th, beginning of the 19th century, the American Noah Webster and others aggressively pushed the alternative spelllings for patriotic reasons of establishing cultural independence from the former mother country. No doubt it also helped sell American dictionaries without competition from the London publishers.<g> I have not heard complaints from anyone in Britain that Microsoft doesn't supply a Bitish Lexicon with their product. I would assume the reason they won't supply you the lexicon is because you probably have an American edition which may sell more cheaply than the product they sell in Britain<g>. I would think you should be able to find a third party add-on somewhere. Regards, Tim