Summary Details
| Query: |
-ise vs. -ize
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| Author: | Zouhair Maalej | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Syntax
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| Summary: |
Dear colleagues, I would like to thank the following people for responding to my query (LINGUIST 9.1839) regarding the spelling of -ise vs. -ize: cwhiteley@tyco.geis.com Dick_Watson@sil.org geoffs@cogs.susx.ac.uk rogers@chass.utoronto.ca jcb@dcs.ed.ac.uk larryt@cogs.susx.ac.uk gcharing@dial.pipex.com sigley@ic.daito.ac.jp Distinction@compuserve.com yasu_watanabe@hotmail.com brutiau@usc.ed Summary The mails I received about -ise vs. -ize could be roughly collapsed into two major classes: ideological and academic. Ideological explanations have centred on the two parties' (American vs. British) persistence in adopting different systems as a way of demarcating themselves vis-a-vis one another (even though this is rather implicit in the way my informants responded). Academic explanations, on the other hand, have focused on etymology (French vs. Greek), tradition (OUP vs. CUP), and newspapers corpora (BrE-NZE-AustralianE). Colin Whiteley (Spain), Vincent Jenkins (UK), and Gaby Charing maintain that the -ise is the standard spelling form in the UK, even though the OED suggested that proposes alternative spellings for some lexical items. Dick Watson, an American who has worked in Sudan and East Africa, pointed to the Americans' inconsistent spelling ("It is unfortunate that American English is not consistent, else I should have written 'surprize'"). Paul Bruthiaux (California) pointed to the rigidity of the American system and the relative recency of the British -ise. I am grateful to Geoffrey Sampson (UK) for correcting my "anaesthesize" as "anaestheTize," and reiterating that I did not say that I was right in assuming that -ise is disappearing from BrE. Henry Rogers (Canada) gave an ideological explanation for the Canadians using -ise instead of -ize "not from a pro-British perspective" as a way of demarcating themselves from Americans. Larry Trask (Sussex) and jcb (UK) invoke that OUP adopts -ize for the morpheme -IZE ("which produces verbs with a factitive or inchoative meaning" in the words of jcb) but CUP adopts the -ise spelling. Trask, however, maintains that the British spell with -ise both the French and the Greek words while the Americans spell them with -ize. Robert Sigley (Japan), relying on data from newspapers and academic writing in both British and New Zealand Englishes, argues that "(a) British (and New Zealand) *newspapers* almost invariably use -_ise_ (over 99% in my NZE data; 98% in a sample of British news articles from 1990-91). Sigley claims that "-_ise_ is also very frequent in most other NZ writings (average for the Wellington corpus as a whole = 87%), though it was less common in BrE in 1961 (average = 62%). Comparing the 1961 and 1990-91 samples of British news articles suggests that there has been some recent standardisation towards -ise in the UK. Peters' (1995) figures for Australian English suggest it's a little behind NZE (possibly because of greater American influence on Australia); (b) British *academic* *writings* often (but not invariably) use the -_ize_ spelling sponsored by Oxford University Press. This convention is based on etymology, rather than on sound, and so is not the same as Webster's -_ize_ spelling convention. Stems of Greek origin get -_ize_ (_anaesthetize_,_baptize_); stems of French origin get -_ise_ (_advertise_, _comprise_)." (Sigley was quoting:Peters, Pam. 1995. The Cambridge Australian English Style Guide. Cambridge; Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.). I would like to thank him specially for attaching a paper in this connection. Yasuhisa Watanabe (Australia) reported a friend typist to have said that "-ize is fading out in Australia because it takes more time to type -ize than -ise. She also mentioned that the similar move is evident in America." Thanks to all again for your help and patience. Zouhair Maalej Assistant Professor English Language Department, Manouba. University of Tunis I <zmaalej@gnet.tn> Fax: +216 1 362 871 |
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| LL Issue: | 10.93 | |
| Date Posted: | 20-Jan-1999 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
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