A Writer's Journal

Englishes of the World

Englishes of the World

I find myself inspired to put on my teacher hat for a minute, because it seems that some educators - or education systems - fail to teach their students of the places that lie outside their country's boundaries, and their subtle differences. 

I've encountered this lack of understanding and worldliness on occasion in my own work when some young reader feels they must point out my complete inability to spell words such as "colour" or "favourite" or "travelling." Don't get me wrong, I value feedback above all else, but all too often these comments come couched in a tone that's varying degrees of patronizing and rude, and you know, if I really had spelled something wrong or made a typo, I'd suck it up and say thank you nonetheless. After all, I absolutely LOVE when you all help me vanquish errors in my work.

But the thing is, "colour" and "favourite" and "travelling" are not, in fact, wrong or incorrect. Yes, they absolutely would be if I lived in America, where the rules of American English dictate slightly different modes of spelling and occasionally punctuation, but I don't. I'm a Canadian, and a rather proud one at that. I've lived my entire life here and been educated in the Canadian school system, as a result I use Canadian English and I will always use Canadian English unless I am hired to write for an American publication or publisher and must then conform to that standard. (And make no mistake, even though I choose not to use it for my online fiction, I'm just as well versed in American English. I can write and edit competently in either version of the language.)

In some ways, I'm lucky. I'm not one of the Wattpad famous, so I don't have to deal with the "OMG, you f-ing can't spell!" comments very often, but just this week a dear friend of mine, whose work is among the cleanest and most polished I've encountered on this site, got Featured, and I got to watch her drown in these criticisms (which is very much what inspired this Writer's Journal entry and this little English lesson).

You see, she's British, and like us Canadians and the Aussies on the other side of the globe, prone to adding Us and double consonants into words, but that's no reason to abuse her. Part of what makes Wattpad the cool and amazing place it is, is that we are a collection of writers from all over the planet and, as such, we can learn from each other and explore the intimate workings of language and expressions and colloquialisms from far outside of the boundaries of our own homelands. I remember once having to ask the writer in question what a "fruit machine" was, because that's a slang term we don't use where I live, here we simply call them "slots." And, in that tiny exchange, I learned something and now if I ever write a story set in her neck of the world, I know how to make it that much more authentic via character dialogue or whatever. Of course, I could have freaked out and made a big deal about not understanding what she was trying to get across with her reference to these "fruit machines," but if I had, I highly doubt I would have gleaned that useful new tidbit of knowledge. And as a result, we both would have lost out.

All that said, it's simply not helpful to yell at a Canadian, Brit or Aussie for not using American spellings because, chances are, we're already well aware we're not using them, and in 98% of cases it was likely a calculated decision. So instead of immediately leaping to the snark card (and figuring yourself clever, when in fact you're proving yourself anything but), why not click over to the storyteller's profile and see where they are from? If you are serious about the craft of writing, learning more about the Englishes of the world is only going to give you a leg up. And if you're simply a reader, why rail so hard against it? Is that extra U or that double consonant really ruining your reading experience? Why not dare to allow yourself to get immersed in the slightly exotic versions of the language and the phrases and/or slang of the countries/regions that might show up in a foreign writer's fiction? What do you really have to lose? Heck, you could consider it a trip to a whole new part of the world without the costly investment of a plane ticket.   

Before I end this, I want to talk briefly about the world beyond the microcosm of Wattpad. Add a little real-life career perspective to this mini-rant, if you will. In my day job, I'm an editor at a magazine and since our mag is published out of Canada, our American freelancers are expected to deliver their work in Canadian English. For those of you who eventually attempt to make a career out of writing, you will find that being asked to tailor your work and your words (on a spelling and grammatical level) for a particular market is actually a super common occurrence and balking at it isn't going to help get your work published. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, one of the best things you can do is educate yourself to the different types of English that are out there and develop a basic understanding of the differences between each.

In short: don't fight the diversity; it is, after all, what makes us unique.