     A SET OF DICTIONARIES FOR AMERICAN AND BRITISH ENGLISH

The dictionary files that accompany this file were adapted from the WinEdt 
English_US and English_UK dictionaries by Patrick Daly. The original two dictionaries 
were compiled by Aleksander Simonic (author of WinEdt) from public domain dictionaries
packaged with the amSpell spellchecker (by Erik Frambach. e-mail: e.h.m.frambach@eco.rug.nl).

The dictionaries are included with Jazzy with permission from Patrick and Aleksander.

The following is the instructions and motivation for using the dictionaries as enclosed with
the dictionaries by Patrick Daly.

--
Anthony Roy (email: home@antroy.co.uk)



What is American and what is British spelling anyway?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are five categories of words in English with spelling variants; the
differences are often referred to as US or UK, but as the table below
illustrates, this is not so clear cut.

I designate the five categories with a representative word from each:
  color/colour
  labeled/labelled
  center/centre
  maximize/maximise
  analyze/analyse
In each case, I give what is normally considered American first, then
the form normally considered British. However, checking with the
Webster's and Oxford dictionaries, one finds that the following are
permitted (the preferred form is given first):

         Webster (US)             Oxford (UK)
          color                     colour
          labeled/labelled          labelled
          center                    centre/center
          maximize                  maximize/maximise
          analyze                   analyse

This shows that we could agree on labelled, center, maximize, and only
need to quarrel about color/colour and analyze/analyse. (This is my own personal style,
where I settle for "colour" and "analyse".)

(Consider the origin of this word. The Latin is "color, coloris", so that
"color" is indeed the true original word. The English "colour" comes from the
French "couleur". The same applies to "honour/honor". More interesting is
"neighbour/neighbor" which is not a Latin root at all, but a Germanic one. It
is related to the German "Nachbar" (literally "the one beside" but which
translates exactly as "neighbour". So why is the "u" there at all? English is
weird!)

More flexibility is needed in the spell checker than that provided by
only two dictionary files.

My solution: 11 files
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have taken UK.dic and US.dic, merged them, extracted the words in the
four categories, placing them 8 additional dictionary files.
    eng_com.dic  (150843 words with no alternative spellings)
    colour.dic   and color.dic   (366 words with -our/-or variant)
    labelled.dic and labeled.dic (326 words with -ell-/-el- variant)
    centre.dic   and center.dic  (85 words with -re/-er variant)
    ize.dic      and ise.dic     (3387 words with -ize/-ise variant)
    yze.dic      and yse.dic     (87 words with -yze/-yse variant)

Six of these files must be loaded each time: eng_com.dic and one of
each pair. One uses the WinEdt dictionary manager to activate as one
pleases. Alternatively, one could use them to make up one big
dictionary of the combination that one desires. I do provide ready-to-run
installations, see below.

There are 32 possible combinations, but I only see 4 realistic ones:
  strict American:   color, labeled, center, ize, yze
  liberal American:  color, labelled, center, ize, yze
  liberal British:   colour, labelled, center, ize, yse
  strict British:    colour, labelled, centre, ise, yse


Patrick W Daly
Max-Planck Institut fuer Aeronomie
37191 Katlenburg-Lindau
Germany
daly@linmpi.mpg.de

2000 March 3
