On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 1:39 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > Whereas the comparatively small differences between British and American > English are all the more important because they distinguish the two. Nobody > is ever going to mistake Finland and the Finish people for Americans, even > if you learn to speak American English. But for Britons to use American > English is, in a way, to cease to be Britons at all.
Which, I suspect, is part of why the pound is still alive and well, and hasn't been replaced with the euro. Maybe some other countries don't mind becoming the United States of Europe, but the British resist the encroachment, and rightly so. > ... a mass or uncountable noun, like air[3], milk, music and > housework. You cannot have "three milks", you have to add some sort of unit > to it: three litres of milk... And yet, oddly enough, you wouldn't bat an eyelid if someone asks for "two sugars" in his tea. Or his hot chocolate... mmm, time for me to go make myself one, I think. Two sugars, a splosh of milk, caramel hot chocolate powder, and butter. Not "one butter", because that concept doesn't exist, but very definitely "two sugars", because the sugar comes in discrete units. (Not "discreet units", mind, although I do trust my sugar not to blab about the sorts of drinks I put it in.) > [1] Yes, I watch as many American movies and television shows as the next > guy. I'm allowed to take the parts of their culture I approve of and reject > the parts I don't. Part of resisting monoculture is accepting other people's cultures, not just sticking with your own. Embracing that difference. So go ahead: Watch "McHale's Navy" and "Yes Minister", and appreciate the comedy of both - decide for yourself which one you find more to your liking, but know that they both exist, and they represent different styles. (Aside: Even in an American TV show like Once Upon A Time, it's possible for non-American accents to be welcomed. Belle is played by an Aussie, and her distinctive accent is commented on in-universe. Somehow, she picked up an accent that's completely different from her father's and her mother's, but is its own particular style and speech. Maybe she learned the accent from one of her books.) We embrace Unicode in Python 3 because it allows us to welcome Russian, Icelandic, Arabic, and Chinese programmers and allow them to write variable names in their own languages, using their own scripts (or, in the case of Icelandic, a script very similar to ours but with a few additional letters). We should equally embrace American and British English - and Indian English, and Australian English, and any other variant that people want to code in. You want to write your code in North-East Scots? Sure. You want to write your code in Gaelic? No problem (though personally, I prefer garlic to Gaelic). You want to use "colour" instead of "color"? Also not a problem, and should be easy enough for someone to understand who normally spells it the other way. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list