Random memory

When I went to America with my sister (in 1993 or thereabouts), I thought I'd memorise a couple of useful temperature conversions so that I could understand the weather forecast there.

I remembered 20 °C = 68 °F, 25 °C = 77 °F, and 30 °C = 86 °F, and thought those numbers were pleasingly symmetric (68/86, and 77 in between), which should help me remember them.

Of course, that didn't help me in a couple of places I was in during my stay (such as Arizona and Southern California), where temperatures regularly exceed 90 °F :)

You say globalization, I say globalisation

I just came across a comment where someone was annoyed at having to use American spellings when programming due to the fact that many libraries use American spelling.

I can sympathise with not wanting to spell colour as color, but I was less sympathetic when he complained about having to use the spelling Globalization in C# libraries.

As I understand it, the use of the spellings -ise and -isation are considered a UK thing, and are not used (or are less common) in the US. Nevertheless, the converse is not true: that is, the spellings -ize and -ization are not confined to the US, but are in use in the UK as well. I'm not even sure whether the -s- spellings have a majority in the UK.

Besides, if they want to use "proper" and "traditional" spellings rather than "new-fangled" and "alternative" ones, then they should be using -z- anyway; to the best of my knowledge, that morpheme comes from Greek -ίζω via Latin -iz-, so the spelling with -z- is more justified etymologically. (An exception is analyse, which had an -s- [well, a sigma] in the original Ancient Greek; the spelling analyze is, I suppose, by analogy with verbs in -ize.) For that matter, they should also call the chemical element aluminum, which was its official name; the spelling aluminium is a later modification.

As for me, I prefer the spellings colour, globalisation, aluminium, but more because it's what I grew up with than because I think that all those spellings are "more original" or "the only proper British spelling".

"Sie" in German Buffy

I just happened to watch a snippet of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in German and found it rather amusing that Giles and Buffy use Sie to one another. It just seemed odd to me; they seemed more buddy-buddy to me than that.

Ah, the joys of having to translate from a language with fewer distinctions into one with more! (In this case, T-V.)