Conference kaosws::canada

Official dictionary?

Maybe Francophones have an official dictionary, but I know of no body
in any country authorized to determine what an "official" English dictionary
would be.

Free market language, you know.

    To echo John 
    
    Official English Dictionary ??????????  Wuzzat ?
    
    In common usage in Canada ...
    
    . OED (all versions)
    . Webster (ditto)
    . Nelson (which was actually a UK published dictionary republished
        here under the Canadian Publishers name)
    
    Commonly used French dictionary is by Robert
    
    Common French English 
    . Robert (French based)
    . Larousse (French based)
    . Harrap (English based)
    
    
    Stuart

    To add slightly to that, for MOST words in normal usage, and the
    printed media except newspapers and journals and US published
    Canadian works, the generally prefered spelling of most words
    is the UK spelling as derived from OED.  However, there are three
    noteable exceptions ...
    
      aluminum - aluminium    - both are seen, and both pronunciations
                                are heard but US version without the last
    				'i' is far and away most common.
    
      tire - tyre	      - tyre is NOT accepted or seen in Canada
    
      Aeroplane - Airplane    - the use of the UK 'aero-' is rare in Canada
      Aeroport - Airport	(although it has been on the decline in the
    				UK to the point that to use 'aero' now is
    				considered archaic)
    
    Stuart

    Funk & Wagnalls publishes a Canadian Edition dictionary.

    Glenn

    If I'm not mistaken there is a dictionary of the Newfoundland
    dialect in print...maybe someone knows more details? 
    
    Pat

    There is a Dictionary of Newfoundland English.  Mostly, the words are
    older English words that are seldom heard outside the U.K., and
    sometimes not even heard there today.  I have not seen it outside of
    Newfoundland, though.
    
    Glenn

    Re: .0
    
    When I worked in Ottawa a few years back, members of more than one
    Federal Government department told me that the Oxford dictionaries were
    the standard for all Federal Government departments - and the OCD was
    often seen in their offices. How official this was/is I cannot say.
    
    Re: .3
    
    A quick poll of Poms around here (including myself) indicates that the
    archaic nature of aeroplane is greatly overstated. I did get used to
    aluminum, but I seem to suffer brain/mouth interlock problems if try to
    say airplane or 'to-may-toe'.
    
    Re: spelling differences
    
    The most consistent difference between Canadian English and the English
    I have encountered outside North America is the is/iz
    difference (organise, organization etc.). Although organize is the
    preferred OCD spelling, I know very few English speakers from
    Australia, England, South Africa or New Zealand who would spell it that
    way.

    There is another "Canadian" dictionary that now advertises itself
    as the only "Canadian" dictionary, and it is published by Gage.
    The American published Funk and Wagnalls dictionaries are often
    seen.
    
    
    Re ize and ise
    
    As strange as it may seem, OED and "Standard" English prefer -ize
    to -ise most of the time, the difference being related apparently
    to social standing (i.e. class).  While this may once have been
    true, it is no longer.  Most Brits I know now prefer -ise to -ize
    simply because of they believe that -ize is an Americanism, presumably
    primarily because of the widespread use of the verb "to burglarize" as
    opposed to the preferred British verb "to burgle".  Both words were in
    fact "back formed" from burglar and are both of roughly the same
    vintage, so neither is actually better.
    
    
    re Aero-
    
    I have certainly seen aeroplane used a lot in the UK even in recent
    times, but rarely for commercial airplanes.  Aeroport, or aerodrome
    was in occasional use in the UK, but is definitely archaic.  Strangely
    the french word is Aeroport ...
    Stuart

    There are two indispensable tools for anyone writing in Canada:
    
    "The Canadian Style - A Guide to Writing and Editing", The Department
    of the Secretary of State of Canada, published Toronto 1985 by Dundurn
    Press Limited, 1558 Queen Street East, Toronto, Canada M4L 1E8.
    Copyright The Ministry of Supply and Services of Canada - 1985.  ISBN
    0-919670-93-8
    
    and
    
    "Editing Canadian English", Lydia Burton et al, prepared for the
    Freelance Editors' Association of Canada, published 1988 by Douglas &
    McIntrye Ltd., 1615 Venables Street, Vancouver, BC  V5L 2H1.  ISBN
    0-88894-624-4
    
    Also, as an aside, I spent 20 years of undetected crime with the Canadian
    Department of National Defence (DND) for which I wrote a number of 
    scientific papers, memoranda, etc.  The dictionary used in my area of
    DND was The Oxford Dictionary, all 26+ volumes!  However, for obvious
    reasons, my desktop version was The Concise Oxford Dictionary.
    
    Another dictionary that was used extensively in DND was:
    
    "A Dictionary of Modern English Usage" by H. W. Fowler, 2nd edition
    revised by Sir Ernest Gowers, Oxford University Press, 1985. ISBN
    0-19-869115-7 and ISBN 0-19-281389-7 Pbk
    
    The following explanation of Canadian English was taken from "The
    Oxford Guide to the English Language", by E. S. C. Weiner and J. M.
    Hawkins, Oxford University Press, 1985.  ISBN 0-19-281499-0
    Pages 202-203 of Appendix III:
    
    "2. Canada
    
     Canadian English is subject to the conflicting influences of British
    and American English.  On the whole British English has a literary
    influence, while American has a spoken one.  The Canadian accent is in
    most respects identical with the General American.  But where British
    English has four vowels in (i) bat, (ii) dance, father, (iii) hot,
    long, (iv) law, and General American three, Canadian has only two: bat
    and dance with a front 'a' and father, hot, long, and law with a back
    ah-sound.  Peculiar to the Canadian accent is a distinction between
    two varieties of the I-sound and two of the ow-sound: 'light' does not
    have the same vowel as 'lied', nor 'lout as 'loud'.  Canadians
    pronounce some words in the American way, e.g. dance, half, clerk,
    tomato, but others in the British way, e.g. lever, ration, process,
    lieutenant, and the name of the letter 'Z'.  Some American spellings
    have caught on, e.g. honor, jail, plow, program, tire, but many, such
    as in '-er' in words like 'center', single 'l' in 'traveled', 'jeweler', and
    the short 'ax', 'catalog', 'check' have not.  In vocabulary there is
    much US influence: Canadians use 'billboard', 'gas', 'truck', 'wrench'
    rather than 'hoarding', 'petrol', 'lorry', 'spanner'; but on the other
    hand, they agree with the British in using 'blinds', 'braces',
    'porridge', 'tap', rather than 'shades', 'suspenders', 'oatmeal',
    'faucet'...
    ...And as there have been different degrees of settlement by the
    various non-English-speaking European nationalities in Canada than in
    the United States, so the range of European loan-words in Canadian
    English is markedly different, many American colloquialisms being
    unknown.  On the other hand, there are several regional dialects that
    differ markedly from the standard language, notably that of
    Newfoundland."
    
    
    Pat

    What a bag of wind!
    
    8^)

    <<What a bag of wind!
    
    See Guidelines in Note #535.

    I miss Scooter, he'd know how to handle this!
    
    ;-)

    Are you guys griping about the fact that I've left you to throw
    brickbats at one another (as usual) ?  I think I'll start a new
    note ... the official Richardson-Rushton boxing ring!
    
    Stuart

    See Note 539.
    
    Glenn, stop sulking!

    Right! Now you've all done it! I've gone and hung myself!
    
    GAAAAACK!