[OSM-talk] American or british english

[Jo]

Hanno Böck wrote:
> Am Donnerstag 20 Dezember 2007 schrieb Robin Paulson:
>   
>> i presume this is for things like 'The Arndale Centre' i.e. proper
>> nouns (names) of buildings/areas etc? in which case, the spelling is
>> dependent on whatever the owner of the structure chooses.
>> if they spell it 'centre', then it's 'centre'.
>> if they spell it 'center', then it's 'center'.
>> if they spell it 'senterr' then it's 'senterr'.
>> imo we're here to reflect reality, not make political or otherwise
>> statements about the validity of any language or dialect over any
>> other
>>     
>
> ACK, if it's for names, stick to the one which is used there.
>
>   
>> or maybe it's for the name of the actual tag key? in that case, it
>> doesn't really matter - whatever the proposer comes up with. i would
>> hope there wouldn't be any silly arguments over which to use, so long
>> as everyone sticks to it when they map
>>     
>
> I thought about that. I just proposed education_centre, where I thought about 
> it.
> I don't mind either, just was curious if there's some policy.
I believe there should be some policy as well. Since the project started 
in the UK/GB. I guess it makes most sense to use UK spellings 
throughout. Since I'm much more used to US spelling, I usually adhere to 
that spelling. Since I'm not in an English speaking country, I had to 
pick one, so I picked the one which (unfortunately) has more influence 
and a higher population.

I do hope the spelling of the keys is going to remain in one variant and 
not in UK spelling for one set of keys and US spelling for another set 
of keys. That would become extremely confusing and I don't feel like 
having to look up which key is spelled in which spelling variant. So it 
should be all UK or all US spelling, if you ask me. Since it has all 
already started in UK spelling, I hope it will continue this way. If it 
doesn't I'll start proposing to rename all keys in Esperanto. Nobody 
will be able to remember them, but then it's equally hard for everybody 
and at least there is only one way to spell stuff in this phonetic language.


Polyglot