Is it true that Americans call offside offsides?

What the actual ****?

'that isn't a goal, the striker was offsides'
'nah mate, he was onsides when it was kicked'

 

Well they also call aluminium 'aluminum' so... it seems they're all for adding and taking away random letters.

 

Colour....color
Honour....honor

Etc...

 

Apparently Aluminium was us adding an extra letter instead of the Americans removing one.

 

It's a bit more complex than that.
He called it something else originally, something like alumum or something. The. Changed it to aluminum but under pressure from other British scientists changed it to aluminum to match the other science things that end in ium. This all happened in a couple of years or so.

American scientists used aluminium as the spelling as did newspapers that mentioned it but the most popular dictionary misspelled it as aluminum and so some people wrote it like that but aluminium was still the most common, it was only almost 100 years later that for some reason aluminum became the most popular. Possibly because it wasn't newsworthy anymore so wasn't seen in newspapers and so the only place anyone saw it written was the misspelled dictionary.

Aluminium was invented in the early 1800's but it's spelling only changed officially to alumin across the pond between the two world wars.


In short it technically was aluminum first for about 3 or 4 years but was officially changed to aluminium both here and in America for 100 years before they switched back due to so many Americans misspelling it.

 

I blame the Alumni

 

You mean the Aluminiumati?

 

That's slightly different though because phonetically there is no difference, theyve just 'americanised', same way they replace an 's' with a 'z' more often than not.
Dramatise... dramatize
Polarise... polarize etc

 

Well they would say that. I go by the English language, not some Harvard interpretation

 

Back to your original question, do they actually say 'offsides'?? As in 'he was way offsides man, that coulda been the perfect o-ffense (another americanism, swapping the c for the s in 'offence') - we had a kicker right in the hole?' Can any of our stateside contingency clarify this?

 

Red. I think it was the English who changed things around in this case not the USA.

Using Z rather than S was common in England, for many words, right up until the middle of the Twentieth century. Pedants, (and I’m one in the following example) still say S is incorrect and only used by ‘modern trendies’. The word being ‘Authorized’ not authorised. The former being based on Greek, the latter French.

So ends the lesson or lezzon.

 

Why would using the Greek be 'more' correct than the French (Latin) derivation that we use in nearly a third of our words?

 

For a lot of these Americanisms you need to look up Noah Webster's project in the early 1800s. Not a fan myself as what he did still isn't logical and feels more prosaic to my sensibilities. Like 'color'- maybe someone can help with this but how does that make more sense? You still have the same vowel making two different sounds.

One thing that is interesting is that a lot of words we consider Americanisms are actually the English of the 1600s colonists . Fall for autumn being one example of many.

 

I’m not saying it’s more ‘correct’ just that the English used Z rather than S for a long time; and it’s still my preference.

The Chambers and OED reversed their stance in the early part of this century to say either S or Z was now ‘correct’ whereas previously it had been S.

 

But anyway , is it true??

 

Fair enough, just 'pedantic' implies one version is correct

 

Mr G Willard says he was well offside.

 

I was trying (and failing) to use self depreciation.

 

I prefer most of the American versions of words. All the words with Z instead of S for example. They shorten stuff, which I like. Big fan of math, over maths.

Never heard them say offsides though. Whether that's in football or any of their sports.

 

Well.. I never knew that! They certainly didnt push the 'z' at Ardsley Oakz Primary - and as a result, I always assumed it was the other way round, that the modern trendies were pushing the z on their agenda, and this was feeding into tech - autocorrect will always side with the 'z' and that's why I thought it must be an american thing.