Grey vs. Gray

Did i miss something ...?

[Yidaki]

Sorry for my ignorance but could someone please shed some light on this: whenever is see someone posting something about google's toolbar rankings (yah, this happens not very often;)) i get confused - i fear i don't know enough about the ranking colours - i fear i miss a colour:

Some people say grey bar others say gray bar ... google's language tool returns the correct translation for both. Is gray the us spelling of grey? Or are there more lightblacks than just grey? Is gray more grey than a simple grey? Does the toolbar show both greys? Like green, white, grey and gray? Is this part of the new algo?

Serious analyzes please:
Did someone see the toolbar flashing in blue, orange or even red?

I don't have the toolbar installed (lucky mac user) - now i fear i'm somehow not up to date with all this important toolbar things ...

[Captaffy]

They both mean the same thing, and yes I believe you are correct in believing that gray is the US version of grey.

[cornwall]

You might also like to know that the local cheese in Cornwall is "Yarg" , so coined because it has a gray rind, and yarg be gray backwards!

[Sinner_G]

So is it a satanic cheese?

[Marcia]

I prefer and use grey because it seems greyer than gray.

>satanic cheese?
Depends on which side of the pond you're on.

[Sinner_G]

Yes, I can see how an 'e' has a more depressive touch than an 'a', which is almost joyous.

[mivox]

Exactly. Gray is too close to Yay, which is too sunny to be grey.

But who knows, someone at Google may have decided grey and gray should be two different things, and are using some kind of secret behind the scenes system to determine who's "somewhere between black and white" bar is grey and who's is gray, depending on the seriousness of their offense. ;)

[Sinner_G]

Hmmm, does that mean that on each side of the big red button they have a grey button and a gray button?

[mivox]

Could be... could be...

[chiyo]

Seeing this is Foo, just a meandering observation. I always knew that there were a "few" differences between "English" spelling and "American" spelling of English words, but i never really knew HOW many until I started working the the web. With new web deisgners, I guess those from countries who use "english" spelling, like UK, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore etc we learned very fast that HTML coding required the US version for color/colour. But as you wrote more copy you became more aware of all the differences.

I've only wondered why it came about that America felt it necessary to have different spellings for many words from the "correct" spelling used by the language they adopted. Does anybody know why or a resource on why?

[chiyo]

Oops sorry, just did a search on a search engine! Now i know...

[Brad]

Grey is the new black.

[SinclairUser]

200 years ago when Americans kicked the British out - they dileberately changed the "British way" of doing things in protest (or spite - depending on your bias). They even make racehorses go round a track in the opposite direction to the Brits.

[mivox]

I've only wondered why it came about that America felt it necessary to have different spellings for many words from the "correct" spelling used by the language they adopted.

Because we are the rebellious teenagers of the international community. Granted, we're getting a little old for the rebellious teenager routine, but it's a little late to change the dictionary. hehehe

[Marcia]

>>make racehorses go round a track in the opposite direction to the Brits

Speaking of going round a track, how about cars? US is left side drivers seat right side passenger seat, UK is left side passenger seat, right side drivers seat. I imagine that could that be a problem in an auto body shop with a work order to fix the drivers side door if it were a UK vehicle with right side drivers seat.

Then think about being out there on the road driving. If there were a UK vehicle with the driver on the right side going down the road who had a very large dog with him, what if the dog were sitting in the passenger seat on the left side?

[jdMorgan]

One point to remember is that our current concept of "correct spelling" is a very recent development. At the time that we in the colonies declared independence, there was no such thing as a "standard spelling" for many words, and people had a tendency to capitalize Nouns way out in the middle of Sentences, as is done in German.

However, I have heard that U.S. IP's see a gray bar, and that UK and the more-recently-independent colonies see a grey bar. It's part of Google's IP-sniffing that causes so much grief when trying to check SERPs in different regions.

Jim

[chiyo]

yep those websites i found taught me that English itself is a mix of many other languages. We all know Latin of course, but also Greek etc etc. And some American words are meant to be more honest to the real original rather than English spelling! so lanuages are a living always moving organism..

If only they would call it a different language like say Amerenglish

[Yidaki]

Wow, i started the thread before going to bed yesterday - now, after waking up, i'm pretty amazed to see that you had such serious two page discussion about it last night. Thanks for your analyzes, folks! ;)

[cornwall]

>>i'm pretty amazed to see that you had such serious two page discussion about it last night.

I pass two comments

"You cannot be serious, man. You cannot be serious." (John McEnroe)

and

"Great Britain and the United States are two nations separated by a common language (George Bernard Shaw)

[graywolf]

Now if hypothertically speaking, your last named happened to be Gray or Grey, you would have had to deal with this problem a long time ago and have have whole series of witty comments to throw out at people when they missspell your name...

a) Gray is the the english spelling, Grey is the french version

b) Did you know the surname gray means long lived

c) Did you know that crayola once held a parade and if your last name was color you got to march in it behind that banner of your name/color

d) what color/colour is the center/centre of your tomato/tomatoe

etc...

[grey259]

I'm from the US, but I've lived along the south side of the Canadian border for the better part of my life..
Somewhere along the way, most likely starting with my bilingual crayons and can-american teachers, the "e" spelling became stuck in my head.
I know it's wrong, but it feels natural. and "a" is such an ugly character..

[anallawalla]

Anyone who wants to study it a little deeper should look up a BBC publication circa 1985 called The Story of English. I believe that PBS has run the TV version of it a few times as did Australian TV (and surely the BBC). The book not only traces the language but how various colonies and parts of colonies (former ones now) have modified it. The TV series was great because each episode covered a different country and we could hear examples of these variations.

Many "American" spellings and pronunciations are old English ones that were frozen and evolved differently. Our Queen Vic's generation Frenchified many spellings.

- Ash

[Robino]

I went to Italy last year. I heard an American complain and say, "Don't anybody here speak American?"
I just sunk my head in shame and walked away.

-Earl Grey

[Workerbee]

A really good book about languages and how they evolve over time is "The Power of Babel" by John McWhorter. It's written at a level that the non-linguist can understand.

[hutcheson]

>we learned very fast that HTML coding required the US version for color/colour.

IIRC, the real story is that Netscape, in its continued quest for useful standards, grabbed the "color spectrum names" (which included both US/Websterized and GB/Frenchified versions) from the Unix/X-Windows specification. Microsoft, either misunderstanding or abhorring the whole concept of "documented standard" and unable to conceive of a world not dominated by M$-Spelling (TM), did not implement the whole list, thus saving approximately 200 bytes in their color table, and as a bonus fulfilling their memory-efficiency-enhancement goals for IE for the next 5 releases.

[rogerd]

Grey is the french version

I shouldn't argue with someone with "gray" in his nickname, but I thought "gris" was the French version... As far as the long-lived part, that makes sense, at least with the French root... An "eminence gris" is a wise oldster...

[steve128]

200 years ago when Americans kicked the British out

Hey we had a bit of trouble with the French and Spanish at the same time, kinda made it difficult...
but that's a Grey area ;-