A knock out round between the two king of thrones of international language; both of them fight to win the throne for sovereignty of the ‘s’ versus ‘z’ on our auto-correct spelling option keeps reminding us all. Which version do you choose, American or English? Or rather which version do you REQUIRE? ‘Harbour’ or ‘Harbor’?

Our TV content is ruled by American; from the tops charts in music industry to the ImDb ratings of American movies, power-driven by the large sums of money and effect which drives the language they use. The large and powerful brands in global tech companies we turn to for text to write and read like Google, Amazon and Microsoft are all American bodies and create an immense unseen stimulus on our language and the way we communicate using it.

The question is how is British English surviving? Is it despondent upon the Queen and her unconquerable influence on all that is truly English? Sometimes it is referred to as the Queen’s English when we are trying to prove the fact that we know a phrase or word is ‘correct’. English originates from England after all, do why don’t we stick to the roots of this language? Possibly US English is just a young language on the boom which might not stand the test of time. England has a countless years of existence to fall back on. It is a survivor.

There was a time when English nearly lost out to Latin and French as the acceptable international language of trade, diplomacy and religion. Even Nordic German made an attempt in the early 500s after the fall of Roman governance in England.

How non-English speaking nations deal with the struggle of choosing between the two versions of English can be realized when they adopt an English word into their own vocabulary, like ‘internet’. This is called ‘Anglicization’ and the way the writer chooses to spell expresses their link to either American or English culture.

To conclude I guess we have found our answer. Which spell check option you will ultimately choose? Do you associate with American or English culture? When you see the ‘z’ spelling does it strike you as somehow ‘foreign’? Do you hope that your reader will notice you are the best of British if you chose the ‘s’ for Anglicization over the ’z’.

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