The Tribune

THE English language is a bear at the best of times. So many words that sound the same yet have totally different meanings: plane, plain. Pain, pane. Here and hear or where and wear. Vein and vain. Knight and night. Heir and air.

Estimates put the number of words in the English language at somewhere between 470,000 and a million, and with numbers like that it’s not surprising there’s overlap. Ever since the first English person sounded out the letters, English has been as complicated, complex, confusing, and convoluted a language as any that has ever been conceived.

Just speaking it is hard enough for the English or for the Americans who inherited it and made it their own. But for us Bahamians, it’s even worse. We’re caught in the middle -- halfway between the language of the land that’s a hop, skip, and 35-minute plane ride away, and the land across the pond that left us its judicial and political heritage. We listen to the music of one and elect our government based on rules of the other. We depend on visitors from one and fly the flag of the other.

It’s no wonder we are confused about how to spell.

Bahamas caught in the middle

The two countries that contribute to the culture we call our own both speak English. They just can’t agree on how to spell it.

This is not a simple pronunciation distinction like the difference between potato and po-tot-o, the former with a loud ‘A’ and the latter pronounced like the description of a human between infancy and childhood. This goes right to the root of who you think should rule the way you spell everyday words. Is there or is there not a ‘u’ in honour, glamour, favour or humour? And how do you spell the word that means to arrange people, things or events – do you organise with an ‘s’ or do you organize with a ‘z’?

For those who say using an ‘s’ is the right way, you may be surprised at its origin. What you defend as essentially and authentically English and the absolute British proper spelling is not originally British at all. It was, apparently, borrowed from the French during a hiatus in the series of Anglo-French wars that began with the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and lasted well into the modern day.

But the question remains – if the British were satisfied with the ‘s’ they borrowed from the French, why did it change to ‘z’ when it reached American shores?

The answer may come as another surprise. It stems from how the news industry tells a story. Long before the days of digital, old-fashioned typesetters pounded out the keys to set type on heavy metal equipment. At some point, someone is believed to have realized that the ‘s’ on their machine was being gravely overused while the letter ‘z’ was rarely clicked. They both sounded the same so they substituted one for the other and it stuck. Once that reached the Associated Press (AP), it was a done deal.

Since the late 1800s, AP, the global news operation and the world’s most prolific storyteller, has set the style for what serves as accepted language – grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, even changes in words considered acceptable for formal use. AP is to the printed form of words what Prada is to fashion – the standard bearer for the present age, even if some find it distasteful at best and loathsome at worst.

Coveted AP stylebooks

While the original AP style books were created for internal usage among its many news bureaus and reporters around the world, by the 1950s the AP Stylebook had become a must-have in offices, boardrooms, and classrooms around the world.

AP Stylebook editors were quick on their feet, adapting to change in technology and culture, initially updating the approved style every two years, and, later, annually.

As typewriters gave way to word processors and word processors gave way to personal computers, two spaces between sentences gave way to a single space. Paragraph indentations shrunk from five spaces to two. Newsprint shrank. Words like texting, iPhone, and social networking appeared faster in the AP Stylebook than they could be changed in the printed dictionary, though AP always had a dictionary partner.

Power of the AP decision

Where there could be more than one spelling of the name of a national leader or newsmaker floating around, the AP Stylebook editors selected the most culturally appropriate and easy to pronounce and that’s what all reporters used from then on, whether it was the original spelling or not. AP cleared up the confusion and Moslem became Muslim. The idea of a single style book for something as complicated as language was novel and it was a huge unplanned success story.  Though initially restricted for newsrooms, millions of copies have since been sold.

I still have my first copy from when I was a reporter more than 40 years ago back in the day, when lowly reporters didn’t earn the right to such a treasure. Someone, I cannot remember who, gave me theirs. It was an honour then, and it remains an honor today.

Changing an ‘s’ to a ‘z’ is more noticeable in The Bahamas where we feel conflicted about the correct spelling of a word. But we still use the phrase “illegal immigrant” when AP declared that after 9/11 (another AP phrase added to the dictionary) the world would be a better place if our language did not label people as illegal. Guns can be illegal, drugs can be illegal, so can many acts of harmful or reckless behaviour. (Or is that behavior?) People, AP says, are not illegal, therefore they cannot be illegal immigrants. They may be in a place without the legal right to be there, but…anyway, you get the point.

AP did not state that using the words ‘illegal immigrant’ was an illegal act. It’s not a legal body, just an advisory service for how we speak and how we tell our story. It was just a change in expression based on a fact that could, coincidentally, help create a softer, gentler culture by speaking in less derogatory terms about others.

If AP Stylebook says it no longer sanctions the use of words like ‘illegal immigrant’ since people cannot be illegal, they can only perform illegal acts, the absence of such a derogatory phrase may eventually lessen the tension in the air.

Of course, it does not resolve the outstanding, scratch-your-head dilemma about the words like honour or glamour or favour for Bahamians, a people born of multiple cultures with differences in spelling that are just a sliver of a much larger picture of what sets us apart from each other.

On the other hand, with all the serious issues facing humankind, the debate over an ‘s’ or a ‘z’ seems pretty petty, but it might be worthy of a convo over a coffee klatch.

Or is that a chat over crumpets and tea?