Spellcheck within a web form is very handy, but potentially annoying if you favour Australian spellings over the US alternatives. If you’re a Google Chrome user, there is an option to set up Australian spell-checking instead.
I’ll confess I hadn’t realised that Chrome had this option until I saw it praised on Twitter. To enable it, click the Chrome wrench icon, select Options, select Under the Hood, scroll down to Change font and language settings, and choose the Languages tab. In here, you can select English (Australia) for your spellcheck, and also set it as your default language for reading pages.
While you can change most language options to Australian English, the closest you can get for the actual interface language is UK English. (Firefox and Internet Explorer sport similar options that are somewhat easier to find, though I can’t recall ever specifically enabling these in Firefox, so I’m guessing that my current setting of EN-AU was picked up from other system settings.)
Elly Hart
Tuesday, January 5, 2010 at 9:20 AMVocabulary wise, what’s the difference between Australian English and British English in Chrome’s dictionaries? Does the Australian dictionary just recognise words like g’day?
Keith Davis
Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 12:15 AMElly.
Looking at language is like looking a tree with lots of grafts on it. You see one tree, but from it bear many branches with many different fruits.
Australian English began diverging from British English (we call it Queen’s English, here) right after the founding of the first colonies.
We’re caught somewhere between British English and American English, in terms of spelling and structure. Formally, Australian English isn’t like American English at all. But not quite the same as British English. The main difference between Australian and British English in Chrome is in contractions, abbreviations, and colloquialism. I think Chrome also recognises key idioms and phrases, too. Though for this matter, I’m unsure.
Australia uses a lot of words that don’t exist in any other form of English. It may not look it immediately, but Australian English is as different to British English as Gujarati is to Hindi. This is for various reasons, some words are given by people of the First Nations, others are taken from American English, or have other Pacific influences. A lot of Australian English was adapted in WWII, for example, as Australians came into significant contact with speakers of Egyptian and Indian English.
There’s a lot of history behind it, ubt that the gist. I hope it helps.
Anon
Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 6:13 AMWow, this is completely untrue. Australian/British English differences are no where near as extreme as the difference between Gujarati and Hindi! (For starters, very different pronounciations, spellings and even a different script!)
There are differences between formal Australian and British, written English, but they are negligible. Without colloquialisms, most native Australians/Brits would be unable to tell the difference.