Bit of a daft question ...
 

... and not an important one but:

Do they use US spelling in Oz or not? I've seen 'Harbor' and 'Center' and just wondered ... ?

Re: Bit of a daft question ...
 

No. Definetly not generally anyway.

Once though I had Oz spellcheck on, and it still spelt the word(forgotten which) the American way, and I knew it wasn't. So look out with spell check.
Oh, that was a word with 'z'. I think 'organisation'.

Re: Bit of a daft question ...
 

Yeah, MS Word has "z" instead of "s" sometimes... bloody yanks ;-) but hey Bill Gates is not an Aussie, what can we do!

;-)

fafa

Re: Bit of a daft question ...
 

I have changed the default langage in Word to 'English UK' so I don't get those annoying squiggley lines under my 's/z' words.
ACE

Re: Bit of a daft question ...
 

I puzzled over this when I arrived - so I asked some 'locals'.

The most popular answer seemed to be that they used to use English spelling way-back (30-ish years or so) . Then the eductaion departments tried to loosen the English leasons with a kind of 'spell it as it sounds' attitude - which led to an increased amount of US spelling. Lately some schools are encouraging a 'back to basics' traditional approach which means words are now being formally spelt using the UK spelling!

So the answer is 'both'.

Cheers.
AndyH
Brisbane.

Re: Bit of a daft question ...
 

OZ definitely uses the English spelling way and not the American. Trust me I am an Aussie living in America :D


Cheers

Re: Bit of a daft question ...
 

There are a few other weird things to get used to - the date for example usually gets written as October 27, not October 27th, and they tend to use shortened versions of words a lot more, so you can refer to firies or ambos, whereas in the UK nicknames like that aren't really used in written English.

Re: Bit of a daft question ...
 

Good point!

Ooops, you've probably been reading some of my posts (remnants of a US education :( )

UK spelling as far as I can tell, but oddly they use some US words/phrases, here such as 'muffler' (= car exhaust/silencer).

I keep meaning to go buy the Macquarie Dictionary (Oz equivalent of the UK's Oxford) so I can start getting it right!

Cheers
Anya.