Does anyone have an American English Dictionary?

[SymbioticDesign]

I couldn't find an American English dictionary at the Libre Office Dictionaries archive.  Is there one?

There are really some huge differences in spelling, not to mention the fact that we use different words for the same thing sometimes.

I never want to spell color as colour or catalog as catalogue.  Then there are outright misses like https.  I know I can teach it stuff, but that will take quite a while and in the meantime requires that I look stuff up, I just want to go on with my work, not create a new user dictionary.  

[uneMule]

Bonjour. Cela convient ?

https://extensions.libreoffice.org/en/extensions/show/english-dictionaries

[walt.farrell]

They're available on the GitHub LibreOffice page that the FAQ article points to (which is an easier version to use than the one @uneMule pointed to, in my opinion), though you need to follow the instructions carefully.

However, they're supplied automatically with the Affinity applications, at least on Windows. And MacOS should have them available to install via its system dialogs, if they aren't there automatically.

[MikeTO]

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

However, they're supplied automatically with the Affinity applications, at least on Windows. And MacOS should have them available to install via its system dialogs, if they aren't there automatically.

It's there on macOS - choosing "English" is choosing American English.

[Alfred]

15 hours ago, SymbioticDesign said:

There are really some huge differences in spelling, not to mention the fact that we use different words for the same thing sometimes.

There are some quite small but important differences such as “defence” instead of “defense” and “practise” instead of “practice”; the latter is tricky because “practice” is the correct British English spelling for the noun but not the verb. As for using different words for the same thing, no dictionary should flag “courgette” as an error if you choose not to call it “zucchini” (and, likewise, “aubergine” should be accepted without question as an alternative to “eggplant”).

[William Overington]

And also, the same word for two different things sometimes, which can be more problematic than two different words for the same thing.

William

 

[William Overington]

Are idioms different too?

William

 

[Old Bruce]

15 minutes ago, Alfred said:

no dictionary should flag “courgette” as an error if you choose not to call it “zucchini”

Can't resist showing my double take misreading of courgette; Corvette and zucchini; Zamboni. Now those are different words for different ways of traveling. Gotta go see an optimist eye doctor.

12 minutes ago, William Overington said:

And also, the same word for two different things sometimes, which can be more problematic than two different words for the same thing.

Cleave springs to my mind.

11 minutes ago, William Overington said:

Are idioms different too?

I'll wager there are some, none spring to mind at the moment.

I have heard that there is an obscenity in England  that is not at all a obscenity if you are in a different part of the country. Causes much confusion I'll wager.

[Alfred]

46 minutes ago, William Overington said:

Are idioms different too?

They certainly can be! I came across the following example only yesterday:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/a-new-lease-of-life

[Old Bruce]

Maybe it is named after Somebody Centre?

[SymbioticDesign]

LOL... 

There is a menu item for choosing a dictionary?  It's not in Prefs, right?  So...  Where is it?

4 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

How does the American English dictionary handle the word 'centre', given there is a Centre Street in New York? I have had much fun over the years pointing this out.

Centre is the spelling when someone is branding something to be 'extra fancy'.  A street name is no big deal because it's a name, and names are not words and therefore do not have to follow such conventions as dictionary spellings. But actually using it correctly in a sentence it needs to be spelled correctly in books (obviously).

Publisher and Designer have both each crashed on me (at least once) since posting this, so I am copying my files over to an external hard drive like a mad man trying to switch from this 2018 16GB i5 Dell Inspiron 5577 Gaming Windows 10 Pro laptop over to my 2011 32GB i5 iMac running High Sierra now that the Other World Computing RAM is here (and working quite wonderfully, I might add).

[PaulEC]

5 hours ago, SymbioticDesign said:

names are not words

While I appreciate the point you are making about the way "names" can be spelt/spelled(!) in different ways, strictly speaking a "name" (i.e. a proper noun) is actually a word. 

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, SymbioticDesign said:

There is a menu item for choosing a dictionary?  It's not in Prefs, right?  So...  Where is it?

It is, in a way, in the Preferences. The User Interface language you choose in Preferences, General, also sets the default Spelling Language for documents that you create.

Beyond that, you can specify the language in the Character panel, or via a Character Text Style. 

[Old Bruce]

Names don't have to use the accepted spelling of the word they are taken from. 

[SymbioticDesign]

Names do not follow the same spelling rules as words, and therefore are a separate class, all to themselves.  Can they be words?  Technically, they are, but they do not fit into those conventions.  So yeah, you are right, they are words, you can pronounce them and we recognize and understand them as such, but strictly speaking, since they do not have to follow spelling guidelines, they become an exception.  That said, there are word spelling exceptions, too, isn't that weird?  

But let's face it, you guys are nit-picking in a forum about different subjects altogether.  Who cares, really?  The forum is about the free exchange of ideas, trying to communicate off the cuff.  I know we have brutalized your precious English language, but thanks for it, anyway.  Now, as an old guy that has to be crabby all the time because of my gangster neighbors, please don't be that guy yelling "Get off my lawn you young whipper-snapper!"

Can't we all just get along and go about our business in a merry way?  Geez.

[garrettm30]

On 10/13/2021 at 3:10 AM, SymbioticDesign said:

But let's face it, you guys are nit-picking in a forum about different subjects altogether.  Who cares, really?

Some people do care. I care, for example. If other people want to comment on it, let them. What does bother me is that on this forum of "free exchange of ideas" some people jump on other people for their participation in that free exchange. Sure, it is not exactly on topic, but you were the one who brought in the idea that names are not words. You freely exchanged that idea, so it seems fair game that other people could interact with that statement.

And here is my freely exchanged idea: it does strike me as atypical that proper nouns should not be considered words. For that matter, even proper nouns can be misspelled. Take a person's given name for example: a person may be called "John," and in that case, it would be an example of misspelling to write it as "Jon," even though that is the legitimate spelling for other people. The difference here is that it is the birth certificate rather than the dictionary that codifies the correct spelling for the word attached that that individual.

[SymbioticDesign]

I guess, if you really have time to nit-pick, that is your prerogative.  I can always stop following the conversation, can't I?  You are right.  And I'll just stop paying attention to things when they go off on a tangent.  No problem.

[sfriedberg]

On 10/17/2021 at 4:44 AM, LondonSquirrel said:

Where's the nitpicking? I asked how American dictionaries handle the word 'Centre' as in 'Centre Street' in New York.

Words and names... Many names in English derive directly from trades, and therefore we have smith and Smith, cooper and Cooper, fletcher and Fletcher, driver and Driver, farmer and Farmer, and so on. So what. A misspelling is a misspelling, no matter what. Whether a lemma is considered a name or a word is irrelevant.

Do not use a dictionary as an authority on proper names.  That's not a purpose of dictionaries.

Consider Smith and Smythe.  It is not an error for someone to be named John Smythe in America.  It is not an error for someone to be named Vaclav Havel in America, but you will not find either "Vaclav" or "Havel" in an English dictionary, American or Commonwealth.  It is not an error for some place in New York to be named Centre Street, Canandaigua, Skaneateles, Owasco, Otisco, Oswego or any other such thing, and you won't find those in American dictionaries either.

Do not use a dictionary as an authority for proper names.  For places, use a gazeteer.  For people, there is no single authoritative list (in most countries), but there are public records considered authoritative for individuals.  Neither of those is a dictionary.

If you apply a dictionary in a word processing application, it will mechanically flag everything that isn't included in the dictionary.  That's how a dictionary handles proper names: inapplicably.  It is up to a human being to understand, from context, that the red squiggly underline is not relevant because the dictionary has been misused, because the word processing application does not understand the concept of proper name.

This is all stuff that used to be taught in high school, if not grade school.  The facts that computer applications are not as sophisticated as bored 12-year old humans, and blindly pushing everything through a single mechanical filter is not a correct solution to every problem, seem to have been overlooked somewhere.

[Alfred]

4 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

there is no word 'webster'

That depends on which dictionary you’re using! As with many surnames, Webster denotes an occupation: it’s an archaic word for weaver.

[Old Bruce]

Carter is a trade.

Jimmy is a noun and a verb. Tool of the trade for house breakers and cart car thieves.