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Are there any spelling differences where Canadian and Australian English universally use American spelling?
Are there any words where ⟨sce⟩ and ⟨sci⟩ are pronounced as /ske/ and /ski/?
Does English use "one and half" to refer to 1.5, or 1 1⁄2? Such as "one and half" hours for 90 minutes, "one and half years" for 18 months, or "one and half days" for 36 hours? --40bus (talk) 06:38, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As a BrE speaker, I would more often say "an hour and a half" (etc.) for units of time. If making several measurement of dimensions, "one and a half inches" (etc.) would be routine, but I might still prefer "an inch and a half" if mentioning a single measurement. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 09:01, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
40bus, confirming that "one and half" is not colloquial English: it is always "one and a half".As an NA-English speaker, I usually use (and hear used) a unit and a half, but two+ and a half units. Prose fractions where the numerator is greater (like 3⁄2) are rare; I've seen them only in recipes where the batch size / yield has been increased from the original (I realise this is not in scope of the original question; nor, on reflection, prose). Folly Mox (talk) 14:21, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We do also say one point five, if that was part of the question, but one and a half is significantly more common in spoken NA-English. Folly Mox (talk) 14:24, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Re #2: TIL from Merriam-Webster that scedasticity and derivatives are apparently not supposed to be pronounced with /sk/ as I always thought, even though it's borrowed from Ancient Greek σκεδαστικός which has a kappa there. Nonetheless the pronunciation with /k/ still seems common (twoexamples), so I still feel free to give that as an example for ⟨sce⟩. Double sharp (talk) 08:52, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Old Science Fiction fans like myself (bear with me, this gets relevant eventually) like to abbreviate it as "SF" (i.e. "Ess-eff"). Decades ago, the sf fan and humorist Forrest J Ackerman coined the term "Sci-fi" ("Sigh-fie") as a pun on Hi-fi (High fidelity), which was quickly taken up by jounalists and others not part of the SF community (it became a shibboleth we used to spot lurking journalists at SF Conventions), but was applied by those within it specifically to badly written TV and Film works that used superficial science-fictional trimmings but lacked any attempts at scientific plausibility. Years later, some in the SF community started to pronounce Sci-fi as "Skiffy" when talking about SF in an ironic and/or self-deprecating manner. A somewhat niche example of 40bus's #2. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 09:17, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
1. I'd say that "program" is pretty standard in the parts of Canada in which I've resided. However, we still mostly use "ou" rather than "o" (e.g. honour). Clarityfiend (talk) 02:15, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
