Aspects of Americanism in English Spelling: the -is(z)e ending

Abstract

The present study is concerned with the issue of the -is(z)e ending in English spelling. A few common sense ideas about this issue are (i) the -ize ending is inherently part of American English and the -ise ending is part of British English, and (ii) currently the former is superior to the latter because of the predominant power of America surpassing that of Britain ever since World War II. Contrary to these ideas, this paper throws light on what actually took place in the history of Americanization relating to this issue. Based on the current trend of fluidity in the use of -is(z)e ending in Phillipson’s periphery-English countries including the Philippines, India, Sweden, and Finland as well as in both America and Britain, the study investigates if there may be any phonetic and/or phonological rationale for the superiority of the -ize ending over the -ise ending, apart from what has previously been thought of this issue from a sociolinguistic perspective. (Hannam University)