Our semi-retired G4 was set for 'UK English'. Our new Mini, much as we love her, only seems to offer our American cousins' version. I sure would like to maximize and fully realize this machine's ability to itemize and verbalize, without it suggestifying a letter zee every time I write an English '-ise'. Do I need to buy a new progrAM, or visit a Mac service centER? I shall send a large cheCK to anyone who can help!! Meanwhile I must sign off - I'm sitting in a draFT.
I think you'll find the answer in the Preferences, within 'International' . So Preferences - International - Input Menu. Tick the British flag and untick the US one. I also like to tick the Character Palette and the Keyboard Viewer.
These options should give you a nice little Union flag in the menu bar, plus the options of viewing the Character Palette and the Keyboard Viewer.
If you still have problems with the language when in a certain application, then the answer will, in all probability, be in that applications Preferences.
On the subject of English speech. For me, something that really grates, is the current trend of pronouncing "aitch" as "haitch". I found the following text in a review of a TV program which sums up the situation nicely.
I agree with the comment about the lady's poor diction. 
Pronouncing iterative eye-terative is just painful unless you are from Texas! In another review she pronounces "aitch" as "haitch" even though her co-presenter says "aitch". I wonder if she pronounces other letters like that so that F becomes Feff and L is Lell, M Mem! The mind boggles at what she would do with W, wubbleyou I suppose.
Don't know how '
' appeared in the entry above. The quote was a 'copy & paste' from the original article so obviously had some mischievous bit of code in there.
Two of my personal hates are, firstly, people who think that 'refute' is a synonym for 'deny': it is not. To refute an allegation is to produce the evidence which proves that the allegation is wrong. Yet we hear television and radio presenters every day parading their ignorance, presumably because they think that refute is a posh word that means the same thing. They are probably under the impression that The Sun is a newspaper.
And secondly, persons using the word 'enjoy' as Americans do. (I hasten to add that I am not including the esteemed person who does so on this website, as he is obviously winding us up). The word is a transitive verb, and requires an object, e.g.'it'.
Purely as an aside, we had some customers in our
shop last week who had recently travelled around the world and who said that whenever they'd met some really nice Americans, they actually turned out to be Canadians.
Steve Weatherly-Barton 