5 ms·

Do Japanese use anglicized "colour" & "favour" etc? If so, I would only expect an inconsistent application of this spelling if he were impersonating a Japanese

• chatmasta 13y ago
  The usage of "-our" vs. "-or" will not tell us anything because any author attempting to conceal his identity would obviously be aware of the perceived differences in usage. So it's essentially irrelevant.
• officemonkey 13y ago
  "Colour" and "favour" are predominate in every English-speaking country except the U.S. (eg: Canada prefers "colour.")
  • arrrg 13y ago
    Yeah, but what are people who learn English taught? For example, the books in my Bavarian school seemed to slightly prefer the British English spelling (but the vocabulary always also included the American English spelling and later on we were reading lots of American and British text intermixed) and for tests the teacher always told us that she didn’t care which spelling we picked, all that mattered to her was that we were consistent (i.e. use either only British English or only American English). I always picked American English but the preference of the books of British English screwed me up somewhat, so I will sometimes mistakenly use both variants in one text. For me it would consequently not seem obvious that someone using both variants is a native speaker who tries to fake another spelling variant.
    • officemonkey 13y ago
      It's my experience that Europeans are taught British English in schools (due to the easy availability of teachers from the U.K.) Japan, Korea and China very likely are mixed between British English teachers (from India and Australia) and American English teachers (from the U.S.) In Japan in the late 80s-early 90s, there was a definite preference for American English teachers.
      • arrrg 13y ago
        Are English teachers in many European countries native speakers? I have only very limited experience, but from my experience in Bavaria (education is a state responsibility in Germany, that’s why I’m constantly only talking about Bavaria) I can say that none of the foreign-language teachers I’m aware of (of any available foreign language, English, French, Spanish, Czech) were native speakers. They were all Germans.
    • asveikau 13y ago
      You might be surprised what kind of inconsistencies you'll find in individuals, even restricting yourself to native speakers. I was born and raised in the US and only recently realized that distinguishing "storey" (of a building) and "story" (a tale) is British usage; I had been writing it that way my whole life unaware that in my country we're supposed to only use the latter spelling. My father spent his first years in the UK and as a kid I picked up a few verbal things from him (most of them disappeared later on). I still think I'm more likely than most people I know to say things like "whilst" or "amongst".
• aegiso 13y ago
  Pretty much everyone has come to the conclusion that Satoshi is probably not Japanese. He has seemingly native command of academic English, and nothing about him suggests Japanese influence except the pseudonym.
  • gwern 13y ago
    > nothing about him suggests Japanese influence except the pseudonym. The hosting of Bitcoin.org and email software were Japanese.
• TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
  It's unlikely Nakamoto is actually Japanese, but I'd imagine a Japanese person would use American spellings considering it is the US that Japan deals with and they typically are taught American English.
  • threedaymonk 13y ago
    Whilst it's true that the American standard is taught in Japanese schools, people come out of schools not speaking much English. To achieve a native-level ability in English, a Japanese person would probably have spent significant time in an English-speaking country, and that's likely to be a larger influence on their usage. (I have lived in Japan in the past.)
    • TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
      Oh, sure. Japan pours tons of money into English education and little comes of it.