British To American Spelling Utility

I’m looking for a utility that would enable me to change British to American spellings in a document. Maybe some kind of grep thing. Anyone have a line on anything like that?

Some of those can mess with Internet texts that I convert to speech.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

17 thoughts on “British To American Spelling Utility”

  2. Must be something to do with secret project #4. Converting encyclicals to mp3 files?

  4. My guess is that this is to satisfy a machine or program’s OCD. I’ve read as many British authors (Tolkien, Agatha Christie, Mary Stewart, Dick Francis) as American, so much that the differences don’t register.

  5. Get a Mac. 🙂 It has built in dictionaries for Australian English, British English, Canadian English, and US English (yes, they’re all different) as well as eight other non-English languages. It will easily identify those British-isms.

  6. Yeah, don’t forget us Aussies in your secret project #4! I’ve just downloaded a whole bunch of JP2 encyclicals onto my HP ipac for a graduate course I’m doing and I’d love to be able to listen to them in the car in “Strine” (ie “Australian”).
    BTW Jimmy keep persevering on this project. I lived for a couple of years in a neighbouring country and, in the spirit of your response yesterday to a caller on CAL, you should also keep this one in mind as you slave away: sedikit sedikit lama lama menjadi bukit. (google…)

  8. “I keep saying it has to do with text-to-speech….”
    Maybe something that reads liturgical latin with a Southern drawl.

  9. Why on earth would you want to change from British when we spell so proper, like.
    This hasn’t anything to do with this really, but have you heard of Naturalreader? I can listen to my essays being read back to me while I’m getting on with other things. I have ‘Audrey’s voice enabled… for some reason ‘Charles’ doesn’t like me and won’t download…and microsoft Sam was just pitiful!

  10. If the list of words to change be short and completely known ahead of time, then sed (rather than grep) is really not a bad way to go. :^)

  11. I prefer Brittish to American spellings. Worst idea ever to mess up the English language in America. All right so that’s an exaggeration, but still.
    Anyway, if you must “correct” the correct Brittish spellings, would a simple use of MS Word’s Autocorrect do it, or does that only work for when you are actually typing?
    Secret Progect #4:
    Internet apologetics for the blind?
    Interactive internet apologetics with audio files?
    Army of speaking Papist robots?

  13. Who said this has anything to do with Secret Project #4?
    I make audio books for myself all the time.

  14. grep? Are you a UNIX guy?! I’m impressed (actually I was impressed already, just even more so now). 🙂

  15. …now that makes me wonder whether B16 writes his Encyclicals in MS Word or Emacs.

  17. Jimmy,
    You mention converting British spellings to American ones (e.g. theatre to theater or centre to center).
    But what about British-isms… like put your valise in the boot (bag in the trunk), windscreen (windshield) or the rubbish bin (garbage can)??
    tim

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