> (it's from Latin "centrum": the R goes after the T, and there is no need whatsoever to revise that.)
Why does it matter how it was spelled in Latin? English is not Latin.
In the era of ubiquitous access to dictionaries, I'm not sure the benefits of having spelling reflect etymology rather than pronunciation outweigh the cost.
The first part of my argument is this: the word centrum still has a cognate in numerous modern languages, which use the TR letter order:
French: centre
Italian: centro
Czech: centrum # identical to Latin!
Swedish: centrum
[... numerous others ...]
The "TR" order of the letters in the "centrum" cognate is still alive in modern languages and their orthography, and so is even the "centrum" word itself.
The second part of my argument is that some contemporary dialects of English itself, like British and Canadian, use "centre"; using the "centre" spelling is a contemporary practice, and not a retrogression toward Latin.
The third part of my my argument is that changing "centre" to "center" is a gratuitous change that brings no benefit; it has no redeeming value.
Spelling it center provides the significant benefit of removing foreign orthography from English, making it easier to learn to read and write.
I see no value spelling it centre. That some other languages spell the word doesn't matter as they're pronouncing it without a vowel between the t and r which is rather different than English.
In French it's pronounced santr. In Italian it's sen-tro. In Czech it's tsen-troom. In Swedish it's sen-trum.
Languages that, like English, pronounce it with a vowel between the t and r? They spell it that way.
In Albanian it's qendër pronounced very close to rhotic English sen-ter.
In Norweigian it's senter (sen-ta) which is pretty close to non-rhotic English.
In Croation, it's centar (sen-tar).
In Lombard it's center.
In Swedish, the other word for center (meaning a center (place) or sports position) is spelled... center.
And even Czech, which spells it centrum, changes the spelling to center in the genitive plural, to match the pronunciation.
So even if we're going to choose spelling based on other languages, there's plenty that spell it similarly to center to argue for it in English - though I would still argue that other people are doing it isn't a compelling argument.
According to Etymonline (i.e. Douglas Harper), quite curiously, the "center" speling in English is actually older!
Quote:
The spelling with -re was popularized in Britain by Johnson's dictionary (following Bailey's), though -er is older and was used by Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope.
At the same time, it Etymonline traces the origin to Old French (14th century) which had it as centre.
Just because Milton, Pope and Shakespeare wrote "center" doesn't mean it was a good idea. The latter couldn't spell his own name the same way twice!
It's a good idea because spelling words how they're pronounced was one of the biggest achievements of the Western world and our broken orthography impairs literacy.
Only English has this insanity driven by people who simply don't like change, like the aesthetics of older spellings, or because they're a closet francophiles/latinophiles like Johnson, but try to justify it with nonsense about etymology because how weak the personal preference argument is.
You need to retain Latin and Greek spellings for interoperability with other languages.
The problem with English is that it messed up its vowels and started changing the pronunciations.
It's very helpful to newcomers to English that a word like psychology is written in a way that is similar to theirs. But, yiles, the butchered pronunciations, /saɪˈkɑːlədʒi/, is unrecognizeable.
Other languages don't have problems with old spellings. In Czech, psychologie is pronounced the way it is written, pretty much letter for letter: /psɪxologiɛ/
We really don't need to retain interoperability, but if that is truly more important than English literacy, then perhaps we should be consistent.
If we're going to argue that centre is the correct spelling because for some reason r needs to go after a consonant instead of the vowel due to etymology, then surely we should extend this:
- Filter should become filtre (Latin: filtrum)
- Trimester should be trimestre (French: trimestre, Latin: trimestris)
- Perimeter should be perimetre (Latin: perimetros)
- Diameter should be diametre (Old French: diametre, Latin: diametros)
- Chronometer, manometer and a hundred other words that end in -meter should largely be changed to -metre like chronometre, manometre, etc.
- Copper should become coppre (Latin: coprium)
- Tiger should become tigre (Anglo-Norman: tigre, Latin: tigris)
- Cylinder should be cylindre (Middle French: cylindre, Latin: cylindrus, Ancient Greek: kulindros)
- Coriander should be coriandre (Anglo-norman: coriandre, Latin: coriandrum)
- Monster should be monstre (Old French: monstre, Latin: monstrum)
- Member should be membre (Old French: membre, Latin: membrum) - along with, of course, dismembre, castmembre, membreship, etc)
I could go on and on.
In the future, we could be entring (Old French: entrer, Latin: intro) pubs while sobre (Old French: sobre, Latin: sobrius) eagre (Old French: aigre, Latin: agrus) to drink cidre (Old French: cisdre / sidre) and get plastred (Latin: plastrum from emplastrum).
We shouldn't have to alter the spelling of more than a few thousand words to proprely (Old French: propre, Latin: proprius) retain Latin and Greek spellings (or rather, a Latin transliteration of Greek given the different alphabet).
Why does it matter how it was spelled in Latin? English is not Latin.
In the era of ubiquitous access to dictionaries, I'm not sure the benefits of having spelling reflect etymology rather than pronunciation outweigh the cost.