Why does ebay.com.au mark words spelt in Australian English as incorrect?

[northmelburnian]

I listed a bike recently and ebay underlined the word "tyre" as incorrect. Presumably ebay only believes the rest of the English speaking world only uses USA English, (i.e. and wanted me to mispell the word as "tire")?

I get that ebay is an American owned company, but couldn't it be a little more culturally attuned to respect the language of the other countries it operates within?

[repentatleisure1952]

I have seen that many times.

I have not spent one nano second worrying about it.

[kopenhagen5]

I don't think it's eBay, I think it is the spell checker they have purchased for the site.

Maybe only USA ones available for their system.

[lyndal1838]

You do not have to use the US spelling.....just use what you want to use.

[digital*ghost]

At least it doesn't auto-"correct" and leaves it up to each individual to decide which spelling to use. I mean, it's just a flag, not a dictation. 

Plus, it depends on the word - do a keyword search for "aluminium" and you get results for that plus "aluminum", so maybe request both "tyre" and "tire" be respected in the same manner, for a more culturally diverse and / or inclusive site experience. 

[northmelburnian]

Thanks digital_ghost.
Interesting and positive that aluminium is recognised.  But then its odd that tyre is not treated in the same way. I wonder how it handles other infamous AU-US English clashes like colour/or, kilometre/er, and recognise/z.

And agree the software highlighting a possible spelling error is a better outcome than automatically changing the spelling to what it considers 'correct',

[northmelburnian]

Thanks Lyndal, but your suggestion entirely misses my point.

I know I can choose to ignore ebay's spelling suggestion. I do because I know the correct spelling of 'tyre' in Australia. 
The real point is many people (i.e. children or Australian's whose first language is not English) don't know tyre is the correct spelling for the air-filled rubber object fitted to a wheel, and that tire in Australilan English means to become tired.

The sticky problem with the internet and online world is the dominance of US-English. The unfettered consequence of this dominance is that US-English gets more entrenched by being repeated over and over and over. I've lost track of how many staff and students tell me "oh but "color" is correct because thats the way google/Word/Facebook etc spelt it". And more recently how many official signs (some even in Australian government buildings) asking us to keep "1.5 meters" apart (instead of AU-English "metres").

Moving forward, big-tech corporates such as those above could/should do much more in respecting and preserving distinct and smaller cultures by geographically and lingustically tailoring their products.

PS >  I know the world has much more critical issues right now than spelling; but its also a much easier thing for companies to fix, and ultimately its about respect and recognition.

[lyndal1838]

I really cannot see what you are getting so upset about....ebay searches see the spelling as interchangeable.

I did a search using both spellings and they both gave in excess of 200,000 results.

Use the spelling that you are comfortable with and buyers will find it no matter how they spell it.

[digital*ghost]

NB: I am a descriptivist - language has some necessary rules for the way it's spoken and / or written, but as someone who has primarily adopted a consequentionalist approach to the majority of issues, the rules can be darned as far as I am concerned, as long as the message being communicated is clear - this in turn informs the opinion I provide below.

To paraphrase Gretchen McCulloch, language is the word's largest, oldest open-source project. In other words, it wasn't a product issued back in 7 million BC with strict and unchageable instructions for use, that varied by geographic location too (and even if it was, most of us expect the utilities we operate to be intuitive these days and only refer to the manuals when we get completely stuck  ). Anyway, this means everyone contributes, and it is in a constant state of being updated. (I highly recommend reading "Because Internet" by the aforementioned author, to anyone as interested in language as this word nerd   It's an interesting look at how written language is changing now that people can more easily write like they speak, and be understood). 

Most of the "rules" are arbitrary. There is no actual reason for us to spell it as "colour" and not "color" - neither is more right than the other, and neither is more incorrect than the other, and they both serve exactly the same purpose and meaning. Nor is there any "heritage" or "cultural significance" for one spelling over the other. Attaching that kind of significance to a "U" that serves no practical function seems a little excessive to me, though I recognise that in the case of tyre / tire, there might be some occasions where a clear distinction between the two words may be necessary.

US English and spelling is (by and large) more efficient than UK English / spelling, so in this day and age it's little wonder it permeates a significant portion of the world - we have a very long tradition of simplifying the pronunciation and spelling of words to make life easier for everyone, and maintaining British tradition because they - at one point in history - insisted they were right and the Yanks were corrupting the language (when, if no one "corrupted" language, we'd all still be speaking middle English) is at least a little bit strange to me.

TL;DR.... Live and let live, or write and let write. 

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.  

[*tippy*toes*]

Unfortunately, you just have to go with the flow. I have a Filipino colleague, who decided last year he would become an Australian citizen, after being here for over 10 years. He took the test and failed. Reason being, everything for the AUSTRALIAN test, is in US text format. He actually got 100% on his written English test, but failed, because he spelt the words he knew, wrong.

Instead of recognize, he wrote recognise. Same with all our words that are spelt "our", like colour. 

As for your issue, your buyers aren't going to see the squiggly line under the words. It's a non issue.