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Is it dependant or dependent? - Australian spelling
These words catch me out all the time and I found the answer unexpected and quite fascinating.
Anyone who thinks our language doesn't change over time, should keep an eye on these words.
I almost feel like saying, 'that depends'.
These two words often cause me confusion so I decided to investigate.
Both the Australian Macquarie and Australian Oxford dictionaries list dependant as the noun and
dependent as the adjective.
E.g. What happens next is dependent on what happened before.
The child was a dependant from a tax point of view.
What is very interesting is if we look at the use of the word via a search of the internet in Australia.
I decided to perform a search using the phrase 'number of dependants' and 'number of dependents'.
The reason I used this phrase is the use should return 'number of dependants' with the most number of results,
since this to me is the plural of the noun.
To my amazement 'number of dependents' returned significantly more results,
which shows that it isn't just me that is confused by the spelling.
The US spelling only uses the 'e' in both cases and that could be causing people confusion.
More of a concern to me is the grammar checker in Word suggests 'dependent' if 'dependant'
is entered and to me that simply should not be the case.
This is an example of where people may be changing their spelling as a result of using Microsoft's spellchecker.
The online Oxford dictionary based in the UK indicates in common usage the spelling with the 'e'
has overtaken the spelling with the 'a'. This could be an example of how overwhelming usage of one spelling,
one could consider to be incorrect, becomes the preferred spelling in the future.
Of course if all Australians read this article, or checked their dictionaries,
the preferred Australian spelling could stay the same.
Until the authoritative resources decide to change the situation the current preferred
spelling in Australia is use 'dependant' for the noun and 'dependent' for the adjective.
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