Study of Satoshi's Spelling idiosyncrasies: American, British or Canadian?

[ungearedbit]

We've published a small study of Satoshi Nakamoto's writing style https://ungeared.com/the-strange-story-of-satoshi-nakamotos-spelling-choices-part-1/ - the first part was focused on his spelling choices. We went through every word written by Satoshi and picked out words that are spelled differently in American & British English and also all of his misspellings (contrary to popular belief, his spelling wasn't always perfect). We identified 108 such instances (likely we missed some, it was a manual process): American – 52, British – 35 and Misspelled – 21.  

https://www.ibb.co/fNMfnW2
Breakdown of Satoshi's Spelling Choices

Satoshi Was Consistently Inconsistent

Perhaps, the biggest takeaway from our research is that Satoshi was highly inconsistent in his use of American and British spelling and he was inconsistent from the very beginning. Many have noticed that in the Bitcoin whitepaper the British spelling of "favour", however, seemingly no one had spotted that in the same paper, he used American spelling for "characterized" (British: "characterised"). Interestingly, this irregularity would have been consistent with the rules of Canadian English.

https://www.ibb.co/7vsnhTQ
Satoshi's Spelling: Timeline

Canadian Satoshi

If we were to assume that Satoshi was indeed Canadian, then his spelling patterns become a bit more regular, but still, it doesn't answer all the questions.

https://www.ibb.co/v3ZLJXz
Assuming Satoshi Was Canadian

Satoshi's Coding Suggests He Was American

Another interesting observation we made is that - predominantly Satoshi was using American English when discussing code. This is also consistent with his coding - we haven't identified any usage of British English there (though this may require additional research).

https://www.ibb.co/v3DN0G9
Satoshi's usage of American English Spelling NOT directly related to coding

From this we came up with two alternative hypotheses:

• Satoshi's native tongue was American English (think Hal Finney or Nick Szabo) and British spelling was part of his operational security. However, being a human, he was not always consistent.
• Satoshi was multicultural. For instance, he could have been born in the UK and then worked for a US-centric company (think Adam Back).
  

More Inconsistencies

Did we mention Satoshi's spelling was inconsistent? - Sometimes, he would use American and British spelling on the same day and even within the same post.

https://www.ibb.co/ByR3jPS
Days When Satoshi Used Both American & British Spelling

Moreover, even when it came to the same words, Satoshi was still inconsistent.

https://www.ibb.co/yF64fLS
Satoshi's Spelling Idiosynchrosies (Words Grouped by Stem)

There is also some variance by the day of the week:
https://www.ibb.co/dtS96HR
Satoshi's Spelling by Day of The Week

American: Mondays, Wednesdays, Saturdays
British: Thursdays
Even: Tuesdays, Fridays, Sundays

We are not sure what conclusions can be drawn from this yet. One thing that is clear is that for some reason Satoshi wasn't using a spell checker or at least wasn't using it consistently.

Part 2

In the second part of our study, we will apply the “Information categorization approach to literary authorship disputes” developed by Dr. Albert Yang et al to the texts of popular Satoshi candidates to see if it can help identify the man or men who created Bitcoin. Dr. Yang managed to apply it successfully to such distinct cases as the attribution of Chinese 18th-century novel, Shakesperean plays, and the Federalist Papers. If you would like for us to look at particular persons, please let us know along with appropriate texts authored by them.

We look forward to your feedback

Bit

bit@ungeared.com

Whose texts should we compare to Satoshi's?
1)Adam Back
2)Hal Finney
3)Nick Szabo
4)Craig Wright
5)Someone Else?

[1714646338]

1714646338

[1714646338]

1714646338

[getsnoopy]

He did not use "American" spellings; they're all "British" (i.e., international). It's a common misconception that the -ize endings are uniquely American spelling conventions, but they're not. They are allowed and used in "British" spelling, and in a standard called Oxford spelling, they are required. That is, Oxford spelling would spell words as organize (notice the -ize), centre, favour, aeroplane, etc.

This standard is used by most international organizations because it's considered the most neutral (not to mention etymologically correct) spelling standard there is; for example, the UN, BIPM, ISO, and NATO all use it, as well as many publications/journals, such as Nature. Moreover, in most countries where English is taught as a second language, this is taught as the standard of English spelling, since the Oxford English Dictionary is considered to be the definitive source on English lexicology.

So most likely, the Bitcoin whitepaper uses Oxford spelling as well because Satoshi wanted to be as neutral and international as possible, as well as to not give away any details about his origin. Given that in other occasions/instances, he use the -ise endings in words, he's most definitely not Canadian, as Canadian spelling doesn't use this ending. He's most likely from somewhere else in the Commonwealth of Nations.

All of this, of course, assuming that he didn't try to fake all of these spellings or "slip-ups" in order to throw people off his scent.

[acroman08]

4)Craig Wright

in case you haven't seen from the news, this guy has been voted as the weakest link(not Satoshi) by a judge, so no its not him. why even consider that guy, that dude is nothing but a con artist.

just curious, have you ever thought that Satoshi Nakamoto is not just one person?

[Ambatman]

4)Craig Wright

in case you haven't seen from the news, this guy has been voted as the weakest link(not Satoshi) by a judge, so no its not him. why even consider that guy, that dude is nothing but a con artist.

Checking the OP last active
You would find out they have been inactive since 2021
It was a dead thread that was reawaken by the newbie above.
Besides back to the OP thread
Is there any benefit in even knowing satoshi identity?
It's a mystery let it continue been one
They all can play detectives
As long they don't invent a conception  fact about Bitcoin.

[hatshepsut93]

From this we came up with two alternative hypotheses:

• Satoshi's native tongue was American English (think Hal Finney or Nick Szabo) and British spelling was part of his operational security. However, being a human, he was not always consistent.
• Satoshi was multicultural. For instance, he could have been born in the UK and then worked for a US-centric company (think Adam Back).
  

Or maybe Satoshi was intentionally choosing every word carefully to not leave a pattern that would hint something about his personality. Or maybe if there is some pattern, it's just an intentional misdirection.

Lot's of people in the world spend majority of their lives using English as they second language in their work, studies, even entertainment. It could be that English is not Satoshi's native language.

[franky1]

this was a necro topic. newbie bumped it without reading other topics of similar content

the summary of the topic is satoshi was not trying to deceive people. instead certain documents and web browsers had their spell check and grammar check set to different regions and sometimes ignoring the red/blue squiggle underlines announcing a spelling/grammar mistake was corrected or not used to not correct it to whatever regional spelling of english the browser he used was set to

in this very post, my browser had 6 red squiggly lines whilst writing. i changed 3 and left 3 alone. enjoy working it out