Sorry, but this is one of the things I love about English: the fact that it doesn't follow cold logic. Language is as much about the heart as the mind; if we were going to be logical about it, we'd all be speaking Esperanto. But, thank God, we're not.

I agree that historically the -ise/-ize thing was not an AmE/BrE difference, but language changes, and a lot of people in Britain do see -ize as somehow "American" and as I've said before, the mainstream quality press in the UK tend to use "-ise", Oxford notwithstanding. For the life of me I can't see the harm in using the prevailing spelling of my own language community. Americans are quite happy to assert their language differences from us, and good on them, so why can't we?

In any case there are plenty of other examples in English where "s" has a hard /z/ sound, and I'm sure people are quite used to this. I looked up words ending in " -ise" at MoreWords, and couldn't find (m)any with a soft "s". The final "e" seems to have the effect of hardening the "s", like the "e" after a consonant changes the vowel sound of a word, eg "fin" to "fine". So I'm afraid I don't even see a phonetics argument for ditching "ise".

http://www.morewords.com/ends-with/ise/

Personally, I like the fact that our spelling reflects the diverse origins of our language (even when wrongly corrected); that we spell certain words coming from Greek with "ph" or "ps". How is this confusing? "ph" is always pronounced like "f", and as far as I know, the "p" in "ps" is always silent. What's more, many of us see certain uses of phonetic spelling, such as "Krazy Kuts", plain ugly. We simply like our language the way it is, warts and all.

As for literacy rates, although it may well have a slowing effect on reading, the crazy English spelling system doesn't seem to have much of an overall effect on literacy rates. According to a table at Wikipedia, all the main English-speaking countries are at 99%, while Spain, with a much more phonetic spelling system is at 97.7%, with Argentina at 97.2 and Chile at 95.7. Nearly all the countries with over 99% are ex-Soviet block, but English-speaking Barbados manages 99.7.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate

There are now more non-native English speakers in the world than native speakers and they seem to manage OK. My students have some problems, yes, but not serious ones. And certainly not enough to put them off the language.

Finally, if you really want to change the spelling system, what we do in Britain is totally irrelevant. The US is in such a dominant position that it could do what it liked. But I imagine there isn't much more appetite in the States for change than there is in the UK. So stop blaming us, please! :)

@joelackey92 - to back up Thomas Smith, there is absolutely no difference in meaning between "She has brown hair" and "She's got brown hair". "Have got" is simply an idiomatic version of "have" for possession. But you seem to have got a bit confused about the difference between "I've got" and "I got". This thread is about "have got". Nobody's questioning that "I got" is the past of "get", although I do question whether "I got" has to have any sense of happening recently.

I'm not quite sure why it is that foreign learners get the hang of "have got" quite early on, but some native speakers don't seem to be able to get their heads around it at all (I also teach English) . Actually I think I do know the answer; people think it somehow has something to do with "get" as in "obtain, acquire, buy" etc. It hasn't, full stop, period (at least not in this idiomatic use). Yes, that's how it probably started, but it hasn't had that meaning for centuries. That's why it's listed in dictionaries under "have", not "get".

''have [verb] - (In some senses have got is also used, especially in British English.) - 1. (also have got) have something (not used in the progressive tenses) to own, hold or possess something" - Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/have

"She's got naturally wavy hair and she's got a friendly disposition." - she didn't acquire these, recently or otherwise; they are in her genes.

As Tom says, in Britain "have got" is the standard way of talking about possession in spoken English. In more formal language, especially written language, we use "have".

But your example "I got a new hat" is not the same as "I've got a new hat". In the first sentence "got" is indeed the past of "get", but in the second, "have got" is idiomatic for "have". And there's no reason why "got" as the past simple of "get" has to be about the recent past anyway. - "Mrs Thatcher got her degree in chemistry in 1947."

It's interesting that when we really do want to use "have got" as the present perfect of "get", ie, to mean "obtain, acquire, buy" etc", we often add something else, like "just" or "myself", to make the meaning clear. - "Hey, I've just got myself a new tablet!"

And with your example of "I got paid yesterday", you are into a different use of "got" altogether, as a sort of less formal passive. "I got paid yesterday" = "I was paid yesterday". But there's no reason why this should be about the recent past either. - "As a teenager, he once got arrested for stealing cars".

@Intuit Flow - I think your colon is OK, but not the semicolon after the coordinating conjunction "so". But if you changed "so" to the conjunctive adverb "consequently" it should work:

He’d been waiting for a chance like this: to show he was capable of filling that management position; consequently, he sent the meeting invitation as high priority to all upper managers.

@Jasper - except few would consider either of your examples as errors. :)

@Hairy Scot - touché

I think this graph says it all really: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=one+of+the+most%2Cone+of+the+more&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=

It may not be addressed in MWDEU, but Burchfield in the New Fowlers's gives his approval to an example sentence which includes the clause: "one of the deepest and most sensitive studies I've yet read."

And as far as what grammar is, I'm 100% with rmensies.

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage, the "not so ... as ..." used to be the regular form in negative comparatives; it's "as ... as ..." that is the relative newcomer (for negatives). Jane Austen, while regularly using "as ... as ...." in positive comparatives, used "so .. as ..." in negative ones:

"She is not so pretty as I expected"

http://books.google.com/books?id=2yJusP0vrdgC&pg=PA124

This change in popularity of the two forms in negative comparatives is shown quite dramatically in this Ngram graph, with the "as" version overtaking the "so" version sometime in the1930s:

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=not+as+good+as%2Cnot+so+good+as%2Cnot+as+bad+as%2Cnot+so+bad+as&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=

For anyone who thinks anonymous might be right, try googling "the kennedies" and you'lll get your answer.

@semiotek - I agree that what you say is the answer to the original question, but the rest is not just about style, it's about sounding natural. I just don't think that "my and Gregg's child" is natural English. It doesn't sound to me like something a native speaker would say.

As nearly everyone has already said, when they mean "provided that" in a conditional - they are interchangeable.

But I don't quite agree about comparisons. In "as ... as" comparisons; "so" can replace the first "as" after "not", at least in BrE:

'After not, we can use "so ... as", instead of "as ... as". This is structure is more common than "less than" in informal English: "He's not so/as successful as his sister" '
(Practical English Usage - Michael Swan - Oxford)

So although I think I would usually say "as", it's quite possible to say "I haven't been here so long as he has". But in positive sentences only use "as".