Theater vs Theatre

Jamesaritchie

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when a character happens to be pretentious or a snob, "theatre" or "cinema" suits
otherwise, "theater" or just say have them say "I went to the movies," etc

You don't have to be pretentious or a snob to read the sign on a building, and around here that's how we make the distinction. The movie house has "theater" written on it, and the playhouse has "theatre" written on it.

The brochures and ads for what's playing are the same way. This, too, I've seen in several cities.
 

King Neptune

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As a resident of the U.S.A. for several decades and having been well acquainted with many persons who were involved in theatre and theater, I have found that there are some who use the French pronunciation, apparently in the hope of being considered "artsy". In my limited experience with that usage it was generally not done by people who are actual actors or otherwise involved in stage productions. I think that usage and pronunciation have been used in film to assist characterizations.
 

Nualláin

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I initially approached the question from a live-theatre perspective, because that's my background. Now, after looking into it a bit more, I'm not sure if the modern cinema/playhouse distinction between -er and -re is as clear as some American observers believe. The reality of usage appears at first eyes to be fairly arbitrary, at least when it comes to the movies.

For example, Carmike Cinema owns both MNM Theatres and Muvico Theaters. When Regal bought Hollywood Theaters, they re-branded a load of them as Edwards Theatres. It doesn't appear to be a particularly firm regional distinction either: Cinema West Theaters and CineLux Theatres are both based in northern California. Two of the three largest movie chains in the States, Cinemark and AMC, use -re in their official corporate names. The other one, Regal, doesn't use the word at all in their name, but of the two brands most associated with the group, one uses -re and the other uses -er.

The prevalence of -re surprised me based on what I thought I knew, but of course my knowledge of English linguistic history doesn't cross the pond very often. I wonder if anyone's taken a serious scholarly look at the word's usage in the States, because it seems like a regional/historical study could potentially be really interesting...

Unfortunately I only do that kind of crap with Latin and Greek, so I'm out. Anyone else want to volunteer?
 

King Neptune

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The prevalence of -re surprised me based on what I thought I knew, but of course my knowledge of English linguistic history doesn't cross the pond very often. I wonder if anyone's taken a serious scholarly look at the word's usage in the States, because it seems like a regional/historical study could potentially be really interesting...

I believe that someone has done the research already. I will look for the results. I believe that the results was that there was a random distribution of the different forms.

https://books.google.com/books?id=t... U.S. difference linguistics research&f=false
 

JulianneQJohnson

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I know nothing of the history and global usage of these words. As someone who has spent her life working in the theatre, generally "theatre" refers to the art, and "theater" refers to the building. I myself tend to use "theatre" in all cases, and have been chastised for doing so. Oh, and I'm a theatre worker in the USA. I know nothing of usage in other countries.