An English Question.

[SunNeverSets]

Hello Members of the MCSG community,

I am from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I do not wish to cause any undue upset in this thread but I have a question that only citizens of the USA can answer.

Why do you spell words such as 'color', 'generalization' and 'dishonor' differently to that of citizens of Britain? Also I would like to know how this has developed. It seems a rather interesting circumstance that two dialects once the same can become so differentiated.

Thank-you very much!

 

[Harris|DareDevilMan1]

Wow, that's some really intelligent and splendid vocabulary you have. Nevertheless, I do not have the answer to the question you ask. You may just want to google it, to give yourself a clear and in-depth explanation for this.

 

[Kreix]

Well idk how to answer this but I live in the good ol' great north so imma put how we spell sht
Colour
Dishonour
Generalization

 

[reven86]

google it? lol

 

[smashmaster]

I know why! We have sweg

 

[Scott]

American's lifetime goal is to confuse Europeans. We use Fahrenheit instead of Celsius, we use feet/inches instead of centimeters/meters, and we pronounce a lot of words differently.

 

[Electrix]

I think it's probably just because of pronunciation.
Lexicographers in the U.S. have made an effort to simplify the spellings of words, and while Americans prefer these spellings, other countries never commonized them.

 

[Ceroria]

I mean, I don't necessarily know why. It would be similar to if I asked you why you spell 'color' as 'colour' etc. We're just strange here in the states

 

[Nirmit|NirmitPlays]

#blameobama

 

[Zinc // Akash754]

American's lifetime goal is to confuse Europeans. We use Fahrenheit instead of Celsius, we use feet/inches instead of centimeters/meters, and we pronounce a lot of words differently.

Not just Europe...the rest of the world almost o-o

 

[Nikola]

Let's take color vs colour as an example:

Color and colour are different spellings but they're the same word. Color is the preferred spelling in American English, and colour is preferred in all other type of English languages (if that makes any sense). Now, coloring, colorer, colorful, and discolorare the U.S. spellings, and colouring, colourer, colourful, and discolourare preferred outside the U.S.

 

[Col_StaR]

From this link: http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/ed...ritish-english-and-american-english-different

The first answer is to blame Noah Webster, of Webster's Dictionary fame. He believed it was important for America, a new and revolutionary nation, to assert its cultural independence from Britain through language. He wrote the first American spelling, grammar, and reading schoolbooks and the first American dictionary. He was also an ardent advocate of spelling reform and thought words should be spelled more like they sound.

Many years before he published his well-known American Dictionary of the English Language, he published a much smaller, more radical dictionary he called a Compendious Dictionary that included spellings such as w-i-m-m-e-n for "women" and t-u-n-g for "tongue." That dictionary was skewered and he dialed down the spelling reform in his final masterpiece. Yet still, Noah Webster, his affection for spelling reform, and the success of his final dictionary in 1828 are the reasons Americans spell words such as "favor" without a "u" (1), "theater" with an "-er" instead of an "-re" at the end, "sulfur" with an "f" and not a "ph" in the middle, and "aluminium" as "aluminum (2)."