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Alright. Out of interest I thought it would be a good time to discuss regional variation between ways to spell words. I'm talking mainly about the differences between British spelling and US spelling and the reasons for the differences. As far as I can ascertain the biggest causes are the traditional spelling of Britain is kept while America tries to come up with unique spelling variations.

or vs. our
US: color, honor, flavor
British: colour, honour, flavour

re vs. er
US: caliber, center
British: calibre, centre

s vs. z
US: recognize, realize
British: recognise, realise

It appears that the British use both ize and ise at times but that ise is more common.

Can anyone help come up with reasons for these spelling difference. Historically it can be understood but I'd like to know why we continue to use different spellings...

I'm trying to figure out why Americans are still using the English measuring system when metrics make more sense.

The metric system makes far more sense indeed. Also our currency system makes more sense too. It's so much easier to count up cents to make dollars in my view :P

It looks like Noah Webster was the big force behind the changes.

Then again we have Aussie spelling which takes in both British and American spelling. While also incorporating native words and concepts into our English and spelling.

Aloha wrote: "I'm trying to figure out why Americans are still using the English measuring system when metrics make more sense."

I have to agree with that, even being American. I haaaaaate the standard system. Inches and feet are extremely aggravating because their numbers aren't always divisible by 10, which is a far more convenient number.
I hope it changes sometime soon.

Aloha wrote: "It looks like Noah Webster was the big force behind the changes.
"

And his motivation was political as much as anything else. He said

"As an independent nation, our honour requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government. Great Britain should no longer be OUR standard; for the taste of her writers is already corrupted, and her language on the decline"

That quotation is in Henry Hitchings' "Language Wars" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...) and David Crystal's "The Fight for English" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...) discusses his role.

Regarding American vs. British spellings.
Didn't the early colonists come out of Devon, where they already spoke a rhotic dialect that sounded terminating 'r's ?
Whereas educated British writers would know French, where the last r is not sounded. 'couleur' and 'colour' are similar in their stress patterns, and differ only in the the sounds of the two vowels.

I just found recordings of Devon dialect that shows the rhotic nature off very well:

On one of the Devon recordings the word "passengerz" is used. If you sound the 'r' then it seems almost impossible to pronounce the last letter as an unsounded fricative. But it is a bit funny that American spelling uses 'z' only in certain constructions.

I heard a lot of the early colonists were Scottish and Irish, hence the rhotic r. But it would make sense there were Devon ones too, because I would assume Plymouth Rock was named by Plymothians. Although I find American accents have more similarities with Irish ones than Devon ones.

I'm not sure about the French thing - the French do sound their last r, at least from what I observe, but it's just a different type of r from the English r. They have the same r at the beginning and end and middle of their words - they don't omit it when it's at the end of a vowel.

Apparently Webster wanted to make the American spelling of the English language completely phonetic - he had in mind a lot more changes than the ones that were made. He'd wanted it to be completely different from British English. But realistically, that sort of thing is very hard to implement, so there ended up being just those few spelling changes.

Gail,
Over on the UK side of the pond, we don't study early American history at school much. From Wikipedia, it appears that 200,000 Ulster-Scots emigrated to America between 1717 and 1775. That would have exposed Webster to that dialect during his life up to the age of 70 in 1806 when he published his first dictionary (again Wikipedia). The Irish Potato famine and emigration of 1 million people were 1845 to 1852. The Scots Highland clearances were 1762 to 1792 but with ships to the Carolinas, Ontario and Nova Scotia, which all seem a bit remote {again Wikipedia).
So if Wikipedia is correct, a big influence on American English would seem to be the Ulster-Scots. But when I listen to this, I am struck by the different vowels and especially dipthongs that don't seem to have persisted in America. There is an example at


Another Wikipedia article says:

"During the 17th century an estimated 350,000 English and Welsh migrants arrived in North America, which in the century after the Acts of Union 1707 was surpassed in rate and number by Scottish and Irish migrants."

This seems to contradict the other article.

I suppose that in a new pioneer country with no recording apparatus yet available, few people would have documented the growth of the language.

At


there is an interesting map of 18th. century British shipping. You can see the Scotland to Canada routes, but the ones to the USA seem to come from the south coast of England, although the resolution is not high enough to show if Devon was heavily involved.

This is all certainly new to me.

I'm on the UK side of the pond too, John. :-) I haven't studied American history either. I've just read bits and bobs about the history of the English language, because I find it interesting, but what I've read has never given any concrete facts or figures - just talks generally about the influence of Irish and Scottish immigrants on the development of American accents. I suppose a lot of it is speculation.

I've noticed a lot of similarities between Irish English and American English, particularly some of the vowels and the way the intervocalic 't' sounds more like a 'd'. Sometimes I'll hear an Irish person speak and think they're American at first. Not so much with Scottish - as you say, it's quite different. Although, interestingly, I lived a few years in Canada and I did notice some similarities with Scottish there - especially the way Canadians say 'out and about' for instance! So that does make sense that the Scots went to Canada. It is all very interesting.

The Canadians also retain some of the British spellings, and they say it's because of their French influence.

Gail,
There is a nice list of Irish immigrant ships to America at


However, all those before 1800 have their source listed only as "Ireland" and not a particular port. There don't look to be enough of these to accommodate 200,000 Ulster Scots. So maybe the immigration was not controlled or recorded before 1800.

Hi Everyone,

Great question by Jonathan, made a couple of good points. Why is this the case is it really is up to people to accept it or not, that every alphabetical letter caries a sound as we all have learnt in school and we know that. The way it worked in antiquity is the way you say it is the way you write it. There are still languages that follow this rule today it's why they don't have spelling, it's easier this way to learn a language, and these languages are hard languages in the sense of how they speak.

However getting to the point that you made, look it seems that the U.S is following such a principle not in full, but there is something like that.

We all know the z sound and the s sound. We seem to notice this at the end of words, just like then words and just the sounds a different, it depends on which letter is before or after the other letter in focus.

Also distance changes language it is the strangest thing, however it is happening, we call it accents and dialect. Anyway good question don't know if that helped but best way for me to answer it.

Take care everyone.

Nikola wrote: "Hi Everyone,

Great question by Jonathan, made a couple of good points. Why is this the case is it really is up to people to accept it or not, that every alphabetical letter caries a sound as we..."

Good points raised too! Great to have people thinking about these things :)