Quote:
Originally Posted by Oswald
Americans spell words in a different fashion to us in the UK. They don't include the letter 'u' in words such as 'colour', 'favour', 'honour' etc. They swap around the 'r' and 'e' in words such as 'centre', 'fibre', 'metre' etc. They use an 'i' where we use a 'y' - in 'tyre' for example and completely miss out letters in a word such as 'axe'.
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That is the result of deliberate efforts on the part educators and grammarians, in the early years of our republic. Noah Webster was one, for example, with his dictionary, who strove for a break with Britain, even in the area of the language.
In the case of words ending in -or, British spelling maintains the influence of French, which supplanted the older spellings Old and Middle English used, based on the Latin origin of such words. Same goes for words ending in the "-er" sound. For most of them, we spell them more phonetically, except where a word was borrowed more recently from another language, like "macabre", or where the spelling is maintained by tradition, as in "theatre".
German is better than English, in that respect. "macabre" in German is "makaber", "theatre" is "Theater", and they're both pronounced as they're spelled.
(I was a language major in college
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