The reason American English dropped the 'u' in words like 'colour' is that in modern English, there is no need for the 'u' anymore, British English decided to be conservative in its spelling and keep the 'u' to indicate how it was pronounced as. ... 'Color' is the standard spelling in American English.
Whereas British dictionary compilers opted merely to record established usage (which tended to favour French-looking words, hence the superfluous 'u'), early American dictionary compilers, notably Noah Webster, felt that simplifying the spelling - such as 'color' or 'meter' - would aid literacy and create a distinct ...
Difference Between Color and Colour
Color is the spelling used in the United States. Colour is used in other English-speaking countries. The word color has its roots (unsurprisingly) in the Latin word color. It entered Middle English through the Anglo-Norman colur, which was a version of the Old French colour.
In 1828, the first edition of Webster's seminal American Dictionary of the English Language was published, and numerous subsequent editions established it as America's definitive lexicon. It contained most of the American spellings with which we are now familiar, including those that omit the U.
Like Benjamin Franklin, Webster wanted to simplify English spelling. He felt that many of the modern English spelling patterns were ridiculous and followed no rules.
Why do the British use an 's' in words like 'realise' but the Americans use a 'z'? It's because American English spelling, many of the rules of which were devised by Noah Webster, who thought it would develop into a separate language, follows the rules of Latin and Greek, whereas British English uses those of French.
Because in 1828, an American lexicographer named Noah Webster popularized a spelling reform to simplify our orthography. The simplified words appeared in his An American Dictionary of the English Language. Americans have been using his simplified spelling ever since. Because we know how to spell.
The first is isolation; early colonists had only sporadic contact with the mother country. The second is exposure to other languages, and the colonists came into contact with Native American languages, mariners' Indian English pidgin and other settlers, who spoke Dutch, Swedish, French and Spanish.
Most scholars have roughly located “split off” point between American and British English as the mid-18th-Century. There are some clear exceptions.
In British English, s is generally used in such words as recognise, authorise. The letter z is used in American English in such words as recognize or authorize. However, it is not wrong to use z in such words when using British English as standard.
Canadians prefer the spelling grey, although gray is also correct. Grey is the preferred spelling in Britain, while gray is favoured in the United States. A tolerant and forgiving person, my aunt never saw the world in black and white, but always in shades of grey.
Grey and gray are two different spellings of the same word. Gray is more common in the U.S., while grey is more common in other English-speaking countries. In proper names—like Earl Grey tea and the unit Gray, among others—the spelling stays the same, and they need to be memorized.
Canadian spelling isn't quite the same as anyone else's. It's no secret that we Canadians spell differently from our cousins in the United States: We put a “u” in words like “colour” and “favour”; Americans leave it out. We spell “theatre” and “centre” with an “re” at the end; they spell them with an “er”
Color is the official spelling in American English, while colour is used throughout the U.K., Canada, and Australia.
The letter is in the middle of a syllable: system, borborygmus. In such cases, the letter y is pronounced as either the long vowel e or short or long i (usually as a long i when ending a word)—and, for all intents and purposes, it is a vowel.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, dialects from many different regions of England and the British Isles existed in every American colony, allowing a process of extensive dialect mixture and leveling in which English varieties across the colonies became more homogeneous compared with the varieties in Britain.
Australian English arose from a dialectal melting pot created by the intermingling of early settlers who were from a variety of dialectal regions of Great Britain and Ireland, though its most significant influences were the dialects of Southeast England.
1788: The Australian accent, at least according to modern experts, began developing right after the arrival of European settlers and convicts.
In this short pronunciation video, we will look at how to pronounce "water" in American, British, and Australian English. American English speakers typically say "waw-ter," while British English speakers say "wot-er." Australian English speakers say "wadder."
Early European settlers to Australia — many of whom were convicts — were from all over Great Britain and Ireland, and their speech patterns blended to form the new Australian accent.
In America the spread of industrialization shifted the power centers to the Midwest, which was largely settled by people of Scot-Irish heritage who still pronounced “r” as “r.” So, Received Pronunciation faded and General American became the standard.
Accents develop and change over time as people tend to live and communicate in specific and delineated communities. Accent is the social marker that signals either affiliation with a group or distance from a group.
OK (/ˌoʊˈkeɪ/ ( listen); spelling variations include okay, O.K., ok and Ok) is an English word (originating in American English) denoting approval, acceptance, agreement, assent, acknowledgment, or a sign of indifference. OK is frequently used as a loanword in other languages.
In British English, they end words like colour, savour, flavour, favour, favourite, neighbour with our. However, Americans prefer to eliminate the u. They spell the same words like color, savor, flavor, favor, favorite, neighbor.
It is sometimes used in Canadian English and very rarely in American English.