Much of our modern alphabet comes directly from the Greek alphabet, including a letter, that looked just like our “
5. z or s? 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.
Around 300 BC, the Roman Censor Appius Claudius Caecus removed Z from the alphabet. His justification was that Z had become archaic: the pronunciation of /z/ had become /r/ by a process called rhotacism, rendering the letter Z useless. At the same time, S was also removed, and G was added … but that's another story.
Why do Americans change S to Z in words like colonise, etc.? Why don't they do it to words like "easy" or "is"? The change with the suffix -ise to -ize was part of a spelling reform by Noah Webster to simplify the spelling by making them more accurately reflect the actual sounds used in the words.
Zee became the standard way to pronounce Z in the United States in the 19th century. It's said that zee most likely came about because it rhymes with other letter pronunciations in the English alphabet (e.g., e, d, c, b, g, and p).
In most English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the letter's name is zed /zɛd/, reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta (this dates to Latin, which borrowed Y and Z from Greek), but in American English its name is zee /ziː/, analogous to the ...
The short answer is that the two nations do speak different dialects of English. Additionally, neither the use of language nor the use of these different dialects is bound by distinct geographical borders. This is why 'mum' and 'mom' show up in other parts of the world outside of USA and the UK.
American spelling was invented as a form of protest
He dropped the letter u from words like colour and honour – which had developed from the French influence in England – to make them color and honor instead.
Most verbs like organize, and their related nouns like organization, take z in American English and can also take z in British English. Certain verbs take s in both language variants, but this is usually fairly obvious – for example, revise would look pretty strange to most as revize.
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.
The modern letter "J" settled on its current English pronunciation only around 500 years ago; in Ancient Hebrew, the first consonant of the Tetragrammaton always represents a "Y" sound.
One key distinction between Australian English and American English in terms of orthography (spelling) is the use of, 's,' as opposed to, 'z. ' For example, in America, words such as, 'specialise,' 'authorise,' and, 'analyse,' are spelt with a, 'z,' as opposed to the, 's' that is used in Australian English.
Does UK Spelling use S or Z? Most common spellings in UK English spellings use 'S' instead of 'Z'.
The British and others pronounce “z”, “zed”, owing to the origin of the letter “z”, the Greek letter “Zeta”. This gave rise to the Old French “zede”, which resulted in the English “zed” around the 15th century.
English speakers in other Commonwealth countries also prefer the pronunciation zed. As zed is the British pronunciation and zee is chiefly American, zed represents one of the rare occasions in which most Canadians prefer the British to the American pronunciation.
The rules regarding spelling were also determined. America chose to stick more closely to the original Latin roots of words (color, labor, honor, etc) while Britain elected to use the spellings we Brits know and love.
It entered Middle English through the Anglo-Norman colur, which was a version of the Old French colour. The current difference in spelling between the American and British variants is credited to (or occasionally blamed on) Noah Webster, the American lexicographer.
In some ways, however, modern American English is older than modern British English. It's all down to an R. When the first English settlers arrived in America, they used rhotic speech where 'r' is pronounced in words, whereas in Britain, the soft 'r' of received pronunciation was being born.
Q: And do you know why some mothers in the English-speaking world are called “mom”, while others are called “mum”? A: Well, sort of. Certainly if you're in the US, your mother is your “mom” – short for “mommy” and in the UK, Australia and New Zealand it's “mum” – shortened from “mummy”.
The UK version is more logical. Math is an abbreviation of mathematics, which is a count noun in British English because there are different types of maths (geometry, algebra, calculus, etc.) and a mass noun that happens to end in an 's' in American English (like gymnastics in both dialects).