They also get the "re" the wrong way round (theatre, metre), overuse the letter "zed" and say it incorrectly, and mispronounce Lieutenant (leftenant. A lootenant is somebody who rents a toilet to live in).
We split from England before most of the words had a concrete spelling in the language. England has had a long fascination with French culture and language ( modern English being a mutt language of Germanic Anglish with heavy Romance language ( mostly French) influence). Anyways, when French started becoming a strong in influence on the language a lot of the lone words had two schools of thought on their spelling. Spell them as they would be constructed in French ( colour,humour,etc.) or spell them using the conventional Germanic rules of spelling ( color, humor,etc.) At one time English dictionaries included either or, or more often, both spellings of many words. honour/honor, gray/grey, colour/color, etc. Since The USA split from England long before the English set in stone, our dictionaries and other " authorities" sided more with losing the French based spellings of these lone words and instead followed the more traditional spelling conventions of Germanic based English. We didn't have the same envy of the French and desire to emulate them as much as the Brits did I guess and didn't adopt the French spelling conventions. We adopted the Anglicanized spellings or at least our word authorities did and the rest was history.
Canada, well y'all are a Commonwealth nation so have had more of the British influence on y'all for longer than we did, and y'all are partly a Francophone nation. So you adopted it too. Hey, at least you guys didn't decide to butcher and reinvent the word aluminum into aluminium. So y'all got some of it correct.
Not quite, Francophonic spelling in UK English dates back to well before the Mayflower, it's a direct result of the fact that the Norman rulers of England were, in fact, French. Much of the original European colonists of what was to become the United States were Irish, many more fled there during and immediately following the Irish potato famine (it's where the US accent largely comes from) and the majority of those were illiterate. Phonetic spelling resulted, and following the Revolution most ties with England were cut - so if there was a non-British way of doing things, Americans did it that way. Drive on the right. Spelling. Being loud and extroverted.
You'll upset a lot of French people if you associate them with the Normans. :) Violent, uncouth, barbaric, smelly, dirty and uncultured, and that's just the women.
That's not quite accurate either Both existed and was accepted. Definitive spellings weren't devised in either place until the 1800's. Prior to that various spellings were common in both places. I concede that going against the British grain played into it when it became more definitive, but the spellings did exist in England prior as well. I never suggested the French language influence was after the Mayflower.
Hey man, driving on the other side of the road is an archaic left-over from when you needed to draw a sword on a horse. Driving on the right makes more sense since most people are right handed and it puts the shifter in the right hand on manuals. That's why us and others decided update roads to the modern times. :D
I have nothing against the letter U. U play a very important part in the English Language. U play a very important part in people live.
This post was edited by BlueJay at January 7, 2017 5:39 PM MST
Slartibartfast 