English vs American spelling

[Proglin]

A wise man once said:

In brittain they speak English.

In america they pretend.

[Soulless_Body]

USA is the only ones in the world that spells that way. Maybe canada??? USA spelling just seems to make the words simple. They spell the word the way it sounds. Kind of makes you think?

[Malfini]

Well, I do agree with soulless_body. It seems like in most of the spelling differences between US and UK English words the UK counterpart needlessly has one or two characters more. Languages and cultures are always changing though so if people value simplicity then maybe someday US English will be more widespread than it is now.

[Xordan]

Actually, I disagree there. Words like Armour (Arm - err/urr) and Colour (Col - err/urr) are spelled like they sound. Armor (Arm - or)and Color (Col - or) aren't. Imo anyway. Maybe it's an accent thing.

[bilbous]

I think the difference can be put down to quirks of the national character. Britons don't like to finish anything they start so they drag out the spelling as long as they can. Americans want to finish things as fast as they can, even if they don't achieve all they want, so they spell things as quickly as possible. 

[Monketh]

In terms of quirks, it isn't a matter of speed but a matter of simplicity.  The spelling "armour" is marginally more difficult to remember than "armor."  There actually seems to be a culture against intellect right now anyway.

[Allive]

anyway there are not only one type of langauge in britian we have many forms of english and we can spell them all when you say english you dont mean british english you mean english english there is at least 5 diffrent variations of english up in scotland alone now pls do not say english is british for its not its english not uk or british just plain english.

[Xordan]

anyway there are not only one type of langauge in britian we have many forms of english and we can spell them all when you say english you dont mean british english you mean english english there is at least 5 diffrent variations of english up in scotland alone now pls do not say english is british for its not its english not uk or british just plain english.

No, there are many dialects, but there is one standard (official) written form of English for the UK right now. What 5 dialects are those anyway out of interest?

[Allive]

kinda hard to explain you see even a ew miles can quite happily bee enough to change the meaning off words and how we speack but theres 2 main types up here and there "scotish and glasswegen. we also have a lot of jordies and cocniey up here then you have the jipsies as well.

[Xordan]

yeah, that's dialect rather than English spelling, the written standard is still the same. I'm living in London right now, just moved from Wales and people speak quite differently Going south to Cornwall is good too, can barely understand them sometimes. The UK is weird how people can speak so differently within so few miles distance.

[Allive]

yeah but my point is we can or most of us can write our dialect and that means its an alteration of english like wid = wood so on so on.

[Xordan]

yes, but that doesn't make it correct Write like that in a high school English exam, or in a university essay and you'll lose marks. We're talking about the main standards, not the local quirks.

[Malfini]

Actually, I disagree there. Words like Armour (Arm - err/urr) and Colour (Col - err/urr) are spelled like they sound. Armor (Arm - or)and Color (Col - or) aren't. Imo anyway. Maybe it's an accent thing.

It must be related to accent Xordan because I know for a fact that the way people pronounce color where I am would have to be spelled "color" or the sound of the word wouldn't match its spelling. The same thing also goes for armor.
I have to wonder though do you pronounce part of "colour" with the same sound as "our" as in "our shoes".

*edit*

This was taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences.

Most words ending in unstressed -our in Britain (e.g. colour, flavour, honour) end in -or in the U.S. (e.g. color, flavor, honor). Most words of this category derive from Latin non-agent nouns having nominative -or; the first such borrowings into English were from early Old French and the ending was -or or -ur. After the Norman Conquest, the termination became -our in Anglo-French in an attempt to represent the Old French pronunciation of words ending in -or. The -our ending was not only retained in English borrowings from Anglo-French, but also applied to earlier French borrowings. After the Renaissance, some such borrowings from Latin were taken up with their original -or termination; many words once ending in -our (for example, chancellour and governour) now end in -or everywhere. Many words of the -our/-or group do not have a Latin counterpart; for example, armo(u)r, behavio(u)r, harbo(u)r, neighbo(u)r; also arbo(u)r in sense "bower"; senses "tree" and "tool" are always arbor, a false cognate of the other word. Some 16th and early 17th century British scholars indeed insisted that -or be used for words of Latin origin and -our for French loans; but in many cases the etymology was not completely clear, and therefore some scholars advocated -or only and others -our only.

From this it sounds like English was forever changed after the Norman Conquest. It also sounds like when a word has an "our" ending in Britain and an "or" ending in America most of the time that word was derived from a Latin word that ended with "or".
If this is true then in most cases of words with "our"/"or" differences the American form is actually more philologically correct.

[zanzibar]

It means that American is closer to latin, not closer to English.

[neko kyouran]

Lets use latin as the official language in PS then.  But then we might have fights over those that will speak latin and those that will speak pig latin and we'll be just back to square one again. 

okay, shutting up now.