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It's really sweet how they add unnecessary letters to feel all fancy about their little words.
"Colour"
"Humour"
Aww, so cute.
Actually can we collectively agree to blame the French for this? It was they who introduced it.
The USA newspapers are credited with removing letters. It used to cost per letter, so people started removing whatever they could.
Noah Webster dropped the 'u' on words as well as otherwise changed the spelling of many words in 'American' English.
Words are changed when their commonly changed... webster took note. Lol
Nah, Webster really did drop the 'u' and changed a lot of spelling. He also learned a lot of languages since back then there were many, many different languages/dialects in America at the time and he wanted to make it easier as he changed spellings, such as swapping 're' to 'er' for phonetics. There was also a lot of anti-British sentiment at the time of course which certainly would have motivated acceptance.
Webster is definitely also credited for this in histories and not newspapers outside of anecdotes.
I’d also heard it suggested that the date was written the “British” way, and post civil war was when they started writing them incorrectly.
It gets worse- "foetus," "aeroplane."
They also think "er" is pronounced "re" like in the words "centre" and "theatre" and "s" is pronounced like "z" like in words like "apologise" and "realise."
Get it together guys. We know you came up with the language, but that's no excuse not to keep up.
Ok, I’m confused by the aeroplane reference. It’s not pronounced as per the American “airplane”.
Speaking of aviation, I have no idea why Americans use such a boring term as "airport". I mean, the guys invented half of the aviation technology and then they just use the term "airport". Such a waste of potential.
The international standard term is "aerodrome". Say it like you mean it. It's a term with gravitas.
Foetus is a weird one, I've never heard that before. I keep trying to pronounce it in my head but the closest I get is sounding like fajitas.
Would you like some chicken
fajitasfoetusIt comes from the german Fötus
oe is ö
and english is a germanic language
Is that right? So it's not the same as the oe in phoenix? I know in old books they used to fuse the letters.
If it’s right I’d want a source, the oe spelling in British English is as far as I was aware a let’s latinize thing in Britain.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/oe https://www.etymonline.com/word/fetus
Because Fetus would be pronounced with a hard e not a ee sound.
oe is a variant of the french œ pronounced ee
This is the first I'm hearing about these And they bug me
"Aluminium" anyone?
But they're almost all 'iums', changing just one is like finding a fly in a bowl of cereal
Molybdenum, lanthanum, tantalum, platinum, it’s not unique and not all got latinized.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/aluminum
And aluminum was what it was originally spelled as well, at this point it’s not going to change in American English. Even the IUPAC acknowledges it as accepted, it’s been there from the start can we move on past this after 200+ years?
Are you buying?
I've been really wanting to make a small forge to melt down some cans
That would be pretty cool, honestly. Probably better than sticking it in the blue bin.
Now let’s hear yanks say “mobile mirror”. You’re too lazy to even pronounce the letters you do have.
Thats certainly one possible explanation for why Americans chose to simplify the spelling of the words they use.