American Spelling

[sabrina]

Does anyone know when and why American spelling began to differ from that of UK? I wonder why they began dropping letters or changing some word spellings completely...Was it the influence of other inmigrants with different mother tongues?

[emilyb]

i did some searching but did not find anything on when it changed, however a good guide to the differences can be found under: http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwesl/egw/jones/differences.htm

[Frank van den Eeden]

thank you emilyb,

http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwesl/egw/jones/differences.htm

is a very interesting site,
I've added it to my favourites. (or AM. favorites)

[Gabriel]

I can't provide any useful information on that regard, but I guess the differences show how much the American society care about becoming intellectually independent from their background... kind of what happens in Italy, uh?

[vicente]

Originally Posted by Gabriel

I can't provide any useful information on that regard, but I guess the differences show how much the American society care about becoming intellectually independent from their background... kind of what happens in Italy, uh?

As an American I can only guess that we found the King's English to be a little, complicated!!? Maybe. I mean, why have a "u" in color?

Frankly, I have always thought that learning English would be very difficult because some of the wacky spelling. Like though, through and other words that have "extra", and to me, unnecessary letters.

That's why I love Spanish. It is so much more sensible.

Another factor might be that early Americans weren't that educated. After all, many of them, probably the majority, were peasants without property who fled poverty and tyranny. I know that in the case of proper names taken during very early census years there was a LOT of serious mis-spelling and they tended to go with phonetic spelling. That might be one reason why so many words were changed.

vicente