The many flavours of English

Americans labour under the delusion they practise roughly the same customs as their friends throughout the English-speaking world. Many do not realise that their orthographic behaviours differ considerably even from their neighbours to the north, Canada. While the United States may have the largest defence budget of any country, and fought in the most theatres of war of any nation, it is still not the centre of the universe, not even of the Anglophone world. The next time you travel overseas on an aeroplane, humour me by asking a foreigner his favourite dialect of English. But please don?t criticise him, nor harbour any ill-will to him, if he fails to recognise the superiority of your own.

You may have noticed something fishy about the preceding paragraph. It was written in English, although with a few spellings you may be unaccustomed to. Many people refer to those as ?British spellings? but in most of the world they are simply standard English. You would see those spellings in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Jamaica and Singapore. It is the United States that has distanced itself from the rest of the Anglosphere.

Why are there different spellings in different countries? Most linguistic changes are gradual, happening over several centuries. They are not usually dictated from on high. Neither was the case in America?s spelling reformation. In fact, many of the differences can be traced to a single person and a single book: Noah Webster?s 1828 ?American Dictionary of the English Language.?

Webster?s dictionary was not the first in the English-speaking world. English word books were printed in Great Britain as early as 1538, although these books were simply lists of words ? no definitions. It was not until Samuel Johnson?s 1755 dictionary that the English-speaking world possessed a truly comprehensive dictionary, which contained nearly 43,000 words complete with definitions and examples.

Webster relied heavily on Johnson?s dictionary when he authored his own 73 years later. However, he altered a number of Johnson?s spellings. For instance, words that ended in an unstressed ??our? in Johnson?s dictionary were changed to ??or? in Webster?s dictionary. Colour, rumour and honour in Johnson?s work are color, rumor and honor in Webster?s.

Many of these differences reflect differences in spelling between Old French (which used ??or?) and the Anglo-Norman spoken in England after the Norman Conquest of 1066 (when ??our? reigned). Webster preferred the much older spelling, which was in most cases true to the word?s spelling in Latin. For instance, the word is spelled ?color? in Latin. Johnson preferred the ??our? ending, and used it to spell words that have sinced dropped the ?u? everywhere in the English-speaking world such as in governour, errour, horrour and mirrour.

Words such as centre and theatre, so spelled in International English, reflect their French spellings ?centre? and ?théâtre." Webster changed these and other ??re? words such as spectre, calibre and fibre to their ??er? forms we are familiar with today. English speakers outside of the U.S. still use the ??re? forms for these words. However, many words spelled ??re? in Modern French, such as chaptre, disastre, périmètre and months such as novembre and décembre, are spelled with the ??er? ending in every Anglophone country.

The ??ise? endings you noticed in the first paragraph are another difference between Americans and other English speakers. Americans admit only the ??ize? ending for words such as organize, civilize and realize while Britain and others commonly use organise, civilise and realise. Here again, the battle is over word history. The ??ise? form comes from French, in which ?to organize? is rendered ?organiser.? However, the Latin form for these is ??izare.? Webster argued that since these words are pronounced with a ?z? sound and were spelled with a ?z? in Latin, there is no reason to continue the French spelling with the ?s.? Oxford University Press uses the ??ize? endings but the ??ise? form predominates in Britain and is favored overwhelmingly in Australia and New Zealand.

One word that drives English speakers crazy is the American spelling of ?aluminum.? In the rest of the world, this element is spelled and pronounced with a second ?i?: aluminium. I?ve talked to a few people who thought Americans were simply mispronouncing the word. The difference in spelling goes back to the element?s discovery in 1808 by British chemist Humphrey Davy. Davy originally spelled the element ?alumium? but agreed to change it to ?aluminum.? It was changed once more to ?aluminium? by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry to conform to the other ??ium? elements such as lithium and sodium. Webster?s dictionary contained only the ?aluminum? spelling, which explains why it became the standard spelling in the United States. Tell ­that to your overseas friends the next time they accuse you of being ignorant.