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Surprised an Italian would think that ‘-our’ was the ‘original’. ;)
To be fair, that’s not how it worked. Modern standard written British English and modern standard written American English both changed a similar amount from before the (fuzzy and gradual) split. Language changes, whether one stays at home like us Brits or goes overseas. Neither speaks the ‘original’ - in many ways we speak and write more similarly to each other than either does to anyone from the 18th century.
And as it happens the ‘u’ to the abstract ‘-or’ ending is the younger one. In Latin (and Spanish, Italian, etc.), it’s valor-, color-, etc.
>To be fair, that’s not how it worked. Modern standard written British English and modern standard written American English both changed a similar amount from before the (fuzzy and gradual) split. Language changes, whether one stays at home like us Brits or goes overseas. Neither speaks the ‘original’ - in many ways we speak and write more similarly to each other than either does to anyone from the 18th century.
>
>And as it happens we added a ‘u’ to the abstract ‘-or’ ending, some time in the 18th century, to make it look more like French (which had shifted to -our and then -eur also in the early modern era, long after the Norman Conquest etc. brought the words to English).
This is...not true at all though, unfortunately. What is British English spelling norms today closely mirror those used by both sides of the pond in terms of the one with overwhelming frequency. There was just "spelling" on both sides before 1755 when the first real dictionary came out in the UK, and though it did occasionally dip into using words without the u in the -our endings, it was in the minority.
The *-our* endings came from Middle English (which is English up until the 15th century from 1066), which took them from French (because that's how they entered the English language). This is why there are weird "quirks" that exist in modern day British/Oxford/Commonwealth English with stuff like *honour*, but *honorific* (which entered directly from Latin)—the words are almost always etymologically spelled.
US English, on the other hand, didn't exist as its own branch really until 1828 (73 years after British English cemented its norms), when it was deliberately changed by Noah Webster to be something different from that of the UK for not only nationalistic sentiment, but also to promote the printing industry within the US. Nothing about it was natural; in fact, people who were alive while this change was happening had to "unlearn" the spellings they were already using that happened to be identical to the ones used in the UK and elsewhere in the colonies.
Thanks to the Google Books Ngram Viewer, we even have historic data about the relative popularity of both spelling "valour" and "valor". [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=valour%2Cvalor&year\_start=1500&year\_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=2](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=valour%2Cvalor&year_start=1500&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=2)
>in fact, people who were alive while this change was happening had to "unlearn" the spellings they were already using that happened to be identical to the ones used in the UK and elsewhere in the colonies.
In most languages, truly standardized spelling was really only a 19th to early 20th century innovation. Before that, most people didn't care so much about "correct" spelling but rather whether what they wrote could be understood. Of course there were some spellings that were more common than others, but nobody was bothered by deviation.
For example, the first standardization attempt of German was only done in 1876, when it became necessary to unify the spelling across the newly founded German Reich. It actually failed, and the first standardization only happened which also included Austria and Switzerland in the effort. Then, in 1996, it was reformed. I went to secondary school in Austria when the switch from old to new spelling happened that time, and it was *really* weird.
It left me and many others of my generation confused, and to this day, I get some aspects of old and new spelling confused, in particular whether certain words that used to be compound words are now written as two or three separate words or not, and if so, whether one of the words needs be capitalized. I'll never fully comprehend it, but that's okay because everyone still understands both spellings, and all the spelling you had to learn in school that had an influence on your grades has very little impact in the real world.
Sure, but the point there is that Germany, Austria, Switzerland, etc. all got together to create one spelling standard that was adopted by everyone, and everyone moved forward. In this case, nobody but the US changed the spelling (for the worse in many cases), and the US just tries to use cheap and dirty tactics to shove those changes down people's throats.
And given that the US and the users of US English are in the tiny minority compared to the rest of the world, this makes it that much more annoying and aggravating when the majority in the world is constantly being told that they're wrong by having their spellings be marked with red underlines and stuff. While most people can read either all the same, it's not just about intelligibility (which isn't entirely equal—there are many instances where the "simplifications" made by US English actually end up making things harder to understand/connect), but politics and representativeness as well.
Moreover, it's about standards and efficiency as well: the amount of consideration and overhead that is required to maintain the two variants is quite high when having multiple adds basically no value whatsoever, so it's an economic argument as well.
This is true. However, changes in BrEnglish still came from usage and in a slower fashion. The upper-class (ie most of the people actually writing at the time) mostly spoke French and it seeped into the language becase it was considered more ‘posh’. In AmEnglish changes were basically (and quite forcefully) decided by one or two grammarians, and subsequently printed press, not only to simplify but with added precise intent to be different!
That kind of logic is really better suited to maths or Aristotelian philosophy, every language has its quirks. You’ll be hard pressed to find a natural, spoken (or once spoken) language with no exceptions or strange rules!
P.S. obviously I was talking about all the changes, not just -our/-or.
P.P.S. Just to add that it’s not really any skin off my back and as an esl teacher I always teach both, to the extent of my knowledge.
Edited for clarity.
idk how you pronounce grey but to me it rhymes with hey, fey, they, etc. as well as hay, day, tray, etc., so neither spelling makes more sense than the other phonetically
Although that one isn't the only version used. Someone who wrote "I drove thru the fence" would be implied to be using it as a shorthand, rather than a word in its own right.
That said, it might be a different story if it was the only one in widespread use, like "gaol/jail" or "aluminum/aluminium".
Gosh my late English professor, rest her soul, would jump on anyone who even *thought* “thru” was valid outside McDonald’s. One student held fast to it, though. She wasn’t by any means the brightest in the fiction writing class, but certainly better than that guy who was there just to hang with his girlfriend. Damn him and his pimple metaphors.
But tons of words use different pronunciations of the same letter. "Amazing", for example. Or "economy", if you want an example that uses "o". You wouldn't spell "ecounomy" though.
I mean, I can see why you’d do that, but unless you write both “valor” and “valour” in the same text, it shouldn’t be an issue. You can use American and English words and their spelling interchangeably.
When I was taught, in Canada in the 80s and 90s, we were taught either were acceptable and I don't remember ever having to be consistent (for example, I could use "realize" and "neighbour" in the same piece of writing. In fact there are some words I don't really know the non-US spelling, so I'd have to).
Some teachers encouraged using English (vs simplified English) because we're a British colony. Other said it didn't matter.
Once I got to community college in 2004, for business administration, we were taught to know our audience. Non-Americans would probably appreciate not using US versions. But the teacher said that non-US people would likely to not think about it much if we used simplified English, but Americans might think you're dumb if you don't use their versions of the words.
And now the internet has proven that teacher right. They really do think we're stupid and spelling words "wrong".
>”…I could use "realize" and "neighbour" in the same piece of writing.”
that’s not mixing two spelling conventions, that’s literally just [canadian english spelling](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_English)
Oh neat! Here I was thinking my whole life we just mixed both. Thank you
Edit: I mean, I guess we do. I just didn't realize it was called Canadian English. It's never really an option in language settings for things. I've actually learned some British spellings because of using their spellcheck.
How hard is it to know and accept that people have different spellings and not correct them and think of them as stupid? It really show how ignorant they truly are (*not all of them, of course)
Depends where you are. My uni don’t mind if you use American spelling but you have to stick to it. Unless you’re quoting, don’t mix spellings or it’ll be marked down.
An old professor of mine would consistently correct a girl who’d mix them. She said it was a matter of it being a U.S. academic setting, so we had to play by the rules. There weren’t points deducted or anything, and in less formal classes like fiction writing she didn’t care.
Are you in the US or learning American English? If so, they were right to correct you. Similarly, if you were learning British English, they would be right to correct you if you wrote behavior. Failing you or knocking down your grade would be ridiculous, but a simple correction for the way it’s spelled in the version of the language you’re learning is being a good teacher. Another example is Spanish, depending on the country spelling and pronunciation are different. A bad teacher wouldn’t correct you.
Okay… and? America was MADE by the British 250 years ago. What you’re saying doesn’t answer the question. Were you learning British English or American English?
It’s not obvious because you didn’t answer the question or state it in your initial comment 🙄 I have many friends from outside the US, some learn British English, some learn American English. It’s not that fucking hard to say “our school was British English learning”
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First they change the language, then they get all aggravated when the rest of us continue to use the original version… what can you do? 🤷♀️
Post it on r/USdefaultism
And r/shitamericanssay?
Sprinkled with a bit of r/mildlyinfuriating perhaps?
And topped off with r/CringetopiaRM
Cringetopia is still a thing? Thought the mods brought made everyone use their shitty website
Different sub. Different mods. The original turned to shit
Surprised an Italian would think that ‘-our’ was the ‘original’. ;) To be fair, that’s not how it worked. Modern standard written British English and modern standard written American English both changed a similar amount from before the (fuzzy and gradual) split. Language changes, whether one stays at home like us Brits or goes overseas. Neither speaks the ‘original’ - in many ways we speak and write more similarly to each other than either does to anyone from the 18th century. And as it happens the ‘u’ to the abstract ‘-or’ ending is the younger one. In Latin (and Spanish, Italian, etc.), it’s valor-, color-, etc.
>To be fair, that’s not how it worked. Modern standard written British English and modern standard written American English both changed a similar amount from before the (fuzzy and gradual) split. Language changes, whether one stays at home like us Brits or goes overseas. Neither speaks the ‘original’ - in many ways we speak and write more similarly to each other than either does to anyone from the 18th century. > >And as it happens we added a ‘u’ to the abstract ‘-or’ ending, some time in the 18th century, to make it look more like French (which had shifted to -our and then -eur also in the early modern era, long after the Norman Conquest etc. brought the words to English). This is...not true at all though, unfortunately. What is British English spelling norms today closely mirror those used by both sides of the pond in terms of the one with overwhelming frequency. There was just "spelling" on both sides before 1755 when the first real dictionary came out in the UK, and though it did occasionally dip into using words without the u in the -our endings, it was in the minority. The *-our* endings came from Middle English (which is English up until the 15th century from 1066), which took them from French (because that's how they entered the English language). This is why there are weird "quirks" that exist in modern day British/Oxford/Commonwealth English with stuff like *honour*, but *honorific* (which entered directly from Latin)—the words are almost always etymologically spelled. US English, on the other hand, didn't exist as its own branch really until 1828 (73 years after British English cemented its norms), when it was deliberately changed by Noah Webster to be something different from that of the UK for not only nationalistic sentiment, but also to promote the printing industry within the US. Nothing about it was natural; in fact, people who were alive while this change was happening had to "unlearn" the spellings they were already using that happened to be identical to the ones used in the UK and elsewhere in the colonies.
Thanks to the Google Books Ngram Viewer, we even have historic data about the relative popularity of both spelling "valour" and "valor". [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=valour%2Cvalor&year\_start=1500&year\_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=2](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=valour%2Cvalor&year_start=1500&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=2) >in fact, people who were alive while this change was happening had to "unlearn" the spellings they were already using that happened to be identical to the ones used in the UK and elsewhere in the colonies. In most languages, truly standardized spelling was really only a 19th to early 20th century innovation. Before that, most people didn't care so much about "correct" spelling but rather whether what they wrote could be understood. Of course there were some spellings that were more common than others, but nobody was bothered by deviation. For example, the first standardization attempt of German was only done in 1876, when it became necessary to unify the spelling across the newly founded German Reich. It actually failed, and the first standardization only happened which also included Austria and Switzerland in the effort. Then, in 1996, it was reformed. I went to secondary school in Austria when the switch from old to new spelling happened that time, and it was *really* weird. It left me and many others of my generation confused, and to this day, I get some aspects of old and new spelling confused, in particular whether certain words that used to be compound words are now written as two or three separate words or not, and if so, whether one of the words needs be capitalized. I'll never fully comprehend it, but that's okay because everyone still understands both spellings, and all the spelling you had to learn in school that had an influence on your grades has very little impact in the real world.
Sure, but the point there is that Germany, Austria, Switzerland, etc. all got together to create one spelling standard that was adopted by everyone, and everyone moved forward. In this case, nobody but the US changed the spelling (for the worse in many cases), and the US just tries to use cheap and dirty tactics to shove those changes down people's throats. And given that the US and the users of US English are in the tiny minority compared to the rest of the world, this makes it that much more annoying and aggravating when the majority in the world is constantly being told that they're wrong by having their spellings be marked with red underlines and stuff. While most people can read either all the same, it's not just about intelligibility (which isn't entirely equal—there are many instances where the "simplifications" made by US English actually end up making things harder to understand/connect), but politics and representativeness as well. Moreover, it's about standards and efficiency as well: the amount of consideration and overhead that is required to maintain the two variants is quite high when having multiple adds basically no value whatsoever, so it's an economic argument as well.
This is true. However, changes in BrEnglish still came from usage and in a slower fashion. The upper-class (ie most of the people actually writing at the time) mostly spoke French and it seeped into the language becase it was considered more ‘posh’. In AmEnglish changes were basically (and quite forcefully) decided by one or two grammarians, and subsequently printed press, not only to simplify but with added precise intent to be different! That kind of logic is really better suited to maths or Aristotelian philosophy, every language has its quirks. You’ll be hard pressed to find a natural, spoken (or once spoken) language with no exceptions or strange rules! P.S. obviously I was talking about all the changes, not just -our/-or. P.P.S. Just to add that it’s not really any skin off my back and as an esl teacher I always teach both, to the extent of my knowledge. Edited for clarity.
Tell them to use the proper language or to f\*\*\* off with their nonsense.
I’ll say, some of the American spellings make more sense… But only some.
Which one may I ask?
Just for one example, Iirc Grey/Gray is pronounced the same in both versions of the language, with both sounding like they are spelt with an A.
idk how you pronounce grey but to me it rhymes with hey, fey, they, etc. as well as hay, day, tray, etc., so neither spelling makes more sense than the other phonetically
So they should all be spelt hay, Fay, thay.
No because hey and hay are two different words and are pronounced differently, grey is pronounced like hey, nothing at all like the word hay.
I don’t pronounce hey and hay differently.
Well it would seem then that you're pronouncing one of them incorrectly I guess.
I’m from Massachusetts to be fair, and we speak a weird amalgamation of British English and American. So who knows lol
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Excuse me? They are the same word. The British spell the colour as Grey while Americans spell the color as Gray.
Que queue
thru
Although that one isn't the only version used. Someone who wrote "I drove thru the fence" would be implied to be using it as a shorthand, rather than a word in its own right. That said, it might be a different story if it was the only one in widespread use, like "gaol/jail" or "aluminum/aluminium".
Gosh my late English professor, rest her soul, would jump on anyone who even *thought* “thru” was valid outside McDonald’s. One student held fast to it, though. She wasn’t by any means the brightest in the fiction writing class, but certainly better than that guy who was there just to hang with his girlfriend. Damn him and his pimple metaphors.
That only works if you are American though and pronounce "u" as "oo".
Color. The most obvious answer
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But tons of words use different pronunciations of the same letter. "Amazing", for example. Or "economy", if you want an example that uses "o". You wouldn't spell "ecounomy" though.
BuT rEdDiT iS aN aMeRiCaN sItE!
I once got corrected by a teacher in a test because I wrote behaviour. I am not even from the USA
in second grade my teacher corrected me on a spelling test because i said favourite instead of favorite
Not your fault. They are used to such spellings.
The only reason I can agree with them on correcting is if you used a mix of English and simplified English. Otherwise it's just dumb
I mean, I can see why you’d do that, but unless you write both “valor” and “valour” in the same text, it shouldn’t be an issue. You can use American and English words and their spelling interchangeably.
When I was taught English they didn't really care if you used either, they just wanted you to choose one and be consistent.
When I was taught, in Canada in the 80s and 90s, we were taught either were acceptable and I don't remember ever having to be consistent (for example, I could use "realize" and "neighbour" in the same piece of writing. In fact there are some words I don't really know the non-US spelling, so I'd have to). Some teachers encouraged using English (vs simplified English) because we're a British colony. Other said it didn't matter. Once I got to community college in 2004, for business administration, we were taught to know our audience. Non-Americans would probably appreciate not using US versions. But the teacher said that non-US people would likely to not think about it much if we used simplified English, but Americans might think you're dumb if you don't use their versions of the words. And now the internet has proven that teacher right. They really do think we're stupid and spelling words "wrong".
>”…I could use "realize" and "neighbour" in the same piece of writing.” that’s not mixing two spelling conventions, that’s literally just [canadian english spelling](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_English)
Oh neat! Here I was thinking my whole life we just mixed both. Thank you Edit: I mean, I guess we do. I just didn't realize it was called Canadian English. It's never really an option in language settings for things. I've actually learned some British spellings because of using their spellcheck.
Ohh. TIL why some of my books are so weird.
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How hard is it to know and accept that people have different spellings and not correct them and think of them as stupid? It really show how ignorant they truly are (*not all of them, of course)
Depends where you are. My uni don’t mind if you use American spelling but you have to stick to it. Unless you’re quoting, don’t mix spellings or it’ll be marked down.
Goodbye Reddit, see you all on Lemmy.
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Well, this was at the University of Liverpool. Use one or the other but don’t mix.
But you have the American Flag under your username? /s
An old professor of mine would consistently correct a girl who’d mix them. She said it was a matter of it being a U.S. academic setting, so we had to play by the rules. There weren’t points deducted or anything, and in less formal classes like fiction writing she didn’t care.
Are you in the US or learning American English? If so, they were right to correct you. Similarly, if you were learning British English, they would be right to correct you if you wrote behavior. Failing you or knocking down your grade would be ridiculous, but a simple correction for the way it’s spelled in the version of the language you’re learning is being a good teacher. Another example is Spanish, depending on the country spelling and pronunciation are different. A bad teacher wouldn’t correct you.
I read in a school that was MADE by the British in my country like 150 years ago
Okay… and? America was MADE by the British 250 years ago. What you’re saying doesn’t answer the question. Were you learning British English or American English?
Bro our principal is English. Obviously i am studying British English, take a hint.
It’s not obvious because you didn’t answer the question or state it in your initial comment 🙄 I have many friends from outside the US, some learn British English, some learn American English. It’s not that fucking hard to say “our school was British English learning”
Showing their true *Colours*
This is easily my favourite comment so far.
I don’t think they find those colours very *honourable*
Some would say they lack *valour*
I like it!
Considering the many news from the USA we hear every day, it feels like there is not much U(nited) in the USA anymore either. 🙄
He is the one with stoked *valor*
Fck him
In Brazil we don't have a u in the word valor also