Different words...

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JohnTomorrow

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Jan 11, 2010
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***Edited for the Irish. Sorry for the offense.***

I was writing something a few minutes ago and i wrote in 'apologise', and that little red squiggle came up under the word. I immediately fixed it, but felt something was still wrong. I discussed it with my fiancee. She told me that, back in the old days, when America wanted to disassociate themselves from the English, they (aside from changing their conversion system) changed the spelling on a lot of their words.

Apologise became apologize. Aeroplane became airplane. Aluminium and aluminum. Mum became mom. Titbit or tidbit.

After doing some research, i've found its different depending on where you come from. Obviously, the English and American spelling is different from each other, but Ireland, Canada and Australia have a mixture of both, Canada and Australia especially.

I can understand this. All three countries have different ways of which they have come to be - Australia has become a multi-national country, Canada is English/French settlers, and Ireland are a bunch of...inebriated Scots (Actually dont know where the Irish came from. Sorry.)

Has anybody else ever struggled with this in the past? Its a good chance to look back at the English language as a historical piece, instead of just a tool we use to communicate to one another. Reading through the Wiki entrance reveals a lot of surprising revelation as to where a lot of words come from.
 

DefunctTheory

Not So Defunct Now
Mar 30, 2010
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It didn't have anything to do with purposely separating themselves from Britain. Its just what happens when you take a lot of different language speaking people and tell them all to use english.

As for you're questions... never really thought about that.
 

Kagim

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Aug 26, 2009
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The fact that my American spell checker keeps punishing me for putting U's in words that U's belong in yes.

Its a pain in the ass when your editing a term paper late at night and not realize what you did wrong only to lose marks for spelling on the paper....
 

SnootyEnglishman

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May 26, 2009
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There's different word spelling sometimes because people like to make themselves sound sophisticated and fancy. Also it's a result of translation errors between languages. It happens

P.S--Nice little Ireland comment there buddy.I can almost hear Furburt raging from here.
 

Acier

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Nov 5, 2009
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Well the economizing of language is just a natural progression of development. unnecessary bits of words are just naturally cut out or changed (shoppe and towne for example).

And I honestly don't think that we hated the Brits so much after independence that we were like "arrrrgh lets change everything"
Because heaven forbid two countries separate by an entire ocean develop differently.
 

SloshedUberman

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Apr 1, 2010
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When America became independent, the languages evolved differently
New inventions got different names in each country, and Webster wrote a dictionary and changed a lot of the spellings
 

JohnTomorrow

Green Thumbed Gamer
Jan 11, 2010
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Furburt said:
JohnTomorrow said:
Ireland are a bunch of pissed Scots.
Erm..since when? Scottish and Irish people are similar racially, but we aren't the same. Some people in Ulster are Ulster-Scots, but other than that....
Plus, the "pissed" thing is quite offensive. Remove it please.
OP: Can't say I've ever had any problems with it. I use the English spellings myself, I just set spellchecker to accept those as the right definitions.
I only have a problem if someone on the other side of the Atlantic calls me out for using the 'wrong' spelling.
Sorry dude. I'm Australian. Not an excuse, but yeah. Swearing and offensiveness is kinda genetically ingrained, much like drinking and wrestling crocodiles.
 

JohnTomorrow

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Jan 11, 2010
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Furburt said:
JohnTomorrow said:
Sorry dude. I'm Australian. Not an excuse, but yeah. Swearing and offensiveness is kinda genetically ingrained, much like drinking and wrestling crocodiles.
Well, thank you for changing it anyway. Sort of, it still implies that all Irish are drunks. Whatever, too tired to argue. I'm somewhat..touchy about the subject.
Well, that's the rub unfortunately...stereotypes. My sister is married to an Irish fella, I give him crap about it all the time. He just tells me to go catch a snake or wear khaki.