Poll: Colour or Color?
- Thread starter NoblePhilistineFox
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Ahh, the 'archaic' argument. I am sure you are just joking around but just to comment on that: probably nothing is pure in English and to avoid any corruptions or archaisms would be a neverending endevour. So we remove a few U's from some words. Well what about all of the endless other examples of inconsistancy? Those U's and so on, reflect the history of their words. Since only learners of the language would need to spell phonetically (natives spell most words automatically from memory), a U here or not here, doesn't really matter. It could have an X in it, and natives would still know 'how to spell it'.RebellionXXI said:
Color, because I'm American. I like the other way better though, but I don't want to be a poser and use it for no reason.
kaveradeo said:
How about 'knife', 'gnat', 'phone', 'Queen', 'comfortable', etc?soren7550 said:
Should it be 'nife', 'natt', 'fone', 'kween', and 'comftable'?
Spellings are just symbols collected together which represent what we generally agree for them to mean, so we COULD spell the words like that, if enough of us understood those spellings. Those letters only have sounds because we attribute those sounds to them. Look at languages like Japanese, where one Kanji character has at least two pronunciations, if not several. English is kind of messed up, no matter how you look at it, when it comes to consistancy in its rules, both in grammar and spelling. Many of those inconsistancies come from uneven changes in the language. There have been so many attempts to reform it. American English is the result of one such attempt. Many aspects of British English are also the result of reforms. But there is just so much that could be changed!
I'm American and I still spell it colour. I don't care what spell-check says. I also spell gray with an e; grey.
Well it might interest you to know that some so-called 'Americanisms' were not invented by American speakers at all, but rather are just words and phrases that were 'held on to'. Such differences were created when British English went through massive changes and the colonists in the Americas didn't, couldn't, 'get the memo' about it. I have found quite a few examples of English supposedly of American invention but which actually reflect how things used to be said.Deviltongue said:I mean, that still use British spelling for shit...UberNoodle said:I hope you are including the USA is that list.Deviltongue said:
I spell it "colour" even though I'm American, mainly because I prefer the way it looks and because I also grew up reading a lot of British literature.
