The only thing that does annoy me is when E-book versions of works by British authors have been changed to use American spellings. It's bad enough that we have to accept US English as a de-facto norm in so many places, but please dog allow us at least to read books written our own language in an unadulterated form.

Let's not forget, english wasn't created in a vacuum either. The english language didn't just appear, fully formed. It slowly evolved to what we know today from what used to be completely different languages. I'm sure there was someone long ago lamenting that the english that the British speak today was a bastardised version of what they perceived to be proper english. I mean look how many accents and dialects exist in the UK alone.

yeah both are right

What's cool to me is if I spell something wrong I'll claim British spelling lol

And usually, the author and/or publisher will make a note on the description.

As an Australian, spelling gives me grief these days because of the internet. I find I'm regularly mixing and matching between AU/UK English spelling and American spelling. It's not unusual to realise that I spelled it realize because I've been corresponding with Americans.

You didn't replace the s with z. As it happens, in most cases we replaced the z with s to look more chic. True story. Before the dictionary, all sorts of spellings got used all over the place. Can we all just get along please.

It's called voicing. Touch your throat when making a z sound, then make an s sound. You'll feel a vibration on the z but not on the s. English also has two different "th" sounds. Try comparing these words: "this", "thing"

To be honest the Z in realise makes sense. It is a stronger Z sound. As for odor/odour that's probably change in pronunciation over time. There was probably a stronger OU sound that's gradually changed to more of an O sound.

In general American aren’t typically exposed much to other cultures. One is not better than another but learning to recognize the difference should be mandatory.

That's happened even within the UK. Friend of mine, a Geordie, gave us a Geordie dictionary when he joined our office. It WAS necessary.

There was actually a systematic effort in early America to "simplify" English spelling as a way to differentiate us from the UK.

Most times you don't. Odor and odour or realise and realize are generally close enough to understand intent. It's usually colloquialisms that cause problems. Notice I said most though. I daresay if you compare say deep south US with Scouse or outback Australian it'd get a lot more difficult.

Spelling was all over the place and was standardized only a couple centuries ago. What annoyed me once was a dude “preemptively correcting” the use of “math” and not “maths”.

Nope the British changed spellings and accents after we settled in America. We speak traditional English. That's also why when you hear or read the sounding out of word you don't have an accent 👍 some of our word variations do come from French spellings though because why not.

According to a Reader's Digest article, the Americans changed them to make them easier and more logical. As an English person, I struggled for years with words like colour/color, but now I wish we spelt it the same as the Americans.

@Trophy Husband. America changed the spellings on purpose. Supposedly, it was to save money on print; which charged per letter. However, I have also read that the founding fathers pushed it into common practice to create a further disinction between America and England.

I'm not sure what you mean by accent? As in every Country, there are numerous regional accents, but The Brit-English language (spelling) is the same, although slang & abbreviations are more prevalent due to, I assume, the introduction of Texting.

i love this more than what words can describe!

The true English frightens them

I use American spellings half the time and British the other half. Color looks weird without the u. But realise looks better with a z. Spoken I’m purely American, until I listen to too much British English and then my internal monologue becomes British.

But American English is traditional and actually correct grammatically and historically. Accents anywhere and slang are still unique and fun but that doesn't make them correct.

😂

I actually get this