Spelling differences between British and American English

You’ve certainly been wondering – why are there differences between British and American English if they emerge from the same source, from people speaking one, almost identical language back in the XVIII century? It wasn’t that long ago, was it? Languages change over time, but it is usually a gradual and justified process – either under the influence of another language, some fabulous trend in the mother tongue or maybe through convenience, as people simply don’t like to use hard language that much. Well, in this case it was different – and let’s talk about the background of it and then bask in numerous examples!

After the United States’ quest for independence, local scholars vied for creating a version of English more distant from that of the British – there was deep distrust in Americans towards the former. Language was seen as one way the British may try to assert dominance over them once again. Since they spoke the same language, a danger arose that they might consider the US to be too close culturally to be left alone!

The US English in the XVIII century wasn’t completely the same as British, since the settlers already used a lot of loanwords from local Indian languages or those coming from German, French or Spanish settlers. But that’s vocabulary – let’s talk about spelling differences that arose because of that!

At first, it’s important to point out that Americans do not use lengthened versions of British words like honour or colour – they’re replaced with honor or color. Let’s think of some additional examples of words it works with in both variations of the language.

The disappearing -u- within the American spellings of the words is very characteristic. Be careful if you intend to speak the variation of the language they use in the US!

Secondly, Americans do not use traditional British suffixes of -ise, rather than that preferring the form of -ize in verbs. This is true for words like organise or apologise – in American variation, replaced by organize or apologize. Let’s dig for more examples!

That s to z change is particularly important in the spelling and brings a change in pronunciation. Americans are usually very consistent in their strong -ize – be mindful of that!

Thirdly, doubling consonants works a bit differently in both language variations. While it works with p or m, the letter l becomes a bit of a thing as it isn’t doubled in American variation. It means that you can often see words like these in English:

Beware! The -l- consonant is often doubled before -ment suffix in American variation. This might be a little tricky!

There are surely more differences, but it is enough for now. Can you think about any words that differ in spelling between the variations?