The Spelling Differences between American and British English

1
The Spelling Differences between American and
British English

• History of English Language
• Professor Michael Cheng
• Presenter
• Helen Cheng

2
Historical Origins

• English spelling was standardized after the
  publishing of influential dictionaries
• British-Samuel Johnsons A Dictionary of the
  English Language (1755)
• American- Noah Websters American Dictionary of
  the English Language (1828)

3
Samuel Johnson

• A Dictionary of the English Language
• aks. Johnson's Dictionary (1755)
• The pre-eminent English dictionary before the OED
• one of the greatest single achievements of
  scholarship
• Deduce to the origin
• Illustrate with literary quotations
• Provide Multiple definitions
• With illustrations

4
Noah Webster

• A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language
  (1806)
• Introducing American spelling and words
• American Dictionary of the English Language
  (1828)
• Expanding to 70,000 entries
• Spelling reform

5
Spelling Reform

• based on the Websters combined vision of logic
  and aesthetics
• principle of uniformity words that were alike,
  nouns and their derivatives, should be spelled
  alike. (e.g. musickgtmusic (musical))
• respell anomalous British spellings (e.g.
  gaol/jail)

6
Common Spelling Differences between BrE and AmE

• Greek Spelling -our/-or -se/-ce -re/-er
• Latin-derived Spelling -ise/-ize -yse/-yze
  -ogue/-og
• Doubled Consonants -ll
• Dropped e

7
Greek Spelling-ise/-ize

• British usage both ise(more frequent) and ize
  (Oxford spelling)
• e.g. organise, realise, and recognise
• American usage ize
• e.g. organize, realize, and recognize
• Originated from Greek -??e??, Latin -izare with
  the pronunciation /z/
• -ise was influenced by the special French
  spelling in -iser

8
Latin-derived Spellingunstressed our/-or

• Nowadaysgt -our for British English and -or for
  American English
• e.g. colour/color, labour/labor, and
  flavour/flavor
• Derived from Latin non-agent nouns having
  nominative or
• Borrowed into English from early Old French
  ending -or or -ur
• After the Norman Conquest gt-our in Anglo-French
  in an attempt to represent the Old French
  pronunciation
• After the Renaissance, some such borrowings from
  Latin gtoriginal -or
• In16th and early 17th century some British
  scholars gt
• -or for words from Latin and -our for French
  loans

9
Doubled Consonants

• General rule when adding a suffix beginning with
  a vowel to words with final stressed syllable and
  ending with a single vowel followed by a single
  consonant
• The British English l doubling is required for
  all inflections (-ed, -ing, -er, -est) and noun
  suffixes -er and or
• e.g. counsellor, cruellest, modelling,
  quarrelled, signalling, traveller, and travelling
• In American usage, the spelling of words is
  unchanged when they form the main part (root) of
  other words
• e.g. wil(l)ful, skil(l)ful, thral(l)dom,
  fulfil(l), fulfil(l)ment, enrol(l)ment

10
Dropped e

• British English usually keep silent e when
  adding suffixes except it is unnecessary to
  indicate pronunciation (e.g. believable,bluish)
• American English usually eliminate silent e
  except for some ambiguous cases (e.g. diegtdying
  vs. dyegtdyeing)
• e.g. likeable/likable, ageing/aging, arguement/
  argument

11
Conclusion

• Language serves as an indicator of cultural and
  social differences
• Language is changing with time and space
• The variants of a single language makes it
  diverse