Why is uk english extra?
Just wondering why YOU think (I know i can just google this) Americans dropped letters/ british kept letters for words like Color, blond, gray, ect...
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AmourPropre
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GaelicPotato
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hauntedbysandwiches
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LloydAsher
Basic english is just knowing around 4000 words, just enough so you can understand a newspaper.
The power of english is that as long as you say it somewhat correctly another english speaker can understand you.
Unlike mandarin (best example) where if you had an accent it could massively change the context of the spoken word.
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SkullsNRoses
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donteatstuffoffthesidewalk
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SkullsNRoses
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Anonymous Post Author
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SkullsNRoses
You wish I was in your area, you coffee drinking yank. You and I are destined to gaze over the ocean at each-other in an agonising mix of repulsion and longing unsure if it’s the steam on our hot drinks bringing a tear to our eye or the deep feelings that burn within us hotter than any kettle.
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Mini69
The average American isn’t intelligent enough to spell properly, so a simplified version of our language has been developed for the Americans simplified brains.
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SweetNLite
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raisinbran
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notacatgirl
for some reason brits say metre instead of meter, centre instead of center and I find that really weird as a half American half brit
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Elroy7141
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BlueAlice
Probably because the UK has more French influence than the US?
Michael Rosen's book Alphabetical talks about this concept. Well worth a go!
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donteatstuffoffthesidewalk
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Clunk42
I imagine it's for the same reason that a Protestant Bible does not contain all the books it should. The Americans wanted to make their English different from the British solely to make themselves different from the British, just as the Protestants removed books from the Bible to make themselves different (except for the books which actively proved them wrong, which they got rid of because they couldn't twist them to match their own false narratives).
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Anonymous Post Author
And so the fabled Miriam-Webster dictionary was born
hey! Who thumbed me down?
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Tommythecaty
It’s easy to make the joke that they needed it dumbed down. I think it’s more likely just being a bit contrary.
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lukeuser
For the record, I haven't looked this up, it's just my recollection (as you wanted).
I believe Webster wanted to make America have its own separate identity, so when he created his dictionary (the first US dictionary), he used different spellings than the British dictionaries.
It's worth noting that at this time period, spelling hadn't codified; even the British dictionaries had only recently been written, and spelling was therefore still very variable, so it wasn't like he was changing the spelling, he was just choosing different ones (and in most cases, both spellings were probably used in both the US and the UK to varying degrees). Since then, we've become much more strict in our spelling, i.e. we stick to the dictionary spelling.
Apart from wanting to be different to the British, it's also the case (I think) that Webster used different spellings in some cases in order to reflect the different pronunciations between Brits and Americans.
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GaelicPotato
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LloydAsher
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Anonymous Post Author
Imagine being such an influential nation invading the world for spices, and then choosing to use none of it.
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LloydAsher
I mean to be fair what domestic spice did england even have? I suppose it would be worrying to have a national foodstuff that was grown entirely somewhere else... wait
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Boojum
Mustard and horseradish have been used in Britain for a few millennia, but although I guess both of those are what most people would call spicy, they aren't actually spices.
Back in the late seventies, there was a burger bar in Glasgow, Scotland, named The 51st State. This was before McDonalds and Burger King had extended their tentacles into Britain, and I ate there a few times when I was visiting Glasgow. (Not because the burgers were great, but mainly because I was amused by the Scottish take on what a fifties American burger joint looked like.)
They had good ol' Heinz ketchup on the tables, but Brits aren't keen on the American version of mustard, so the only mustard was Coleman's English.
I was in there having a burger one time, and two couples who were very obviously American tourists sat down at the table next to me. Their burgers arrived, and I happened to notice that a couple of them were slathering generous dollops of mustard on their burgers. If I'd been a better person, I would have said something. Instead, I just braced myself not to laugh when they took their first big bite and the inevitable reaction followed.
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Somenormie