British Billy's guide to spelling

  • Published
  • By British Billy
  • 48th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
ROYAL AIR FORCE LAKENHEATH, England --  As a wise cat of some experience, I have come to appreciate that variety is the spice of life not only when it comes to the meat selections in my food pouches, but in most areas of existence. 

I have heard disparaging comments from Americans about 'weird British spelling' and one or two less than generous remarks about Americans' inability to spell 'correctly'. When it comes to spelling, in my humble opinion, there is room in the linguistic countryside for some divergence. Britain and America are like twin squirrels (of course, we British are the red squirrels and Americans their grey cousins) that have chosen to scamper down different paths in this particular meadow. 

The differences in spelling between American and British English can be pinned on a single individual, Noah Webster. Some 200 years ago, Webster believed that a distinct American language would help merge the 13 colonies into one nation. In compiling an early American dictionary, spelling book, and basic reader, he simplified British spelling. 

Webster regarded the form of English spoken in the British Isles as having been corrupted by the English aristocracy. He worked with dogged determination to standardise and simplify the spelling of American English. He excised extraneous vowels as in colour/color and favour/favor, and he transposed letters, most notably the final '-re' as in theatre/theater and centre/center. 

To be fair, there are so many oddities in English spelling that I can appreciate what Webster was trying to achieve. Apparently the vagaries of British spelling are partly due to something known as the The Great Vowel Shift, which was a gradual process beginning in Chaucer's time (early 15th Century) and continuing through the time of Shakespeare (early 17th Century). Presumably a lot of vowels did a lot of shifting around that time. 

Shakespeare, it is said, had more than a dozen ways to spell his name, so it sounds as if he knew a bit about shifty vowels himself. 

So whether your choice is 'aluminium' or 'aluminum', 'defence' or 'defense', 'encyclopaedia' or 'encyclopedia', we should celebrate our differences with good humour -- that's with a 'u', by the way.