4 ms·
Don't blame Webster. For a lot of the well-known differences, he actually preserved the original. In particular, the British added the "u" when French was in f
by o11c 2y ago
Don't blame Webster. For a lot of the well-known differences, he actually preserved the original.
In particular, the British added the "u" when French was in fashion, and likewise for "-ise" (in fact, "-ize" dates all the way back to Ancient Greek!)
One thing that Americans do get wrong is misspelling "-lyse" which comes from a different Greek root, so should not follow the same pattern as "-ize". But even then, Webster didn't invent the error.
- yesco 2y agoTo me it's about consistency. I don't really care what is or isn't "correct", I care that the spelling can sometimes be different depending on the region. It would be one thing if there was some unified body for English, like the French have, but we don't, so it's just another competing standard. Ultimately I think changes like this should be more grassroots than top down whims of private dictionary publishers. Not to mention that all this focus on the phonetics fundamentally misunderstands that the phonetics of English spelling are closer to a mnemonic than a rule. I suspect this will become gradually more obvious as languages world wide evolve to be more keyboard friendly in the coming century. But this all just my take on the situation.