How, when, and why did American English become different from English English?

Question

For example, why don't we use "u" in the same way (colour), and why do we use a "z" when they use "s" (civilised)?

Was it because we felt the need the "break away" during the revolution?

Answer 1

when we became our own country things just gradually changed...i doubt it was on purpose but it was more a "cultural diffusion" type senerio

Answer 2

For those spelling changes, yes, it is pretty much the desire to establish our own identity. Noah Webster (NOT Merriam Webster--no such person) was a driving force in "spelling reform". He actually proposes dozens more spelling changes, but the only ones that caught on were "colour" > "color", "theatre" > "theater", and "travelling" to "traveling".

As far as actual differences in dialect, those began from the first time that English settlers started living in the Americas, about two centuries before the revolution.

NOTE: The Merriam-Webster dictionary is a merger of the Merriam dictionary and the Webster dictionary. Two different people.

Answer 3

It was because we all live on different continents. It started changing as soon as we became colonists her in America. You may notice that Australian English is also different, for exactly the same reasons.

Additionally, Canadian French is different from the French that is spoken in France.

Ours is a live language...All of us who speak it change the way it is used on a daily basis. New words come into use, and others go out of use.

Dead languages are the only ones that never evolve.

Answer 4

I actually read about this in my history book. After the War of 1812, when America was going through a period of American nationalism. They began to try to find more ways to establish themselves as an independent nation. So a man named Merriam Webster devised a new dictionary with different spellings of common English words. This was to establish America's independence as a nation. That's why.

Answer 5

both modern british english and modern american english developed concurrently, meaning at the same time. the difference in spelling is due to the acceptance of webster's dictionary spellings in the u.s., if i'm not mistaken.

Answer 6

The early settlers had no institutions of higher learning
while England had Oxford and Cambridge, so they were
taught the mere essentials and only later did colleges and
universities appear but very few could afford them