Why do British people spell it "favourite" and we spell it "favorite"?

Question

I've noticed a lot of other differences, but why do they add the "u" to everything? It bugs me.

Answer 1

When Noah Webster created the first American English dictionaries, he deliberately made British and American spellings different because he wanted American English to be distinct.

For this reason, which was completely arbitrary, you will find other differences as well, such as between "-ize" and '-ise' endings. REALIZE vs. REALISE etc.

Answer 2

Language reform has been seen in many countries through out the world, so it's no surprise that it was front and centre for the Americans for a while. Two notable characters in this endeavour were President Theodore Roosevelt and Noah Webster. Each for a variety of reasons, their major reasons being the simplification of the language. In the case of the removed U's however, it actually changed slightly the pronunciation of the words. Colour to Color resulted from the pronunciation change of "KOH-LOOR" to "KOH-LOHR". Favourite to Favorite resulted from "FAV-OOR-ITE" to "FAV-OHR-ITE". In each case a distinctive clipping of the word.

Answer 3

cf the other answers: & British English apparently kept
the French spelling for some words with Norman-French origin.

For the US it was more logical/consistent to use a "Germanic" spelling because that was closer to the real pronouncation when American spelling was fixed.

Not much was changed after it was fixed.

btw. it was just before Shakespear’s time that they stopped using Northern French in Englands Courts - so French spelling was closer historically for England and that helped to keep it.

Answer 4

Because the Brits and Canadians use the Queen's English. We Americans dropped it to make things more convenient, but I much prefer the British and Canadian spellings and use them in daily life. Just a matter of opinion, I suppose.

Answer 5

American is not the same language as English ,how many times is this asked
there are hundreds of differences .just think of them as different languages and you can stop being anoyed by it

it bugs the English that you omit the u,have you ever thought about that

Answer 6

Our English is a derivative of England's English, which is why we have different figures of speech and such. We have spelling and grammar conventions and they have their own. So they didn't add a "u;" in actuality we subtracted one.

Answer 7

We don't add the U. You took it out. Somebody, it may have been Webster, literally went through the dictionary and took out all the letters he thought weren't needed. I would love to know what he did with "Queue".

Answer 8

Just divers colours of language.

Answer 9

it's like neighbor and neighbour. i agree with the answerer above.
to answerer above, he just called it line!

Answer 10

we take the easy way out!