Why do the British spell "Fetus" like "Foetus"?

Question

...And then still pronounce it like they didn't drop a random-@$$ O into it?

And while I'm at it, what's with "al-you-mini-um"? It's "Al-oom-in-um"!
(And don't say the "British discovered it, they'le pronounce it how they want", I've heard that one. It was the DUTCH. Hans Christian Ørsted.)

Answer 1

1. The British spell fœtus (NOT foetus) like that because it's the correct way to spell it. Not our fault if you Americans can't handle complicated spellings...

2. We spell and say "aluminium" like that becauser that is the way it is spelt and pronounced in English.

3. Hans Christian Ørsted was DANISH not Dutch.

4. It was, Humphry Davy, a Briton, identified the existence of a metal base of alum in 1808, (17 years before Ørsted), which he at first named alumium and later aluminum

Answer 2

In Bill Bryson's book 'Mother Tongue', he perports that when the printing press first became available, there weren't any dictionaries to reference for correct spelling. So who ever ran the printing press got to decide how a word was spelled. Hence many of the same words were spelled differently in different locals, even though they were speaking the same language. This is sort of what happens here at Yahoo Answers, only we have spell checkers, dictionaries etc. Go figure.

Answer 3

Webster (the dictionary guy) was an American. He decided when working on dictionary to eliminate some of the illogical or unnecessary aspects of spelling.
So for example, "colour" is the historically correct spelling (retained in UK, etc), but due to Websters feeling that the "u" was pointless, we spell it in US as "color".

from Wikipedia:
"Webster completed his dictionary during his year abroad in 1825 in Paris, France and at the University of Cambridge. His book contained 70,000 words, of which 12,000 had never appeared in any earlier published dictionary. As a spelling reformer, Webster believed that English spelling rules were unnecessarily complex, so his dictionary introduced American English spellings like "color" instead of "colour," "wagon" instead of "waggon," "center" instead of "centre," and "honor" instead of "honour." He also added American words that were not in British dictionaries like "skunk" and "squash." At the age of seventy, Webster published his dictionary in 1828."

Answer 4

My guess would be because it's Greek in origin. A lot of words in the English language derived from Greek have an "oe" spelling pronounced like "ee." Like the "oe" in "Phoebe."

Answer 5

American spelling is different to proper English spelling, just as different countries have different accents. No use trying to denigrate one or the other, they're just different, like a rose is different to an orchid. Each should be appreciated for it's individual beauty.

Answer 6

why do the Americans spell "Foetus" like "Fetus"?

and why do you spell "Honour" like "Honor"

and "Colour" like "Color"?

and "mum" like "mom"?

and "retard" like "george"?

different countries spell different words differently

in Australia we spell "jail" as "gaol"... I don't know why.. and i know it looks retarded. But that's how we roll down under

why attack an entire country's language? get over yourself

Answer 7

Take a linguistics or nature of language class. You obviously need it.

Answer 8

Because we speak english, not american.

Answer 9

THEY DONT KNOW HOW TO SPELL IT ! !