Why do people from the USA spell color as *colour* and favor as favour? Kind of phony isn't it?

Question

What is up with the snobby answers? F all of you.

Answer 1

They don't. "u" is unilaterally dropped from all of arbour, ardour, colour, favour, flavour, harbour, labour, neighbour, savour, etc. Canadians/Brits retain the original spelling, i.e. with the "u".

Answer 2

The asker is questioning why SOME people from the US insist on using the British spellings of the words rather than the standard American spellings. And to this, I can give two possible answers:

1) they are trying to be more correct, because the British spellings were standardised earlier, although those spellings had long since been dropped in common usage in the US before the British standardization occured; or

2) they are just trying to be pretentious.

I suspect you'll have to judge each case based on your knowledge of the writer whether they are purists or pretentious.

Answer 3

It isn't phony

American and British English spelling differences are one aspect of American and British English differences.

In the early 18th century, English spelling was not standardised. Different standards became noticeable after the publishing of influential dictionaries. Current British English spellings follow, for the most part, those of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755). Many of the now characteristic American English spellings were introduced, although often not created, by Noah Webster in his An American Dictionary of the English Language of 1828.




As any student of English knows very well, there is an amazing variety of spelling (lexicon), meaning (morphology), pronunciation (phonetics), useage (syntax), and even punctuation in the English language amongst the many people who use English, either as their first or as an additional language. For non-native speakers of English, these differences can be both difficult to comprehend and confounding when trying to learn the language.

Answer 4

You have it wrong. People from the USA spell those word color and favor. It is the British and Canadians who add the extra u. It is a British thing...and should be taken up with them.

Answer 5

bj is kinda correct. British's and America's english are somewhat different. Here in Singapore, we use the british spelling, "colour" and not "color". However i'm not so sure if we'll get penalized in exam for different spelling or not.

Answer 6

We don't. That is a English (Britain), Australia...kinda thing. In the English language (American) the words you listed above are spelled like you spelled them.