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Comment by astura | Hacker News Reader

Noah Webster had some modest success, but only in the US, which is where many of the unique American English spellings come from - color, center, plow, etc.

Some of his proposals never caught on though. I think I remember tung (instead of tongue) being one of the rejected ones.

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Color is not uniquely American. It was used in England since before America’s discovery and is, in fact, more etymologically correct - it comes from the Latin word “color”. :)

The more French-influenced colour was more common in England, and obviously eventually did totally win out.

There are generally very similar stories for most “American” spellings.

Iirc it's "Couleur" in french.

It is now, maybe, but not when the borrowing took place.

Colore in Italian. Adding random "u"s to Latin words is a very French thing.

Portuguese abbreviated it to "cor", but we keep the longer version on the verb "colorir" (to color).

And in Polish we have both the Latin import "kolor" (Phonetic k in place of c) and Slavic variant "barwa". (Sounded with v English sound as w per phonetic Latin and forward trill r)

Polish is weird like that.

Noah Webster was (among other things) a spelling reformer, he didn't "invent" all of his spellings but he researched and deliberately chose them based on his ideas about language and politics and advocated for their use.

It was a deliberate effort, not something that just happened.

Which makes me curious, what did the Anglo-Saxons use as the word for “color”, before the onset of French influence?

Looks like it was hue (as hiw).

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=hue

Also blēo(h) and dēah.

Wow, I've always assumed that the difference between American and British spelling is because of a natural divergence as a result of being far away for such a long time.

No, it was a deliberate effort to create a schism.

It was also cheaper on the printing press. Less typesetting required.

I wonder as an non-American, if books printed in the US, like Shakespeare or the King James Bible or Dickens novels use British spelling or American spelling.

My copy of the king james bible uses the American spelling with the original words and phrasings, quite amazingly.

That's irregular, though, and obviously a "corrected" text for the American market, right? What does the copyright/publisher info say? The KJB is notably copyright-free, so US publishers were free to modify it.

The Harry Potter books I read as a kid used American spelling.

Yes, there was a separate American edition. (Even the title of the first volume was changed: the original "philosopher's stone" became "sorcerer's stone" for the US market.)

Sometimes I wonder if the editing world is arbitrarily building barriers in order to justify its continuous existence.

In the case of HP1, the title difference was based on the perception that the alchemical reference in the original title would be less evocative in the American youth market and “sorceror’s stone” would convey the intended idea better to that audience due to cultural difference. I don't know if test marketing or focus groups were involved in that judgement, but I wouldn't be surprised.

In India, the book has "Philosopher's" and the movie has "Sorcerer's". I learned only recently America had "Sorcerer" in both book and movie, I thought the Americans renamed only the movie.

The American editions make some changes, such as:

car park -> parking lot, lot -> bunch, dustbin -> trashcan, punch-bag -> punching bag, sellotape -> scotch tape, cinema -> movies, post -> mail, trolley -> cart, queuing -> lining up.

See https://www.hp-lexicon.org/edits-changes-text-ps/ for more

Why would they do that? Just to deny us the experience of reading genuine UK English?

I feel deceived.

It seems patronising to Americans. They even renamed The Philosophers’ Stone to The Sorcerors’ Stone because they thought ‘philosopher’ was too complicated.

It's called "localization" and it's done to make the book more accessible for people unfamiliar with foreign spellings and phrases.

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