Is this "regional American English"? I've never seen renaissance written as "renascence" in the midwest, northeast, or California.
Growing up in the US in the '70s and '80s, I'd never seen it this way, either, and a little googling shows that it's a very obscure variant, with fewer than 60K uses, compared to renaissance with over 13M uses. I think someone saw it mentioned as an American variant and became confused into thinking that it was a common American variant.
Hrm, interesting.
Maybe I can go back to using the proper version, then!
That's actually an archaic spelling as far as I know. Standard american English spells and pronounces it as the French loan word it is "reh-neh-ZONCE".
That’s the en-US for renaissance‽ You live and learn.
Etymologically, the word comes from the French for rebirth, which is spelled 'renaissance'. Normally, it's prudent to take a live-and-let-live approach to the development of language as that's how language evolves, but in this instance the Americanised spelling is downright barbarous and not holding with the origins or spirit of the word. In this case, I'd argue that the American spelling isn't different in the way color or aluminum are, it's just wrong.
At least with aluminium the US spelling is the original spelling, it was just anglicised with an -ium ending to fit in with the other elements.
Yeah, it matches up with how Americans pronounce it, too. British English speakers (like me) pronounce it 'ren AY sonce', while Americans pronounce it 'ren uh sonce'.