Yeah, they changed my design, added a u in color.

And, I find myself typing armour every. freakin. time now. Roark, this has to be Your fault!

You cannot resist! MUAHA! *evil British laugh thing, you know, like on Bond or something*

Actually, Iridiel, in most things American spelling is more logical...we don't pronounce the u's, and we pronounce all them thar s's as z's. But when have we ever let logic stop us? (Also, Imperial sucks, just feel I have to stick up for us and Europe a bit there. Even though we still don't use all metric. But we're getting there.)

You don't actually have a choice with armour as "armor" does not exist within Lusternia. Actually, Shiri, we do pronounce the 'u's, it's simply not immediately obvious, or we are meant to and most people just like to be lazy and not add any subtlety into pronunciation.

I suppose that's a point. I suppose I'm too used to speaking in Lincolnshire farmer mode as opposed to proper English. Over here, we say things more like "vapers" than anything else.

I'd like to see a banner like that. I found Achaea through a banner of just that sort back when PvP was running it. I went looking in Kurtz's archives, but could never find a copy of that banner ( all I remember was Frances mentioning something about slike and salve balance. Those two odd terms were what piqued my curiosity)

For some of my fellow 'mericans who are wondering why the rest of the world demands funky spellings, try reading some of Daniel Webster's (yeah, the dictionary guy) other suggested changes. "Thumb" looks mighty strange to my eyes without the B at the end.

From what I can tell, the difference in spelling between American English and Standard English is created by the difference in dialects over time. What you had here at the formation of our nation was a largely uneducated populus toiling daily in order to produce what was necessary for base survival.

As such, perfection in the spoken and written language were often considered unimportant, and minor differences in word pronunciation slowly began to occur. In effect, this removed subtle aspects of the spoken language which provided more depth in regards to undestanding. Consider the words I've used in this paragraph. Some, such as 'subtle' tend to be commonly mispronounced. The 'proper' pronunciation of any word includes -every- letter present in the written one.

Take a look at the word 'Knight'. In old English, (or perhaps middle as I am not aware of this term's etimology) it was pronounced with every letter enunciated. Knight and Night were not homonyms, but rather entirely different words as the 'K' had a hard clicking sound which began the word.

A simple example of 'homonyms' which are not can even be found commonly in texts these days. Grey and Gray. I have seen both in reference to the colour, both pronounced -exactly- the same by the majority of people. Yet the vowel sound in the middle of the word is different, simply not easily noticed by our ears.

Subtle differences in intonations and pronunciations are simply not obvious, or even perceptable, to those who do not hear them constantly. If you don't believe me, go take a course in Chinese (any form).

Basically, it is not laziness which creates the spelling differences between common American and Standard English, but rather the slow formation of a dialect based upon differing cultural standards.