Active communication in English vs American

Yeah i know that. I was wondering whether there were any real life Fraiser Craines out there, You know that one where he gets punched in the face because some Brits think he is taking the piss when he says "I spell colour with a U!!!!"

Probably. You'll find all kinds of weird people if you look hard enough. But Fraser Crain (or Kelsey Grammer, anyway) has a weird way of talking anyway, for an American. He does sound a little like he's affecting certain features of British pronunciation, like overpronouncing his T's. So he's not a good example of the breed.

All this reminds me of Americans who intentionally use markedly Commonwealth spellings (*especially* "theatre") just because it is somehow "better" or "more proper" for whatever reason. I must say that such is something I myself tend to find very pretentious and generally irritating. For the record, same things goes with pseudo-English affectations in the speech of Americans (as with our stereotypical example of Fraiser Craine) for me as well.

I don't know. Theatre doesn't bother me, but centre does. Keeps making me want to say "sentra"!

>>I don't know. Theatre doesn't bother me, but centre does. Keeps making me want to say "sentra"!<<

"Theatre" just bothers me because people insist on using it, for whatever frickin reason, so much...

You see I find that all very interesting, I don't know alot about when the spelling differences came about? Was it a backlash against British rule? Or simply to make the language more accesable in some way? I would like the know your views on this.

Basically, in the 18th century, spellings weren't as firmly fixed as they are now, so some variations just solidified here and not there. And then there was a guy called Noah Webster who had a pet peeve about a lot of spellings, and made a concerted effort to have them simplified. But to be honest, only a handful of his versions were actually adopted. I'm sure there's more to the story, but that's the gist of it.