Behaviour or Behavior

Dean   Tue Mar 20, 2007 2:20 pm GMT
Hi, I'm not sure what'd the differnce between Behaviour and Behavior? Can you please help me out?
Thanks Dean
Liz   Tue Mar 20, 2007 2:33 pm GMT
Basically nothing. Just the spelling is different, the former being the norm in Britain, the latter in the US.
Guest   Tue Mar 20, 2007 3:06 pm GMT
>> Hi, I'm not sure what'd the differnce between Behaviour and Behavior? <<

The "u".
Dean   Tue Mar 20, 2007 3:46 pm GMT
thanks liz again.
Kendra   Tue Mar 20, 2007 6:03 pm GMT
Both of them are used in Canada. It's a free country ;)
Marc   Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:10 am GMT
Dean wrote:

"Hi, I'm not sure what'd the differnce between Behaviour and Behavior? Can you please help me out?"


-->>

Civilisation -British / French
Civilization -American / Spanish

Honour -British / French
Honor -American / Spanish

Centre -British / French
Center -American

It seems that American-english dropped the -u's- and -s's- in words mentioned above to assimilate themselves more to the Spanish style of syntax or maybe they did it unconsciously. They're literally hundreds of words that Americans modified their syntax-structure to a Spanish one.
Josh Lalonde   Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:17 am GMT
<<It seems that American-english dropped the -u's- and -s's- in words mentioned above to assimilate themselves more to the Spanish style of syntax or maybe they did it unconsciously. They're literally hundreds of words that Americans modified their syntax-structure to a Spanish one.>>

This really has nothing to do with Spanish. The form with 'z' comes from Greek, and is the preferred form of the OED, so it is not only American. The 'honor', 'center' spellings instead of 'honour', 'centre' come from the simplifications introduced by Noah Webster. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster). I've never heard anything about Webster adapting American English to Spanish usage. Also, this isn't syntax, it's spelling.
And while both do occur in Canada, the British forms are much more common, being used by newspapers, government documents, major publishing houses, etc. (except for -ize, which is more common than -ise).
Guest   Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:30 am GMT
Noah Webster was a fan of Spanish and thought that it's spelling system was more logical than English's so he decided to adopt some of its features in order to improve English.
Lazar   Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:32 am GMT
I agree with Josh: those spelling changes had nothing to do with Spanish influence. The spelling "-or" comes from Latin, and it has precedent in English going back centuries before the establishment of the US. And likewise, "-ize" comes from Greek, and in fact this is the traditional British spelling. Modern British "-ise" is the innovation.
Travis   Fri Mar 23, 2007 6:52 am GMT
Fundamentally, the differences in American and English spelling derive not from some kind of American effort to differentiate their spellings from English ones, unlike what some people today may happen to believe. Rather, such largely derive due to multiple different spellings of words already being in use in spelling English and, in some cases, different preexisting spellings being standardized upon in the US and Great Britain. The cases which do not fall under such either result from incidental differences in spellings that developed later such as with "aluminum" versus "aluminium" or, as in the case of "-ize" versus "-ise", conscious efforts to differentiate the two (which, contrary to popular belief, have generally not been on the part of Americans).
John   Fri Mar 23, 2007 10:37 am GMT
-ize is not American, it's Oxford spelling.
Used by lots of academic publications in Britain.
But -ise is the norm in newspapers and daily usage.

I've noticed the similarities between American spelling and Spanish spelling, too... (but, of course, it doesn't mean that American spelling adopted Spanish spelling conventions)
Skippy   Fri Mar 23, 2007 2:39 pm GMT
Behaviour, harbour, humour, colour... Those are all used more commonly in the UK, while both the u-form and uless-form are used in Canada.

I'm a fluke... I'm from Texas and I use the British way... It looks better to me... My professors hate it... I guess b/c I do it, but I'm American and I still write things like "organize" and "civilization" in the North American way... Whatever... Most of them are Communists anyway... lol
Andy   Fri Mar 23, 2007 3:54 pm GMT
We always use the u-form in the UK. Presumably some oddball, who writes dictionaries in Oxford, will disagree.