orthography - How come 'ou' was reduced to 'o' in the US?


Americans write color and favorite, when others say colour and favourite. How/why did this happen?



Answer



The pronunciation is the same, so you can't really say that some "say" this while others "say" that. It's strictly a spelling difference.


These are among the reforms introduced by Noah Webster in his dictionary, with a view towards (a) simplifying the spelling, and (b) creating a distinct American English. (The root forms of many of these words indeed lack the u - for example, Latin color, Italian favorito - so that may have been another motivation of his as well.) So these forms prevailed in the United States, while in the rest of the English-speaking world they kept the original spellings.


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