Yanqui Spelling

I have no wish to blow 'em up, but why must the yanquis spell like they do?

They took the 'U's out of colour, and valour, but not flour and our - why? Flour and color don't rhyme as spoken by most Americans.
They turned Aluminium into Aluminum, but not Uranium into Uranum - how come?
* Um, we didn't do this - the discoverer called it aluminum, and the British thought it should match other 'ium' metals
They took a bunch of perfectly reasonable words ending in 'ise' and made them end in 'ize' - but not all of them and I can't keep track! [Not quite - see RealizeVersusRealise.]
Unlike the Aussies they can at least pronounce 'fillet'. But they call a main course an 'entree' - what's up with that?
* but where do the Brits get the 'f' in lieutenant? (they say 'leftenant')

Others?

"They" didn't do most of those. One man did them: Noah Webster, because it seemed like a good idea at the time (to him).

Some other differences are due to different knowledge of foreign languages. Any semi-educated Englishman can make a reasonable stab at pronouncing French words, but might be totally ignorant of Spanish. In America exactly the reverse is true.

Re: US radio: I like all the ads with the phony British accents for the Jag-you-are motor car. At that price it isn't just an car.

So Spanish words are mangled into English English, while French words decay slowly, and French words get mangled into American English, with Spanish words more or less holding their original pronunciation.

It goes further, because if you see a foreign word, and have no idea how to pronounce it, you might find you assume it goes like the foreign language you already know. I vaguely remember some US military types trying to pronounce place-names in Yugoslavia and sounding 'j' as 'h' like Spanish, when it should have been more like 'y'.

I'd like to know which American region is home to the accent that doesn't like the sound "u". Here are some examples:

"Tuesday" as "Toosday" (Sheryl Crow's "Toosday Night Music Club".)
"New" as "Noo"
"Suit" as "Soot"

For the same reason you might use the phrase: "You bloody well know why!" (why not leave out bloody well - the sentence would have better meaning?) How do you pronounce the word "two" is it tawoo? How do you pronounce the word Aussies? Ayoussies? And is Britain pronounced Bry tain (as in attain)?

And another thing - if 'schedule' is supposed to be prnounced 'shedyule', why isn't 'school' pronounced 'shool'?

If an expat aussie (pronounced "ozzie" - seppoes take note) can cut in here, "bloody well" does bloody well modify the meaning. It means something like "whether you think so or not". Use without the "well" is more emphatic still - meaning something like "no one in their right minds would question the fact that ...". And use more than once in a sentence means, "... and I'll say this slowly for you so you don't strain something". Lastly, inserting "bloody" inside a word doesn't modify it's meaning per se - the tmesis is just for the sake of bloody scansion.

As for the pommies, whether you've noticed it or not, they're on the ascendant on the world stage. While bloody GeorgeBush toadies to the bloody Saudis and tears your constitution to bloody tatters, the poms, by effectively seizing command of the EuropeanUnion from the bloody French, are rapidly returning to their pre-WW2 status as the real bloody leaders of the free bloody world. And leaders get to write the bloody dictionaries ... so maybe you'd do best to go pick up an OE-bloody-D and get bloody reading. --PeterMerel

See also: AustraLaise?. MonarchyBetterThanRepublic?.

I'd like to know which American region is home to the accent that doesn't like the sound "u".

The region you're looking for is the one between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The pronounciation of the the word 'choir' is impossible to infer from the spelling.

AmericanSpelling