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american english
dear friends, well, will some intelligent grammar expert tell me, why in american english there is somtimes the omission of letter 'u' eg- color, neighbor etc, why are the pronounciations different, eg- schedule is pronounced as skedule instead of shedule ( are you getting me). please explain.
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I'm English, and I am a language freak - good qualities for this question, I feel. Yes, the schedule thing: well, of course England deported many many people to America after Columbus "found" (or not) it in 1492. They saw it as a dumping ground for criminals, ditto Australia. Therefore it became increasingly populated with Englishmen and women.
Now, going back to Chaucer of the 1400s (this IS relevant, I promise): in those days, they spelled everything phonetically, eg wyfe instead of wife. And take for example, was. We pronounce it 'woz' but in those days it was 'wass'.
The schedule thing is a result of Englishism and a gradual change in pronounciation. Like the word pronounciation - most people say proNUNCEiation. Language is constantly evolving, and that means there are multiple ways of pronouncing things.
Though it pees me off when people say shedule instead of skedule...
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Well, to be honest.. I have no idea about the "schedule" bit, howeveR.. I know that the "U" thing kind of dRopped when AmeRica gained it's Independence fRom England, I do believe. HoweveR, many people today still use it. If you ask me, I think kids just think it looks cool, so now it's become some soRt of "cool" tRend. PeRsonally, I kind of find it insulting. I'm pRoud of AmeRica today, and would like to keep ouR English language as is... Hopefully this claRifies!? =D
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k, this goes back to the american relovution. when american broke off from england, they decided to "americanize" english. mr. webster (hint, webster's dictionary, wink wink)decided that he was going to change some english words to look more american. so on words like "colour" and "favourite" he dropped the "u" so it'd be "color" or "favorite". people in england and austrailia spell it with the u and americans don't. also the english language is already just a screwed up language with exceptions so yeah. idk about the schedule thing, sorry
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I'm pretty sure that when Merrim Webster (and all those other dictionary writers) were first writing a dictionary, the purposefully changed the spellings of some words to show that they no longer had association with England. Now we wouldn't have cared, but since we have been spelling this way for so long, people don't want to change the words back. And also with the pronuciations, it's another reason why English is such a hard language to learn- unless you've lived here all your life, you're never really sure how to pronounce the words. It's just another complicity of American English.
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I'm not entirely sure why we omit the letter u in certain words, but I think it just has to do with how American-English evolved after we seperated from England.
As for pronunciation, it's once again, a regional thing. If you are worried about properly pronouncing or spelling something, I wouldn't worry too much. Most people can understand different spellings and pronunciations of various words.
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its just a different dialect. its like that with every language..especially when the countries that speak it aren't so close. it also happens in different regions of countries with accents. notice that americans and english have different accents?
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It just a part of the language. There are irregularities in every language. English just happens to be one of the harder ones.
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