Throughout our lives we are always taught about the hidden “u” in some words. Words like colour, neighbour, favourite and so on. But when we hop on our phones or our computers chances are when you spell it like that you’ll get the little red squiggly line underneath trying to tell you that you spelled it wrong, why is that?
It has to do with your language settings. Most machines sold in North America such as phones or computers are default set to American English as opposed to British English. But why is there a difference?
For that we need to go back about to the mid 1700’s. It wasn’t until ” A Dictionary of the English Language” was published by British lexicographer Samuel Johnson in 1755 that the spelling of the English language became mainstream, and even that took years to actually catch on. Prior to that, writing was seen as something only the highly educated concerned themselves with. Fast forward to 1806 when a man named Noah Webster wanted to differentiate the way Americans spelled things, further separating the country from it’s British upbringing. Noah removed the “u” in words that, for us, end in “our” and rearranging or eliminating letters in many other words too. This gave his dictionary “A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language” a much smaller character count when compared to it’s British counterpart. In 1828 this became known as the “American Dictionary of the English Language” A two volume series featuring over 70,000 entries. Years later it was revised by George and Charles Merriam in 1948 to what is now known as the “Merriam-Webster Dictionary.”
So if whatever you type with doesn’t let you end words with “our” check your settings, it may just be factory set to American English.
