[Ti] weird word pronunciation (seriously OT)

[John Griffin]

Erika typed this message on 4/26/03 7:47 PM:

> Aluminum, theater, center and color are U.S. spellings. British/Commonwealth
> spellings
> are Aluminium, theatre, centre and colour (not to mention honour, valour,
> humour etc),
> these last being via the French, who added the 'u' to them. Color, valor,
> humor, honor
> are the original Latin spelling (3rd decl. nominative from memory). Theatre
> stems from
> the Latin Theatrum, I think. Not sure about Aluminium and centre; don't have a
> Latin
> dictionary handy.

I have often wondered about this. Being Canadian, I always consciously
change the spellings to American when I am writing to an American audience.
But normally we spell the same way as in the UK. I use the UK dictionaries
in all my applications and am informed that every time I change words from
the Canadian (UK) to American, I have created a misspelling. It can be very
confusing to do this on the fly.

However, we are a strange mixture. We put Gas in our cars, not Petrol and we
drive on Tires, not Tyres, and the cars (autos) have Trunks and Hoods, not
Boots and Bonnets. We sit on Couches, not Chesterfields and we have Aluminum
Powerbooks, not Aluminium.

jg