"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 21:53:34 UTC, Capitol wrote:

FYI the US spelling is frequently the correct one. The modern English
spellings were a result of the intelligentsia adding a French
flavour(flavor was the original spelling) to the dictionaries of the
19th century.

Yes, US versions of words are often the original (purer) version, or
indeed where they use a different word it is ours that has been
corrupted or changed.

The problem with the UK the power base is in the south east of England.
Southerners generally look more to France than north of Northampton. In the
Times a few years back they had an article about why the south east people
speak with a sort of lisp. The "r's" inserted into words, such as, charnce,
darnce, when they are chance and dance (save the larst darnce for me sounds
odd when sung). In the 1700s a French King had a lisp, so people would copy
his lips to indicate they were well connected.

The English aristocracy and rich set, who looked to France rather than to
the rest of their own country, copied the lisp sound too. The rest of the
country were not impressed and never took up the lisp type of "r's" in
words. They also attempted to round all the vowels in an attempt to sound
more French. The working and middle classes in the south east did take up
the lisp sounds, probably as a way of being seen as being connected. The
Americans, then a colony, never took up this lisp sound either. Yet this
lisp sound has been regarded by south easterners as the "correct" way to
pronounce English and have continuously attempted to push this,
unsuccessfully, onto the rest of the country. Before the late 1700s most of
the UK spoke their vowels similar to the Americans which is similar to the
north of England.

A lisp sound is also the case with Spanish in Spain and south America, where
the Spanish also put in lisp sounds, such as Bathalona. the "th" is the
lisp. The south Americans do not speak that way. Spanish when spoken sounds
as it every other words has "th" in it.