Re: [gentoo-user] A New Linux Way

[Martin Eisenhardt <martin.eisenhardt@wiai.uni-bamberg.de>]

Hello everyone,

OK, this *is* getting rather off-topic, but what the heck ... :-D

On Wednesday 11 January 2006 14:04, Mattias Merilai wrote:
> Antoine wrote:
> >> I'm glad you didn't write humor-impaired, because then we'd have had a
> >> long discussion on whether the longer "humour" stands out and
> >> represents a great community better than the "traditional" (albeit more
> >> recent) humor...
>
> Didn't that ou/o stuff in humour/humor, saviour/savior, colour/color
> etc. have anything to do with  differences between uk and us english? I
> seem to remember that in uk they spell these words with ou and the lazy
> and/or progressive americans have shortened it down to only o for
> themselves...

IIRC it is just the other way round. The Pilgrim Fathers came from England to 
Cape Cod (near Boston) and brought with them the English language. At that 
point in time, color was spelt color - even in the UK. Americans have kept 
the old spelling while their progressive European ancestors changed the 
spelling of some word (f.e. color -> colour) - maybe because of some French 
influence at the Court in London ...?

If you want more information on this, Bill Bryson's book "Made in America" is 
a rich source for that kind of things.

Kind regards
Martin Eisenhardt

> English is however not my native language so if i'm mistaken please
> excuse my yet-another-spam inspired by the infamous Yet Another Best
> Distro Ever (tm).

P.S.: Since English is not my native language either I am by no means an 
authoritative source of information on the development of the English 
language over the past centuries - I just think I remember having read this 
somewhere but forgot exactly where ...
-- 
Dipl. Wirtsch.Inf. (Univ.) Martin Eisenhardt

Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg
Department Business Informatics and Applied Computer Science
Media Informatics Group

D - 96045 Bamberg

fon: +49 (951) 863 2856
fax: +49 (951) 863 2852

www: http://www.mneisen.org

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