Flavor vs. Flavour

An anonymous reader writes "A recent flamewar ensued on the Linux kernel mailing list, this time debating the proper spelling of 'flavor', or is it 'flavour'? Even Linux creator Linus Torvalds joined the fray with some rather humorous comments. For the most part, it sounds like spellings will stay as they are, but it makes for an entertaining read."

Comments

Re:Flavor/Flavour

[usotsuki]

In fact correct: the US form is "curb".

International English follows the British spelling. We Americans should just grin and bear it, and accept the fact that our "English" is nonstandard. (Like Microsoft's implementation of Java, perhaps) In any case, if your target audience is wider than the US (and maybe Japan as the English they use there tends toward American), it is best to use the international spellings - colour, flavour - than our utterly made up spellings. (Damn you Noah Webster! It's all your fault! No, seriously.) I think people gravitate to the US spelling because they are simpler, but they are not more correct. But no one else here in the US is likely to agree with me; I'm probably going to get modded (-1, Flamebait) for this one. Heh.

In short, we should just accept that our English is nonstandard, and use the English every other English-speaking country uses.

-uso.

Mark Twain had it right:

[eidechse]

"I respect a man who knows how to spell a word more than one way."

Re:Webster was a tool.

[kyz]

It's not a case of "which was around earlier", it's a case of "what do the British use? Let's not use that". They could do no worse than the old English that the English themselves had discarded.

The reason most USian words are around earlier is because they're from pre-Norman Britain. We modified our language to be more pallatable to the Gallic nobles running the country, e.g. adopting the prefix -our over -or, -re over -er, -ise over -ize, and so on.

Let's use "centre" as an example. The French pronounce and spell it -re ("son-tre" for centre). The US prounounce and spell it -er ("sen-ter" for center). We Brits pronounce it -er and spell it -re.

In case you're wondering, center/centre is from the Latin centrum, so the French were right.