First and foremost, this has probably been aired on this board loads of times. If you've seen this kind of thing before, don't worry.

Why did American spelling split from British? The words color/colour, marvelous/marvellous and traveler/traveller to name but a few are so odd, it's weird that this should have happened. One explanation that I can think of is just long separation from each other made the two nations develop slightly differently, but really, America wasn't founded THAT long ago (in linguistic terms). Another possible explanation is that America didn't want to be associated with Britain after the War of Independence (Quebec uses very different French to France for this reason, using "chien chaud" instead of "hot-dog".) If anyone wants to be a traveller in a lift with jam spread on their sandwiches while they screech with their car tyres and think about the marvellous spelling of foetus, drop me a line.

Phil-"OK, it wasn't really all that funny but I would like your input"-bee