We use program too. We don't use it for programmes but we do use it for programs.

Does that clear things up?

Sarcasm is an unfortunate tactic. Care to elaborate your point, though? You know, in a more intelligent manner and actually state your issues with my post? Using sarcasm to simply make a jab at me doesn't really dismiss what I'm saying. That long word is inefficient and pointless. I'll point something out, though. Why are you using contractions? Why not type out "I will" or "It is" or "is it not"? You're doing it for the sake of efficiency. Furthermore, it's the same way you use grammar: you make it a more efficient to be read. Everything is based around efficiency.

A really interesting topic (leading me to figuring out my long-lost password to actually participate!).

What I don't agree with at all is calling "American English" wrong. It's just a different dialect or variety of English with it's own spelling. Nothing wrong about that.

I find it hard to say which "English" is more important or popular around the world. Me being from Germany, I learned the British English in school which I guess is what most people learn around here.

Still I feel that American English (or American accents) is on the rise as the (english speaking) media (in Germany) is heavily influenced by the U.S. (I would put my guess at more than 80% of music/films/television etc.). Although Britian naturally is basically just around the corner, the U.S. is more important economically which is influencing the English accent CEOs and business people are picking up and so forth...

Then again a lot of students go studying abroad in the UK while just as many prefer going to the US, Australia or Canada picking up the respective dialects.

For a non-german speaker I could honestly not tell a big difference between Canadian and American accents by the way while travelling through the north-eastern part of North America (New York, Chicago, Toronto, Winnipeg). I sure can tell the difference between British English and American English though...

And as far as my spelling goes, I am generally switching back between Britsh, American and Misspelling

Teachers told me just to stick to one version in school but they sure didn't tell me spelling "colour" as "color" is a mistake.

So all in all I would say that it's not really a black or white topic...

More than anything else, I wanted to use the word "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" in a post. It's been several months since I've done that.

English is, indeed, English. Which is to say, it's not American. Therefore, America shouldn't really be going around and changing the language, taking out letters which really aren't all that confusing, and indeed are integral to the meaning of the word, just to make the pronunciation literal - doughnut, for example. A doughnut is made of dough. A donut is not made of do. Similarly, aluminium is a metal, and ends with the same suffix as quite a few other metals, and aluminum... really? A third example: ethanoic acid. "eth" refers to the presence of two Carbon atoms, and to the fact that it's oxidised Ethanol. So what the hell is Acetic Acid? Oxidised Acete?

Actually, there's nothing wrong with that. What's wrong is when they enforce it on everyone and set it as some stupid unchangeable default on Microsoft Word. When it is taught in schools worldwide (as seems to be clear from this thread), in place of the actual original language.

If I took the French language and took out all of the accents and called it "British French", the French would be annoyed, wouldn't they? It destroys the feel of the language.

Also, does "colour" really take that much longer to type than "color"? Did you really have to remove one-sixth of the letters to save you...what, half a second, if that?

No, not at all. It's a coloured topic.

"Color" really ought to be pronounced "koh-lor", or "koh-ler", like "colon".

It was a joke. I thought the "There's no denying my logic :P" would clear that, but I guess these things can be hard to notice over the internet.

You take a sixth of the keystrokes away by going from colour to color, but only a seventh from are not to aren't. I do realise it's not exactly the same situation but still. I'm not even talking about english now, any language is an expression of it's people. No language is ever done or finished while it lives and there's nothing wrong with it changing over time. The difference from old english to british english is, as was pointed out, much more relevant then the one between american and british english. Also, this whole "oh no, they took my language and raped it" mentality is, frankly, kind of retarded and pretty close minded.

Etymological loss is a common argument against the American changes made to words. The logic is not entirely horrible, though. Why have a "u" in "colour" when it is silent? Same with "donut" and "doughnut." The "ugh" is unnecessary and doesn't need to exist even if it changes the etomological meaning.

Also, your logic is of issue. Simply, the issue is that 18th century perspectivists would further argue that YOU are also destroying the feel of the language. The argument eventually becomes cyclical because anyone can argue that "their" language is being destroyed. Past individuals could simply say the same thing to you saying that you're destroying their "original language."

And French has had different versions like Norman French (in comparison to Central French), but that led to the evolution of the English language. The "Ur" language is something none of us know. There is no original English language. It is constantly evolving. You're displaying perspectivist-type idealogy but there are issues with that. There have been unnecessary grammatical rules. Hell, perspectivism is sometimes grammatical incorrect. I've had many times where people use "I" instead of "me" in the wrong instances because it's more "appropriate." Either way you slice it, language is not as simple as you're describing it. If that's how you then that's how you feel but a lot of people can use your argument against you.

Color/colour really ought to be spelled culr.

Etymology is overrated.

The best thing that could of ever happened to the English language would of been Roosevelt succeeding in his "Phonetic spelling" agenda.

Surely American English is not a seperate language but simply a dialect !