Non "international-standard" spelling?
I was surprised, to say the least, at this comment by volpon:
As for "practising, colour, favour, travelling?" I'm guessing you're sticking to these quaint, non-international-standard spellings because there are more British members here than from any other country? - volpon
This was posted on this thread as I insisted to post practising.
Now, what do we have to do, volpon, do we all have to adapt to the American English spelling because you are in the majority? 
My spelling, for a change, mind you, jeje, as I am famous for my great typing skills
, was correct and I am not planning to change it because the mayority of the users of this site are Americans.
13 Answers
I'm sorry I opened that can of worms. It really was an innocent mistake, I forgot about that one little difference in spelling, mainly because my focus is on Mexico and not Europe...
Can you find it in your heart to forgive me? (lol)
Well then, following this reasoning we could expect other speakers not only to adopt American spelling, but also pronunciation... And filnally, wouldn't it make things a lot easier if we all switched to English (or rather American), as it is the today's world's lingua franca?
And as for making English generally easier and more logical, have a look at the text below 
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government decided that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as 'Euro-English'. In the first year, 's' will replace the soft 'c'. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard 'c' will be dropped in favour of 'k'. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome 'ph' will be replaced with 'f'. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter. In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent 'e' in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as Replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' with 'v'. During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.
Yes, indeed, I was teasing; I am definitely not an American that suffers the unpardonable sin of hubris.
If you search "international spelling in English," some very interesting hits will pop up. The nub of most of them is that there is an attempt to standardize English. Or, in some cases, to create a entirely new version, like this one that shows much promise. (My tongue is firmly planted in cheek.)
"...rather than having to lern almost two languages... The written language could be made consistent, predictabl and streamlined and its basic principls require only a dubl page rather than a whole dictionary fleshing out exceptions to hundreds of ruls. (and on it goes...)
As for spelling? Colour is popular in Britain and its Commonwealth nations, while color is used in most other countries when American English has been adopted as the standard business language. (China, Singapore, Germany, etc.) Same for favour/favor. I see traveling spelled with one "l" in US print media, but when one sounds out the word, the British version with 2 "ll's" is more appropriate because there are clearly 3 syllables. I also favor/favour spelling **judgment* with its "e" intact which makes far more sense. And, practise is surely far better phonetically than **practice."
I don't believe it's a big deal which choices one makes.
But from what I've skimmed, the hits point to one certainty: English language usage and spelling will keep changing, as it always has...
And, my, I do love change!
As the resident Brit on here, I have to put my two penn'orth in on this 
We have been messing around with our language for thousands of years. We've pinched bits of it from the Romans, the Celts, the Danes, the Saxons, the Normans, the Germans, and everyone else we have come into contact with.
I would doubt that there are more than a handful of Englishmen alive who could actualy read Beowulf in the original English - I'm certainly not one of them. I struggle with Chaucer, and even find Shakespeare incomprehensible at times.
I wonder if anyone English person under the age of 50 even knows the difference between "who" and "whom", I'm sure most of them think infinitives are meant to be boldly split, and a lot of them have extreme diffficulty spelling their own names, let alone remembering to put the "u" in colour.
So, I really don't think you Yanks can do any more damage to our language than we have done ourselves. You may well even be improving it in many ways. However, as a dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist, I reserve the right to retain my u's, e's and double ll's for the rest of my lifetime at least. 
Heidita, not only because you most likely grew up learning British English spellings because you’re in Spain, but it makes sense to continue using British English, since you’re in Europe.
- Also, it was around early 1800s that American English was changed to accommodate the spelling of words based on phonetic pronunciation. Well...SURPRISE!!!...Americans and the British don’t pronounce words the same. In fact, when you talk about differences in accents amongst English speakers, it’s always the vowel sounds that determine the dialect. So it’s only natural that American spellings are different from British. I don’t even want to go on to talking about Scottish, Irish, South American, Australian, etc.
I guess what surprises me the most is when a Native English speaker (namely Americans) hasn’t realized that there are actually different other correct ways to say, spell, and use English….after all we don’t call it ‘United-States-ese’ or ‘Americanish’
I think possibly he was being facetious? I have it in my mind that British spelling is actually more "international" than American spelling.
I don't know the history or exactly why some of these words were changed by Americans, but it is what it is.
The use of the word "change" here appears to imply that the "proper" spelling and usage of these words had already been etched in stone at the time of the split between the original 13 colonies and England. This could hardly be further from the truth.
The history of the attempts to standardize the English language has a long and interesting history that supersedes, by at least a few hundred years, the accomplishments of the OED and Noah Webster, respectively.
If you look at the OED, which does an admirable job of trying to document the evolution of the words of the English language, you will find that a single entry for a word will often have, in its examples of usage, at least a dozen variants throughout the recorded history of the word's usage. You have to remember, though, that even though the OED made tremendous inroads into standardization of spelling and usage, the task of cataloging the English language by the philological society (the group that gave rise to the undertaking that would come to be known as the OED) did not even commence until the 1850s. More importantly, the first portion (the A's) was not even published until nearly 40 years later.
In the U.S., on the other hand, Noah Webster (both a word enthusiast and spelling reformer) had already planted his own seeds of standardization when he published his first American dictionary of the English Language in the 1820s (a full century before the OED was "finished").
Of course, prior to this there were many different "dictionaries" in circulation, but most of these did little to unify the English language and were often regarded by critics as severely inadequate. One exception of note was the dictionary published by Samuel Johnson near the middle of the 18th century (a tome of about 1500 words), but even this was unlikely to have much of an impact in standardization due to inadequacies in scope and given the political climate of the time. The interference of political of events was especially evident in the U.S. in light of the fact that both England and its colonies were embroiled in and then recovering from a 10-year war with France around the same time Johnson's dictionary was published. Shortly thereafter, the two sides were then engaged in a 10 year "civil war" themselves that would culminate in the creation of the United States of America.
It should be no surprise then that since inroads into standardization of the English language only began in earnest during and shortly after the split between England and her colonies, it should come as no surprise that there are variations between the two. But to say that these variations were "changes" implemented by the Americans would be unfair. More likely, these variations already existed and were not changed as much as they were chosen (for whatever reasons) over other alternatives.
Too bad there isn't an English equivalent to the RAE.
But, since when did spelling have anything to do with pronunciation in English?
"Cough" "Off" both (the two) have the same final sound.
"Wind" and "wound" both have two pronunciations
And does "read" mean something you did in the past or something you're doing now?
What about "right", "wright", "write" and "rite"
to, too, two
Should I go on?
I'm copying in an amusing and perceptive comment by bdclark: "OMG, U cnt b serious! def imo thngs c%d ezy change 2 adpt 2 txt msg & email"
It caps off the lively discussion we had about non-standard English a couple of hours ago.
Here's a comment I wrote in response: "Great point: in no time flat, we'll see that obnoxious cyber-lingo become standard English. That's a change I'm not sure I'll welcome."
But, since when did spelling have anything to do with pronunciation in English?
Indeed, actually the system on this site in flashcards does not know anything about different pronounciations either.
In several of my verb lists, read(three forms) is pronounced as reed, reed, reed
Point well made Heidita! Also if I may add in my two cents, isn't it our responsibility as language fanatics to know and use all correct spellings both in English and Spanish? Not to mention to enjoy the unique cultural variety different countries bring to the same shared language! Who's to say which spelling is inaccurate or out-of-date? This should be a non-issue as we strive to become "fluent" in either English or Spanish. Bravo!
Aloshek said:
I'm sorry I opened that can of worms.
I probably added to the worms by correcting you Aloshek. So I apologize for that! 
I didn't want to make you feel bad. But when it comes to English, the "Queen's English" is the original standard. I don't know the history or exactly why some of these words were changed by Americans, but it is what it is.
People trying to learn English probably think we're crazy. I say we all just hug virtually and agree to disagree.
Is anyone else in favor/favour of this practice/practise?
Practice - Jordan
I was corrected again
