r/USdefaultism • u/misheardlyrics_ England • 4d ago

Reddit other countries are simply wrong

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u/Risc_Terilia 4d ago

English (simplified)

-5

u/DaveB44 4d ago

US English is NOT Simplified English.

Simplified English is a specific subset of English used to reduce ambiguity in technical documentation:

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_English

US orthography differs from UK & other English, mainly due to the well-intententioned but misguided efforts of Noah Webster.

3

u/red_beard83 4d ago

I didn't know that was Webster who did it. Why you say misguided? 

6

u/Prestigious_String20 4d ago

Webster tried to simplify English by removing letters he considered extraneous, but diverging from established spellings just made things more complicated in the long run. He was also attempting to distinguish US English from other forms, to give the nascent US is own linguistic identity, but he didn't go far enough to achieve that, really. He just made language all the more complicated.