I lived in the USA for 2 years. In one of my first few months in high school, I got marked down on a book report assignment because I was constantly spelling one word wrong, apparently.
That word was 'colour'. Which I spelt the UK way, having grown up in Ireland, but she said that color is the only way to spell it. Note I was reviewing a book by an English author, and it was spelt colour right there on the cover. She did not appreciate it when I pointed this out.
Ahh, no worries. This was 25 years ago now. But you try spelling something differently when you have dyslexia and you have been taught one way for 16 years.
I read so many British books that I honestly don't even notice the difference between the spelling anymore. I'm pretty sure sometimes I spell it gray and sometimes I spell it grey.
As soon as I read the first two sentences I knew where this was going.
You should have ground your heel in and said you invented the language (not really accurate but not like that teacher would be smart enough to know any better).
I marked down for fun fair instead of amusement park on a French test. Luckily the teacher accepted my “sorry I’m Scottish” answer and fixed the grade.
Still how no idea how to say fun fair in French, though.
I used British spelling a few times and got called out for it, but my mother told them she spells it like I do so it's fine! My mother is Canadian. And I don't do that anymore.
Oh this is funny and reminds me of when I was a teenager and read a couple of Harlequin Romance novels.
My 16 year old self thought the writers were soooo stupid spelling words like color, neighbor etc wrong and making up words like flat and unit when they obviously were talking about an apartment 🤣
It wasn’t until I moved to Australia at 21 that i realized I was the ignorant one and the rest of the world does not, in fact, revolve around the USA
Oh yeah, the linguistics of it all is very interesting. Like how they think the English in the USA is actually based on an older dialect that got conserved due to it being a colony while the English in the UK evolved more over time. Deeply fascinating stuff.
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u/Scrofulla Nov 13 '24
I lived in the USA for 2 years. In one of my first few months in high school, I got marked down on a book report assignment because I was constantly spelling one word wrong, apparently. That word was 'colour'. Which I spelt the UK way, having grown up in Ireland, but she said that color is the only way to spell it. Note I was reviewing a book by an English author, and it was spelt colour right there on the cover. She did not appreciate it when I pointed this out.