In the Oct. 10 edition of American English and British English we looked at the simplification of certain spelling conventions preferred by American lexicographer and reformer Noah Webster. These included the removal of the superfluous “u” in words such as colour, favourite and neighbour (to become color, favorite and neighbor) and the changing of the ending “-ce” to a more representative “-se” in words such as defense and license.
There are other spelling conventions followed in American English after Webster’s changes that differ from those still used in British English. These include the “-er” ending to replace the “-re” ending in words such as fiber (fibre), meter (metre), center (centre) and theater (theatre), and the dropping of the redundant “a” or “o” in words such as anemia (anaemia), diarrhea (diarrhoea), encyclopedia (encyclopaedia) and archeology (archaeology).
Another difference is observed in words ending in -ogue, such as analogue and catalogue, which have the variants analog and catalog. These are essentially alternative spellings of the same word. While the use of “o” instead of the British “ou” in words like colour is now standardized, both “-og” and “ogue” are possible in American and British English, although the Americans prefer analog and catalog, the British analogue and catalogue.
(Paul Cooper, Taipei Times)
在十月十日刊出的美式&英式英文單元，我們審視了美國字典學家暨改革者諾亞‧韋伯斯特偏好的某些拼音慣例之簡化。這些包括移除在colour、favourite、neighbour等字裡多餘的字母「u」（簡化為color、favorite、neighbor），和字尾「-ce」轉變為更能代表其發音的「-se」，例如defense、license等字。
而在美式英文中還有其它的拼音慣例，經由韋伯斯特的更動，變得和仍在使用的英式英文有所不同。這些包括以字尾「-er」取代字尾「-re」，例如fiber（fibre）、meter（metre）、center（centre）、theater（theatre）這些字，及省略字裡累贅的字母「a」或「o」，例如anemia（anaemia）、diarrhea（diarrhoea）、encyclopedia（encyclopaedia）、archeology（archaeology）這些字。
另一差異則可在字尾「-ogue」的字被觀察到，像是英式拼音analogue、catalogue等字的變體為analog、catalog，它們基本上算是同樣單字的不同拼法。對於像colour這些字來說，使用「o」而非英式的「ou」現今已被視為合乎標準，不過「-og」和「-ogue」在美式和英式英文中均有可能出現，雖然美國人還是偏好使用analog、catalog，而英國人則偏好analogue、catalogue。
（台北時報張聖恩譯）
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