Laurence is a British expat living in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is a contributor for BBC America and has written for Anglotopia . Having graduated from Lancaster University with a degree in English Language and Creative Writing, Laurence runs this blog, Lost In The Pond , charting the endless cultural and linguistic differences between Britain and The United States.

It is quite common for British prescriptivists (people who don't welcome change to the language) to bemoan the American spelling of words like. They will often comment that "Americans have dumbed English down", that the simplification of the language only came about because "Americans are not cultured."As with a large percentage of word differences, the American spelling ofwas the direct decision of one very important man: Noah Webster. Famously, Webster introduced the relatively young nation of the United States to the dictionary, an influential book that helped to demarcate American English from Dr. Johnson's British English.Some years before the publication of Webster's book, however, there was much debate among settlers over whether or not English should even be adopted by the very country that was trying to become independent from Britain. Because of a small German influence in the New World, the German language was even suggested for Americans.However, Webster, who bore somewhat of a political influence, pushed for not only the introduction of English, but the American standardisation (or should I say?) of it. It was his belief that America needed to be independent not only politically and economically from the British, but artistically - particularly when it came to literature.It was in his, an abridged version of the more expansive dictionary that would come later, thatwas changed totoandto. Bizarrely, a central tenet of Webster's standardisation strategy was the idea that chopping down words would save money, since shorter words would equate to fewer pages in print publications.Webster was not interested in "dumbing down" English, but rather ridding it of the many inconsistencies that still exist today. Indeed, something that is often overlooked is that Webster had proposed countless other changes that were ultimately rejected by the American public.In fact, if Webster had had his way, I'd now be referring to the American. Half of thiswould be. And if you developed a fewand pains after falling off yourin winter, someone wouldthat a warmmight be the order of the day.Many have argued that American standardisation has robbed English of its glamour, a word, incidentally, that Americans normally spell with a. But I would argue that there is nothing more glamorous in linguistics than a vibrant, ever-evolving vernacular.Especially one with colo(u)r.