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The irregular spelling of very common words, such as are, have, done, of, would makes it difficult to fix them without introducing a noticeable change to the appearance of English text. English is the only one of the top ten major languages with no associated worldwide regulatory body with the power to promulgate spelling changes.
As a result, there is a somewhat regular system of pronouncing "foreign" words in English, [citation needed] and some borrowed words have had their spelling changed to conform to this system. For example, Hindu used to be spelled Hindoo , and the name Maria used to be pronounced like the name Mariah , but was changed to conform to this system.
English has generally preserved the original spelling when borrowing words; and even more importantly, English began to be widely written and printed during the Middle English period: the later development of modern English included a Great Vowel Shift and many other changes in phonology, yet the older spellings, which are no longer phonetic ...
Some sources distinguish "diacritical marks" (marks upon standard letters in the A–Z 26-letter alphabet) from "special characters" (letters not marked but radically modified from the standard 26-letter alphabet) such as Old English and Icelandic eth (Ð, ð) and thorn (uppercase Þ, lowercase þ), and ligatures such as Latin and Anglo-Saxon Æ (minuscule: æ), and German eszett (ß; final ...
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In Canada, the -ize ending is more common, although the Ontario Public School Spelling Book [65] spelled most words in the -ize form, but allowed for duality with a page insert as late as the 1970s, noting that, although the -ize spelling was in fact the convention used in the OED, the choice to spell such words in the -ise form was a matter of ...
This is a list of British English words that have different American English spellings, for example, colour (British English) and color (American English). Word pairs are listed with the British English version first, in italics, followed by the American English version: spelt, spelled; Derived words often, but not always, follow their root.
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