Reply to thread

Guardians of selected parts of the English language, but prepositions apparently got kicked out in the cold years ago and have to fend for themselves, surviving in only selected pockets of modern AmEng... ("I'm going to write Steve and tell him about this" etc.)

Both languages have changed; it's certainly true that we have some words ('autumn' possibly being one of the more obvious) and some spellings that they didn't have when they left, due to continued absorption from the French - who were frightfully trendy - amongst other things. But it's also true that their precious Noah Webster was a nationalist who deliberately messed around with the language with the partial objective of making it distinct from that of the homeland, and made a conscious decision to sever words from their etymology for the sake of different/simpler spellings.

And fundamentally, they invented the word "burglarized", which means they're wrong. ;-)