| I read an article once that suggested that the Web was held together with rubberbands and chewing gum, metaphorically speaking, and that the dramatic increase in traffic over a decade has only made things worse. Maybe we are lucky there are only occasional glitches.... English reflects the history of Britain, and its diverse influences. For example, the influence of the Normans, not only in introducing French words into English, but in softening the German roots, so that many things that were sounded in Middle English became silent. But there was no regular orthography until the rise of the great dictionaries, so many texts are full of eccentric spellings before the 18th century, unless they have been edited for simplicity. A lot of the spelling questions were not resolved until Dr. Johnson and Noah Webster came along, and became authoritative, one in Britain, the other in America. Many of the remaining oddities are differences between American and British English, or regional differences. Ketchup appears to be the Northern spelling, catsup the Southern, for example......... |
