Tim - an American in Britain - takes a look at the bizarre spellings used in the UK.

	You can start learning British spelling, but you can never finish.	For an American like myself, learning to spell the British way was a lot like learning to drive the British way. At first you believe it will require no more than a permanent shift in your thinking; then you realise that it requires you to do things you know to be wrong; finally you realise that to some extent it can't be done. You can start learning British spelling, but you can never finish. I'm not someone who believes that good spelling is unimportant, nor do I believe that modern American spelling is inherently superior to the British. American spellings are meant to be more economical and sensible, but the 19th-century American spelling reform movement that brought us innovations like "dialog" and "program" never actually got much farther than, well, dialog and program. I will not pretend that I was wholly unfamiliar with British spellings. In the States we often use them in crossword puzzles when the American spelling doesn't fit, so that "form of payment, to a Londoner" is "cheque" and "gold measure for Anglophiles" is "carat" not "karat". I'm also not going to maintain that my difficulty with British spelling has hampered my ability to communicate, although the first time I read instil I was like, helloooo . The instil problem is just the tip of the iceberg. In Britain you do instil but then you do install, but then you make it instalment, even though you do installation. Whatever. Forget the instil group. What about the -our bunch? We Americans have always known that you British like to render labor as labour, and I quickly picked up that the same went for harbour, honour, rumour, vigour, rigour, neighbour and flavour. In fact I took a perverse pleasure in writing these olde worlde spellings. But how was I was supposed to know there wasn't also majour and minour? Or that while it was honour and honourable, it wasn't honourary, humourous, or vigourous and rigourous? British spelling began to seem like an exclusive club intent on black-balling me.
	I took a perverse pleasure in writing these olde worlde spellings. But how was I was supposed to know there wasn't also majour and minour?	Along with this -our mess, you have the -ise/ize puzzles and the -re/er enigma. Then there's what I call the body/disease surplus vowel. In Britain, common diseases like diarrhea, hemorrhoids and septicemia, along with bodily parts like the esophagus are spelled by throwing in an unnecessary extra a or o, as if they weren't hard enough to spell in the first place. There doesn't seem to be any rule regarding which words are awarded this affectation, so I have to look up any word that might possibly qualify. Of course with words like oedema and oesophagus, I'm not even looking in the right part of the dictionary. When two or more of these oddities are gathered together, you get a word like manoeuvre, which, pardon my French, is French. Where I come from, boys getz beaten up for spelling that way. And while we're here, let's talk about gaol. Of course I had come across this word before in English novels, and although I gathered from the context that it was a synonym for "prison", it never occurred to me that it was pronounced "jail". What sort of Britain do you want, a crusty old nation of ye olde tyre remould centres, ful of people making cuppes of taca and doing the hoeuvring? Or the shiny Nu Labor Brittan of 2-morrow? I suppose we should be surprised that the British and American spelling is so similar, considering that they diverged at a time when the number of e's in me depended on how you felt when you got up. Actually,I have grown quite fond of British spelling, with its odd combination of formality and silliness, rigidity and licence ("driver's certificate", according to Professor Higgins). One thing, however, has always puzzled me. What's with the two g's in waggon?