The English upper class has been in charge of spelling standardisation for the best part of 400 years, and they've made an absolute hash of it. They inserted silent letters all over the place (e.g. island), and kept historical spellings so far past their use-by date as to be bizarre (e.g. knight). The English spelling system is a linguistic laughing stock. Maybe it's about time we let someone else take control.
...and the American system is better?!
It's a pity the debate has to be so politically charged, wouldn't it be nice if we could judge Webster's reforms by their merits?
Note that whatever it is, rising intonation is definitely not a form of Americanisation, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal
-- Tim Starling (Australian)
who cares, it's ugly.
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