British English
British Fucking English - aarrrghh, it's English you wankers.

If you must feel the need to add a descriptor, add it to your own bastardisation* of the language and list it as 'American English'. But if you really, really want to piss me off; just add a little squiggly line under words like colour or containing 'ise' even after selecting this so-called 'British English' option.

* For my American friends, please feel free to substitute 'evolution'** for bastardisation.

**For the large minority of you that don't feel evolution exists, feel free to substitute 'Intelligent Design' in its place.
( Kovacs Slogan free since 2003, Thu 31 Mar 2011, 20:51, 6 replies)

According to the Oxford English Dictionary...
...it's "ize" in English English. Hence your wiggly line
( Olembe Refuses to write in this space, Thu 31 Mar 2011, 21:46, closed)

In this case the OED is wrong.
-ize is American.

-ise is English.

(Some linguistic scholars might argue that -ise/-ize derives from Latin or Greek roots but they're simply wrong, regardless of how many letters they have after their names.)
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Fri 1 Apr 2011, 1:53, closed)

Set Language American
There's a mainframe-based product IBM developed in Warwick called "Application System", or AS for short (it was subsequently sold off to the company that handled the training). It started off as something they ran on their bureau service, but they subsequently started selling it.

AS naturally spoke the right sort of English but it was multilingual, so enter a "SET LANGUAGE" command, and it would communicate with you in one of the supported languages. Version 1 of the product supported a language called "American" which allowed you to do things like spell "colour" in the American way as "color", for instance.

The product was rather good. It was in competition with a US-written product called IC/1 which sucked. AS, quite rightly, won out much to the distain of the folks in the US and the amusement of folks here. However, someone (probably in the US) aparently objected to the "SET LANGUAGE AMERICAN" command as it disappeared from version 2.
(An eejit passing by in a purple satin skirt with sparkly bits, Thu 31 Mar 2011, 22:23, closed)

Wikipedia...
Sulfur
French fries
Potato chips

I was threatened with a ban for daring to suggest that there should be seperate English and American wikis.

Also all the city renaming for example: Mumbai (Bombay) and Chennai (Madras). Indians can call what they want what they want but why do we have to follow suit? Seems to have been led by the colonial-apologist BBC. Why don't the BBC start refering to Germany as Deutschland and Spain as Espanya? Because that's not what they are called in English...
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Thu 31 Mar 2011, 23:34, closed)

I make a point of referring to Peking as Peking.
Ditto Bombay, Madras, Burma, Rhodesia, Zanzibar, and more.

We brought civilisation to those benighted godless places; it's a damned cheek for the natives to think that they know better than we do what their places should be called.
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Fri 1 Apr 2011, 1:54, closed)

Actually
It's 'British' English that has evolved, whereas American English is much, much closer to that which was spoken around colonial times.

Not trying to be pedantic, I'm a TEFL teacher and have to teach both forms. I also believe it's unnecessary to add the qualifier when describing the vocabulary used in the UK; however for non-English speakers, it is normally required.
(Heggy, Mon 4 Apr 2011, 12:21, closed)