Never mind my post if these have been mentioned already, but I find standard American English to be more comprehensible than the British counterpart for the most part when it comes to tracing a linkage between pronunciation and spelling (not that English is itself a particularly good language at that). “Lieutenant”
has been mentioned already, in spite of there being no “f” in the word, but the word “coeliac” in BrE feels like just as much an offender to me; I know the word is derived from a Latin word etymologically, but Latin pronounces the “o”, and the prevalence of “co-“ prefixed English words that are pronounced /ko/ makes it very easy for a first-timer to say it with a “ko-” instead of the correct /s/.
American English seems to be better at making words “look” more natural too. Everytime I see the word “licence” my brain either automatically converts it into “license” or is left slightly perplexed; I mean, there is “incense” already, so why not change it too?
There are some expressions that the British do better, though, like the use of prepositions. I can never understand how it can be “from … through …” when it stops at the item that it’s “through”, and I feel “through” can be better used for the 2nd out of 3 items, as in “from … through … to …”, if one wants to really exaggerate a thing’s omnipresence, but then nobody says it that way. There’s also the use of prepositions in adverbials describing time. It just feels more consistent to say “I am working on this Sunday” than to say “I am working this Sunday”, but that’s a petty grievance.
And then there’s the usual “aluminum” vs “aluminium”. When the hell is “americum” coming, America?
