Wash them clothes....how?

[Mortblanc]

The two languages were united right up to the mid 1800s. Neither language is the same as it was before then and one did not drift away from the other. They both evolved along separate paths from a common vocabulary as did the Canadian and Australian dialects.

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The largest variation is the divergence of the rhotic and non-rhotic pronunciations with the American and Canadians recognizing the R and English and Australian dialects eliminating it.

The spelling thing is simply a phonic interpretation.

We had a writer over here called Mark Twain, who proposed that any intelligent person should be able to spell any word in the English language at least three ways.

Every language group has its variations. That's how we wound up with French, Spanish and Italian all deriving from the common Latin.