saying it one way or the other certainly DOES say something about you.(and I'm not sure Nellie has it yet, either *grin*)

In person, if you tell me you don't like the 'flava' of that coffee, I'll get it immediately and my brain will process it with almost no effort and realize that you have a cultural accent and pronunciation style. LOTS of cultures have variations in how and whether an 'r' is pronounced. High class English speakers often drop the final 'r' sound.........but....when they write letters or books, they spell 'flavor'....excuse me..'flavour'...*smile* (but always with a final 'ah'...)

What's the difference? Well, in this day & age, search engines for one! If you had posted 6 weeks ago about your favorite coffee and I went looking for it, I'd only be successful if I could remember that you chose to drop the 'r' and add an 'a' in your spelling.
   Not to be picking particularly on you...I have bit of the same problem, when a few folks choose to post in Scots dialect ("a braid type 'o spakin' wi' lot's o' apostrophies")...I can usually get it, but, except when that dialect IS the point, or it is used to explicitly give lyrics to Scots songs, it is hard to read comfortably.

It is VERY hard to control one's speech patterns. I have a funny combination of southern and midwest 'twang in my voice, and I suppose that I pronounce some words a little differently than Tom Brokaw would......but spelling is much easier to standardize. We have some differences between countries, but you can download a British or American dictionary for your spell-checker..(the Brits have a lot of words with extra letters 'flavour' 'colour', as you have noted).

IF you really wish to 'color' 'colour' 'colah'?? 'culla'?? (see the problem?)some of your postings to make a point about language, fine, but otherwise, you are exaggerating differences in places where they might be awkward. (There are very complex systems for indicating precise pronunciation patterns see this page...(if you follow the arrows, you can hear a speaker, read the text, and see the technical transcription of the text)

Who determines what is proper? hmmmm...I'm not sure that is the right question. There are ways to analyze what is standard or most common.....just search Google, for example...or get out a dictionary. 'Proper' is a subjective thing that depends on context. If you were to spice most of your posts with 'jive talk', you'd no doubt get compaints or just be ignored by some...and be misunderstood by others. It's not like anyone can make a law about how you can speak ...or even how you spell. But there are certainly standards that allow people who have variable dialects to communicate.

In Germany, there are a number of dialects...almost different languages at times...but there is something called "die umgangsprache", which is basically the form spoken by the newscasters on nationwide TV, that most people can approximate when necessary.
The word for 'beautiful', schön can be pronounced 'shone' or 'schurn' or a couple of other ways, but in print, it is, I believe, almost always schön.

ah, well....there is no easy stopping place to explicate a lifetime of thinking about some stuff....and not easy to differ with folks without sounding condescending or critical. But typing all this, whether anyone reads or agrees with me or not, sure allows me to refine my own views about subjects.....an ongoing process with no end in sight!