One of Alan's students noticed that Canadians are celebrating Labour Day on September 4 while Americans will celebrate Labor Day. There are two interesting notes here.

1. Culture: Both Canadians and Americans celebrate a Day of Labor on the first Monday of September to commemorate the contribution of workers to our societies. Most other countries of the world celebrate workers on the first day of May, often referred to as May Day.

2. Spelling: Canadians spell the word Labour, while Americans drop the letter ‘u’ out of the spelling. For the most part, Canadians tend to follow British spelling conventions. Many American spelling differences came about in the 1800s with a movement to simplify the spellings or to make them more closely reflect their pronunciation. Below is a list showing the more common differences in the two systems. Note: differences in dialect are not “right” or “wrong”; they simply reflect standardized variations. As a student of English, you should adopt the system nearest to where you live and work.