Choose from the bank ONE word to fill in each of the following blanks in the passage. Each word in the bank should be used only once. differences, change, influence, instead, language, order, potato, sweater, same, separate, system, understand Language experts say that spoken English was almost the __1__ in the American colonies and Britain two hundred years ago. Americans began to __2__ the sound of their speech after the Revolutionary War in 1776. They wanted to make it different to __3__ themselves from the British in language, in the same way they separated themselves from the British government. Some American leaders proposed major changes in the __4__. Benjamin Franklin wanted a whole new __5__ of spelling. His reforms were not accepted. But his ideas did __6__ others. One was Noah Webster. Webster wrote that all words should be said in the __7__ of the letters that spell them. This is why Americans use the letters"e-r" to end many words __8__ of the British "r-e". Webster spelled the word "center", for example, "c-e-n-t-e-r", instead of the British "c-e-n-t-r-e". Sometimes Americans and British people do not __9__ each other because of different word meanings. For example, the word "jumper" in Britain means a __10__. In the United States, it is a dress. The British word "brolly" is an "umbrella" in America. And the British call __11__ chips "crisps". All of these __12__ led British writer George Bernard Shaw to joke that Britain and America are two countries separated by the same language!