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Comment by Trezoid | Hacker News Reader

Any country that uses British spelling for things.

That really depends, because "British spelling" isn't an all-or-nothing thing -- many of the Commonwealth countries show broad variation in how much they adhere to the traditional UK spellings.

Thus, for example, Australia has a Labor party, not a Labour party (while neighbor New Zealand does have a Labour party), and typically sends people to jail instead of to gaol. Canada usually has tires instead of tyres, and Canadians realize things instead of realising them.

It's probably worth noting that "gaol" hasn't been common in British English for some time. A search of the BBC news site reveals "jail" being used almost daily while "gaol" is only used to refer to historical buildings which are now closed.

Well, on etymologic grounds, "gaol" is closer to French (goale, while the pronunciation is different) than the Old English equivalent (gaylle, gaille, gaile) - so jail is somewhat closer to the Old English, in form and pronunciation.

The ALP (Australian Labor Party) changed the spelling of their name deliberately in 1912 order to distinguish it from the general labour movement and also to make them appear more progressive and modern by using the American spelling.

More information on Australian spelling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_English#Spelling

Not sure about NZ & Oz but you would never see it written "tyre" in Canada and I bet most Canadian's would have no idea "tyre" was an alternative spelling for tire.

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