Several years ago, a coworker pointed out that an article spelled "organization" with an "s" instead of a "z" and wondered why such an obvious mistake would pass an editor.
I pointed out that that's just the British spelling. Everyone in my group was amazed that I would know such a thing. It was an eye-opening moment... for me.
Yes Australian here. I run into this problem with programming languages all the time. Because of things like "colour" vs "color" or "centre" vs "center". "Maximise" "minimise" etc are good examples as well
My coworkers and I call it the 'American API' problem.
It isn't exactly "the" British spelling -- it's actually "a" British spelling. That is, the "z" form is not only correct British usage, it's actually quite a bit older [0].
My mom has a British/Indian accent but I've never even been there: there are a lot of less common words that I didn't even realize I said differently until I was too old to feel like intentionally changing it: rather with an 'ah', calcium with a 'sh', occasionally unconsciously spelling things "theatre" or "centre" or "harbour" (I guess a good chunk of the books I read growing up were from British publishers? I don't really know). I don't know why but I always managed to be surprised by how shocked people's reaction is to these pronunciations and spellings, especially because I've spent my whole life in California surrounded by immigrants (I'd say the percentage of friends I've had with parents born in America is in the very low double digits).
I pointed out that that's just the British spelling. Everyone in my group was amazed that I would know such a thing. It was an eye-opening moment... for me.