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by petepete 2582 days ago
The funny spelling of centre always gets me too, it just looks so wrong! I can get used to writing words that end in ise as ize, and colour as color. But center, fiber, liter, etc just don't sit right.
2 comments

It's just a matter of getting used to. I imagine these spellings do not evoke the same feeling in you, even though they are objectively following the same rule as centre and fibre:

Maple not Mapel

Cable not Cabel

Able not Abel
Here’s my American perspective:

Centre look and sounds like “cent-ruh” rather than the rolled out sounding of err sound to make “center”. Then again, how you say it is a bit different, too.

There are two "US" pronunciations on Wiktionary.

The first is much closer to the British pronunciation, which (I think) is much more deserving of the spelling "centre" than the second "cener".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/center#Pronunciation