As an American who just worked for a year in the UK: no! The Brits continue to insist -- as is their right -- that the -ise and -our endings are the only right way to write in British English.

"Is it valid to say that the AE spelling is in the process of replacing the traditional BE spelling in the UK?"

Rather the reverse. The form with "-ize" is older and etymologically correct. Some publishers, notably the Oxford University Press still insist on the "-ize"is spelling, but with the popularity of MS-Office, with its oversimplified spellchecker, "-ise" is becoming more prevalent. OED2, of course, uses "-ize"

The last British-corpus-based statistic I saw gave a ratio of 3:2 in favour of "-ise"

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_spelling... and the references given there.

As I understand it, the typical BE spelling is a variety of ize, ise, and yze. This variety has to be memorized (unless you follow the lead of Oxford University Press and the OED, noted by Mike. The actual rule for determining the which to use is as follows:

1) words adopted from French use ise.
2) words adopted directly from Latin (but not via French) use ize.
3) words adopted from Greek use yze.

Of course, without checking a dictionary, you are not likely to know which rule to apply. It does not surprize me that spell-check features may facilitate the preservation of this seemingly random spelling choice. If BE writiers can count on their computers choosing the right spelling for them, and they no longer personally have to remember, any incentive to adopt a consistent spelling disappears.

Although I don't read a lot of British texts, I do read some on the Internet (BBC news and a variety of webblogs). I have not notice any shift away from the traditional BE mix of spelling. Of course, I have no idea if the spellings used are the "correct" BE ones or not.

In AE, apart from a handful of Greek-origin words (e.g. analyze), we always use ize.

@Sharper
"... nouns that end in -lysis should form verbs ending in -lyse, but -lyze is often seen in American texts."
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7322/1173
oh good, another opportunity fro me to link to one of my favourite articles!

@Marianne: an interesting article, but I am puzzled by this assertion: "In contrast, nouns that end in -lysis should form verbs ending in -lyse, but -lyze is often seen in American texts." I thought the use of the "y" rather than "I" pointed to a Greek origin of these words, supporting the use of -ize. The prime example would be "analysis" and "analyze." Since the article is looking at citations in scientific literature, I would expect many of the words to have been directly borrowed from Greek or Latin (rather than via Old French). This would support the -ize spelling.

@Sharper, I think his point here is not the "i/y" but the "s/z": the verb forming from the noun ending "-lysis" and not from "-izein", i.e. analySis -> "analySe" rather than "analySis" -> "analyZe" (it's never written analyZis, is it?).

Bottom line, though, is that I think we Brits will stick to "-ise" whatever the etymology - and its usage seems to be on the increase again. ;-)

For some reason I feel obliged to add my view of this, which is:

- Words formed using the "ize/ise" suffix take either -ize OR -ise in BE. The dictionary, many academics, some novelists, and I prefer -ize, but most others prefer -ise. In AE -ize is compulsory.
- Words formed from other roots generally use -ise everywhere (see the list in Marianne's article)
- Words ending -yse/-yze: In BE always -yse (paralyse, analyse etc.), in AE always -yze (paralyze, analyze etc.)

Simple, really. Or not.

> Simple, really. Or not.

LOL, I vote for "or not".

Thanks to everybody who answered and shed a little light on this confusing issue. It seems to be a lot more complicated than I thought.