Difference Between American English And British English

1. Difference Between American English And British English

2. AMERICAN ENGLISH • American English (AmE) is the form of English used in the United States. • American English in its written form is standardized across the U.S. (and in schools abroad specializing in American English). • American speech is somewhat uniform throughout the country, largely because of the influence of mass communication and geographical and social mobility in the United States

3. BRITISH ENGLISH • British English (BrE) is the form of English used in the United Kingdom and the rest of the British Isles. It includes all English dialects used within the British Isles. • British English has a reasonable degree of uniformity in its formal written form. On the other hand, the forms of spoken English – dialects and vocabulary – used across the British Isles vary considerably more than in most other English-speaking areas of the world.

4. Historical background • The English language was first introduced to the Americas by British, beginning in the late 16th century. Similarly, the language spread to numerous other parts of the world as a result of British colonization elsewhere and the spread of the former British Empire, which, by 1921, held sway over a population of about 470–570 million people: approximately a quarter of the world's population.

5. PRONUNCIATION • GRAMMAR • SINGULAR AND PLURAL FOR NOUNS: For Example, In British "the team are worried"; American "the team is worried". Americans may use the plural form when the individual membership is clear, for example, "the team take their seats" (not "the team takes its seat (s)”, although it is almost always rephrased to avoid the singular/plural decision, as in "the team members take their seats".

6. PHRASEL VERBS: • In the U.S., forms are usually but not invariably filled out, but in Britain they can also be filled in. However, in reference to individual parts of a form, Americans may also use in ("fill in the blanks"). In AmE the direction "fill it all in" (referring to the form as a collection of blanks, perhaps) is as common as "fill it all out."

7. USE OF TENSES: • British uses the present perfect tense to talk about an event in the recent past and with the words already, just and yet. In American usage, these meanings can be expressed with the present perfect (to express a fact) or the simple past (to imply an expectation). This American style has become widespread only in the past 20 to 30 years; the "British" style is still in common use as well. • "I've just got(ten) home." / "I just got home." • "I've already eaten." / "I already ate."

8. DIFFERENT PREPOSITIONS IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS: • In the United States, the word through can mean "up to and including" as in Monday through Friday. In the UK Monday to Friday, or Monday to Friday inclusive is used instead; Monday through to Friday is also sometimes used. • In AmE, one always speaks of the street on which an address is located, whereas in BrE in can also be used in some contexts. In suggests an address in a city street, so a service station (or a tourist attraction or indeed a village) would always be on a major road, but a department store might be inOxford Street.

9. MISCELLANEOUS GRAMMATICAL DIFFERENCE • In names of American rivers, the word river usually comes after the name (for example, Colorado River), whereas for British rivers it comes before (as in River Thames). • In most areas of the United States, the word with is also used as an adverb: "I'll come with" instead of "I'll come along". However, in some British Dialects, 'come with' is used as an abbreviation of 'come with me', as in "I'm going to the office - come with" instead of "I'm going to the office - come with me".

10. REFERENCES • Hargreaves, Orin (2003). Mighty Fine Words and Smashing Expressions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-515704-4 • McArthur, Tom (2002). The Oxford Guide to World English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-866248-3. • Peters, Pam (2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62181-X.