AMERICAN ENGLISH AND BRITISH ENGLISH

Many students want to know about the differences between American English and British English. How did these differences come about? There is no quick answer to this question. At first the language in Britain and America was the same. In 1776 America became an independent country. After that, the language slowly began to change. For a long time the language in America stayed the same, while the language in England changed. For example. 300 years ago the English talked about "fall". Today, most British people talk about "autumn", but Americans still talk about "fall". In the same way Americans still use the expression "I guess" (meaning "I think"), just as the British did 300 years ago.

At the same time, British English and American English started borrowing words from other languages, ending up with different words. For example, the British took "typhoon" from Chinese, while the Americans took "tornado" from Spanish.

In 1828 Noah Webster published the first American dictionary. He wanted to make American English different from British English, so he changed the spelling of many words. That's why the words colour, centre and traveller are spelt color, center and traveler in American English. Except for these differences in spelling, written English is more or less the same in both British and American English.

The differences are greater in the spoken language. For example, Americans say dance /dæns/, and in southern England they say /da:ns/. In America they pronounce not /nɑt/; in southern England they say /nɒt/. However, most of the time people from the two countries do not have any difficulty in understanding each other.