American English vs British English

The English language was inserted to the Americans by British colonization in the early 17th century and it propagate to many part of the word beacuse of the power of the British empire: Over the yearsm English spoken in the United States and in Britain, started diverging from each other in various aspects. This led to two dialects in the form of the American English and the British English.


Between American English and British English there are a lot of differences in spelling, vocabulary and phonology but there are also in certain grammatical cases.


As we all know American English is the form used in the United States and British English is the form used in the United Kingdom, both are included all English dialects of their respective zones.
American and British English diverged from a common predecessor and the evolution of each language is linked to social and cultural factors in each land, cultural exchange also has an impact on language.

British English uses the accent known as Received Pronunciation, or RP and also known as BBC English or Queen´s English, which has been considered as proper English “correct English” and comes from the cultured English spoken in South East England. British English is the English which taught in schools. And American English uses the accent known as Midland American English. In United States,the vocabulary and pronunciation are uniform due to the influence of mass communication and socio-geographic mobility.

Let's start with the differences, the three major differences between between American and British English are:


Pronunciation: differences in vowels and consonants, as well as stress and intonation.


Vocabulary: differences in nouns and verbs, especially phrasal verb usage.


Spelling: differences are generally found in prefix and suffix forms.
For these three sessions, I will inform in detail in the following post but now I inform about some differences in general.
For example, an important difference is the use of Present Perfect: the concept of the use of this tense is the same but there are some shades:

- British English: “I have eaten a pizza”

- American English: “I eaten a pizza” (In American English this phrase is also possible, but in British English would be considered incorrect)
Others differences:

- American English generally prefers the singular for collective nouns and British English is backwards. Ex: AmE: “ the parliament is...” and BrE “ the parliament are...”

- “Get” verb: The past participle of the verb “get” is “gotten” in American English and in British English is “got”.

- Possession: to express possession in English we use “Have” or “Have got”. Both forms are correct but the British use “Have got” and the American use “Have”.- Prepositions: some prepositions are also different, for example:

AmE - on the weekend BrE - at the weekend
AmE - on a team BrE - in a team

I hope you have found interesting this introduction, To be continued...!


Sources: "The English Language", David Cristal.
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/British_and_American_English and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_American_and_British_English

By: María Durán Martínez.