American English Vs. British English; SPELLING

British English has a tendency to respect the pronunciation of many words of French origin and Americans often take away words “that are not necessary”, and usually don't respect the pronunciation of word of French origin to give a pronunciation “more American”.

To be sure which version you use, first, you must consider the nationality of the people that you are addressing, and secondly, you must be consistent to be using British English or American English.

Most dictionaries include both spellings and make note of the two spellings. In many American dictionaries, the difference is included in brackets, for example: Labo(u)r, Colo(u)r, etc.

And in British dictionaries, make note of the difference in brackets immediately after the headword. For example: watch (plural: watches).

American English spelling sometimes doesn’t double the consonant at the end of a word, while British English spelling does. Especially when the consonant is an “l”. For example: British: travel, traveller, travelling and American: travel, traveler, traveling.

-ise and –ize: spelling with –ise is more used in British English and the spelling –ize is more used by American people. For example: realise - realize.

-ae/oe and –e: British use –ae and –oe and American use –e: Example: BrE anaesthetic, foetus, encyclopaedia. AmE anesthetic, fetus, encyclopedia.

-ou and –o: Examples: BrE: colour, honour, labour, mould. AmE: color, honor, labor, mold.

-en and –in: Examples: BrE: enclose, enquiry, ensure. AmE: inclose, inquiry, insure.

-re and –er: Examples: BrE: centre, litre,theatre, fibre. AmE: center, liter, theater, fiber.

-ce and –se: Examples: BrE: defence, offence, licence. AmE: defense, offense, license. 

And Finally, you can see other spellings:

British English              American English

cheque                            check

moustache                     mustache

storey                              story

tyre                                  tire

tsar                                  czar

pyjamas                          pajamas

programme                    program

kidnapper                       kidnaper

analogue                         analog

catalogue                        catalog

Sources: “The English Language”, David Crystal

The new Oxford American dictionary.

A dictionary of spelling British and American, Michael West, D,Phil. http://www.transpanish.biz/es/ingles.html

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/British_and_American_English

María Durán Martínez

American English Vs. British English; VOCABULARY

In vocabulary, we can also find some important differences and it is important to consider depending on English-speaking country you are in and the people you are addressing. The street language or “slang” is also different in each country.

Some words may mean something in British English and the same word might be something else in American English or vice versa. Some of the AmE uses have come to be used in BrE in recent years.

There are thousands of different words and in the following list, you can see some examples:

                          

      AmE                                            BrE

chips	crips
pants	trousers
schedule	timeline
sick	ill
trash	rubbish
vacation	holiday
vest	suitcoat
antenna	aerial
fall	autumn
soccer	football
grain	corn
roast	joint
elevator	lift
lite	light
truck	lorry
homicide	murder
diaper	nappy
can	tin
candy	sweet
cab	taxi
cookie	biscuit
corn	maize
museum	art gallery
penitentiary	prison
subway	underground

And finally you can see more examples in the following video. I hope you like. 

Sources: “The English Language”, David Crystal.

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

http://www.ompersonal.com.ar/omexpress/idioma/britishVSamerican.htm

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/British_and_American_English

By: María Durán Martínez. 

Language in USA

        The United States of America have been known as the world’s melting pot of culture for some time now. This title stems from the fact that there are many different cultures from around the world in the United States and with many different cultures comes a fair share of various languages that are spoken. The States have been shaped by immigration more than any other country on the planet and language is no exception for that matter.

        The United States of America actually have no official all-national language, even though it would seem that English would be an appropriate candidate for the position. However, English, specifically American English, is the de facto language of the United States, and is used for legislation, regulations, executive orders, treaties, federal court rulings, and all other official matters. Nevertheless there are laws that require some documents (e.g. ballots) to be printed in multiple languages when there are a certain number of non-English speakers in the area.

       Spanish in the United States is considered and reviewed through the course of time. Also, a cultural phenomenon, where two languages melt, called Spanglish is observed and some interesting examples are stated. In total, there are 34,547,077 people in the United States who speak Spanish as their primary language at home, including 3.5 million in the territory of Puerto Rico, where Spanish is the primary language. Over half of the country's Spanish speakers reside in California, Texas, and Florida alone. According to Metcalf (2000), Spanglish (blends of the language names "English" and "Spanish") or jerga fronteriza – refers to the range of language-contact phenomena, primarily in the speech of the Hispanic and Anglo population of the United States and the population of Mexico living near the Mexican-American border, who are exposed to both Spanish and English. These phenomena are produced by close border contact and large bilingual communities along the United States-Mexico border and California, Oregon, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, Puerto Rico, The City of New York, and Chicago. Spanglish is also known by a regional name "Tex-Mex" in Texas.
       
        To conclude with this brief glimpse to the languages coexist in America in general, a quotation said by former president John F. Kennedy: “Everywhere immigrants have enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life”. And it is true; the English that we hear in the United States today is an account of America’s history by itself. Ever since the first settlers from Europe started their lives on new soil, language has been evolving rapidly. What followed were just waves of new immigrants from all around the world looking for a new life and an opportunity to live across the pond, in a presumably better society. Language is closely connected to culture and culture has been an area of conflict since the dawn of man.


Source: How has immigration into the United States influenced the language? by Jan Hansel.

By Estefanía Benítez Sánchez

American English Vs British English; PRONUNCIATION

During the centuries the language used in the USA has changed in many ways since it developed independently of the British English. Some words were taken from the Native Americans, other words were added, and others were influenced by the Dutch and French setters’ language. The fact that a lot of immigrants from all over the world have arrived in the USA has contributed to the development of American English.

There are many different ways of speaking English with variants of accents, dialects and English derivatives but in this post I have focused on the two main currents: American and British English. 

  An interesting fact, Received Pronunciation is used only by 5% of the United Kingdom population; it is because there are many dialects in the British Isles. If we travel to United Kingdom, we will notice that the difference in pronunciation from region to region are stronger and broader than in United States although the latter is a much larger country.

Perhaps, it is due to the fact that statistically Americans change of residences more often than the British. People in the south of The United States have a particular accent, while for example people of Boston speak very differently.

The main theme is differences between American and British PRONUNCIATION and the most important differences are: 

  - “can” and “can’t”: In American English, the difference between "can" and "can’t" is sometimes difficult to distinguish, while in standard British English you can clearly see the difference

- The sound / r / may not be audible in some British English words, such as "car". The / r / is deleted, as well as dialects of New York and Boston.

- Americans tend to reduce words by omitting letters, the word "facts" for example, in American English, "t" is silent.

- Sometimes the sounds of the vowels are omitted in British English, as in the word "secretary", where the sound / a / is not pronounced.

- The pronunciation of the syllables sometimes varies in each version.

- Affixes: -ary, -ory, -ery : When the syllable preceding "-ary,-ery or -ory" is stressed, AmE pronounce all these endings /əri/, while BrE pronounce these endings without the vowel sound, but when the preceding syllable is unstressed, AmE has a full vowel rather than schwa: /ˌɛri/ for “-ary” and “-ery” and /ˌɔri/ for “-ory”. BrE retains the reduced vowel /əri/, or even elides it completely to /ri/.

-Some single differences:

BmE  AmE    Words

/æ/       /ɑ/        Pablo, pasta

/ɒ/       /oʊ/      compost, homosexual, produce, scone

/ɑː/      /æ/        banana, morale, scenario

/æ/       /eɪ/       compatriot, patriot, patronise, phalanx

/ɛ/        /i/         crematorium, cretin, depot, inherent, leisure

/ɪ/        /aɪ/        dynasty, housewifery, idyll, livelong, privacy

/z/        /s/         blouse, complaisant, crescent, erase

/aɪ/       /i/         either, neither

/ɑː/      /eɪ/        gala, promenade, tomato

/ʃ/          /ʒ/       Asia, Persia, version

Finally, here's a funny musical video: 

Sources: "The English Language", David Crystal. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_pronunciation_differences

 

By: María Durán Martínez

 

Loan-words

Loan-words are words adopted by the speakers of a specific languagen in this case English, from a different language which is called source language. A loan-word also can be called borrowing. However, these two words are metaphorical because the borrowing words are not taken from a language and returned later, so they imply a proccess. 

Loan-wrods are the result of a cultural contact between two language communities. Borrowing of words can go in both directions between the languages in contact, but often there is a asymmetry, such that more words go from one side to the other. In this case the source language community has some advantage of power, prestige and/or wealth that makes the objects and ideas it brings desirable and useful to the borrowing language community.

Those who first use the word might use it at first only with speakers of the source language who know the word, but at some point the come to use the word with those to whom the word was not previously known. To thse speakers the word may sound 'foreign'. At this stage, when most speakers do not know the word and if they hear it think it is from another language, the word can be called foreign word.

The United States has a large number of loan words (if well it seems the opposite as a source language). This linguistic result was almost totally a consequence of the first period of settlement. In that early period, most of the words had been to do with new fauna and flora, or with notions deriving from contact with the Indian tribes. Now, there were many words from Spanish, French, German, Dutch and the other immigrant languages, which were increasingly becoming part of the American environment.

Here, we have a table with several examples of words and phrases come from other languages which are used in American English: 

LANGUAGE	WORDS
Indian languages	Chipmunk, hickory, how!, moccasin, moose, opossum. Papoose, pemmican, pow-wow, racoon, skunk, tomahawk, totem, wigwam.
Dutch	Boss, caboose, coleslaw, cookie, snoop.
French	Bayou, butte, caribou, cent, chowder, crevasse, gopher, levee, poker, praline, saloon.
German	And how, cookbook, delicatessen, dumb, frankfurter, hoddlum, kindergarten, nix, no way, phooey, pretzel, sauerkraut, spiel.
Italian	Capo, espresso, mafia, minestrone, pasta, pizza, spaghetti, zucchini.
Spanish	Bonanza, cafeteria, canyon, coyote, lassoo, loco, marijuan, mustang, plaza, ranch, rodeo, tacos, tornado, vamoose.
Yiddish	Gonif, kosher, mazuma, mensch, nosh, schmaltz, shmuck, schnoz, scram, shlemiel, Enjoy!, You should worry!, Get lost!, Crazy she isn’t!

Sources: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words/loanwords.html
"The English language" by David Crystal.

By Estefanía Benítez Sánchez

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.