Main differences between British and American English

English is the world language. It is one of the official languages in the USA, great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and even in the Republic of South Africa. It has several varieties and it is very important for those who study English.

The history of the American English language. In the XVII –XVIII centuries in America flooded crowd of immigrants in the face of the French, Spaniards, Germans, Dutch, Norwegians and even Russian. But most of them were from England (the British Isles in General, and this is Scotland and Wales), where they spoke English. Even then, the English language was not uniform for all segments of the population: in the speech of the aristocrats, the bourgeoisie and the peasants there were many differences.

The new population of America just needed to communicate with each other, the choice fell on the language spoken by the majority – English. But it was not aristocratic (Royal) English, and the language of the bourgeoisie and peasants, who usually did not have a good enough education. Throughout the time, the people of America had other goals and objectives than the population of England, they have a different history, they lived among the other natural world, which could not affect the language, so it absorbed a lot of changes. That's how American English appeared, along with British English and other variants of its development.

There are different versions of English: American English, British English, Australian English, Canadian English, new Zealand English. Hybrid languages: Pidgin English, Bichlamar, Kroo English.

Pidgin English was used in transactions with the population of the Far East in New Zealand and Australia.

Bichlamar is a jargon used in the Islands of Polynesia, which, in addition to English vocabulary, includes French and Spanish words.

Croo English is common in West Africa. It is a mixed language based on English with a mixture of Portuguese vocabulary.

But the closest to British English is Australian, new Zealand. Australia and New Zealand, due to geographical isolation, were not strongly influenced by other languages and cultures. American version. Most people come into contact with the American version of the English language. Why is English, especially its American version, so popular? Many teach it because Americans speak it, and America is one of the largest countries in the world.

The U.S. is a leader in science and technology. The Americans themselves say that the world should understand America. The differences between American and British English are quite noticeable. But in fact, they are not so much. It is sometimes difficult to understand whether this or that book is written by an American or British author. Since the American version is the most widely used in the modern world, linguists have already made attempts to systematize the lexical, spelling, phonetic and grammatical differences between the American version of English and British.

Differences between British and American English of Course, there are more similarities than differences between these options – it's the same language! But still there are a number of differences between them, the main one is the simplicity of the American version. Replenishment of the vocabulary of the English language in America went in two ways:

• 1.    through the formation of new words and stable phrases and rethinking old ones;

• 2.    by borrowing from other languages. Sometimes the reason for the development of the word of a new meaning is the similarity of the objects designated by this word. This phenomenon is found, for example, in the English word “store”, which in America has acquired the value of a shop, shop. This rethinking was due to the fact that, at that time, in the colonies, any shop was, by necessity, also a warehouse of goods. Hence the phrase keep the store to have a store.

A special group consists of words, the meaning of which has undergone a complete rethinking. This process can be traced, for example, in the English noun corn, which in England means any crops. In America, the word corn began to mean corn, i.e. the very culture that had to be mainly cultivated by the first settlers. One of the sources of vocabulary in this period were borrowed from other languages and, first of all, from the languages of Indian tribes living in North America.

English is the world language. It is one of the official languages in the USA, great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and even in the Republic of South Africa. As they say all over the world, It has several varieties. This is very important for those who study English.

Thus, the differences between American and British English are quite noticeable.

Annex 1

Main differences in spelling

Annex 2

Main differences in vocabulary