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American and British English The distinctive features of American and British English can be seen especially in the following areas:
In part one of the series we look at the former two areas. Semantics There are two important types of difference in the meanings of words in the two varieties:
Type 1: Same Object, Different Names Some of the biggest differences are in the words used for basic everyday things, such as common foods, household equipment, and the parts of a car. For example:
Type 2: Same Word, Different Meanings Differences of this type can be very confusing, even for people whose first language is English. The Macmillan English Dictionary provides over 25 special usage notes that deal with these American/British "false friends".
Pronunciation There are a number of easy-to-hear differences in the way that English is pronounced by American and British speakers. Here we will look at the following areas: stress, some vowel sounds, and vowels followed by an "r." Stress (Loudness in Your Voice) American and British speakers have different stress patterns
in their speech when they say certain words with two or more syllables.
For example:
The same differences can be heard in words like gourmet, chalet, garage, parquet, and paté. In words with several syllables like secretary, American speakers emphasize the ending more than British speakers, so that the word seems to have an extra syllable:
The same differences can be heard in words like conservatory, contributory, inflammatory, inflationary and preparatory. In words like missile, however, British speakers give more emphasis to the last syllable
The same differences can be heard in docile, fragile, mobile, and tactile. The sounds /j In some words, British speakers say /ju
The vowel sounds / In many words where a comes before a sound such as /f/, /v/, /s/, or /z/, American speakers use a short a, like the sound in gas, where many British speakers (especially in southern England) use a longer a, like the sound in father. For example:
Vowels followed by /r/ Vowels with an /r/ following them are called rhotic or r-coloured. These are pronounced without the /r/ by many British English speakers, but the /r/ is pronounced by most American English speakers. For example, mother and bird both have 'r-coloured'
vowels in American English:
However, if the /r/ appears in front of a vowel in the next word, it is pronounced by both American and British speakers. If you are interested in hearing American varieties, you could rent videos of Clueless (1995), for California "Valley Girl" talk, My Cousin Vinny (1992), which contrasts New York speech with Southern speech,Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) for the Deep South or Norma Rae (1979) for working-class speech. If you are interested in hearing British varieties, you could rent a video of a film, Billy Elliot (2000), which has up-to-date dialogue with authentic British accents heard in the U.K. If you like older films, Beatles films from the 1960s, such as Help (1965), are also nice examples of U.K. English, as is This Sporting Life (1958). My Fair Lady (1964) a classic award-winning film, examines how Professor Higgins, a linguist and dialectician, changes the harsh working-class Cockney accent of a beautiful flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, and turns her into a princess in high society. Next in the series In the second and final part of the article on American
and British English, we will take a closer look at the differences between
the two language varieties in the areas of spelling and grammar. |
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