American vs. British English

The Americans and the British clearly speak the same language, although with enough variation to create language versions with slightly different personalities and local flavor.

Accent

It’s difficult to make clear distinctions between US and UK accents when there’s such a wide variety of accents within both countries. A Texan and a New Yorker are both Americans, but have very different accents. The same goes for British accents in London, Manchester and Glasgow.

However, some very general distinctions can be made. For example, Americans usually pronounce every “r” in a word, while the British tend to only pronounce the “r” when it’s the first letter of a word.

Spelling

American British

color colour

behavior behaviour

theater theatre

meter metre

organize organise

traveled travelled

American and British dictionaries are very different, because they were compiled by different authors with very different perspectives on language.

The UK’s dictionary was compiled by scholars from London who just wanted to collect all known English words, while the American one was made by a lexicographer called Noah Webster.

Webster wanted American spelling not only to be more straightforward but also different from UK spelling, as a way to show America’s independence from the former British rule. He dropped the letter u from words like colour and honour to make them color and honor instead. He did the same to words ending in -ise to make them -ize, because he thought American English spelling should reflect the way it was said.

Vocabulary

American British

apartment flat

college university

vacation holiday

chips crisps

(french) fries chips

the movies the cinema

soda/pop/coke/soft drink soft drink/fizzy drink

sneakers/tennis shoes trainers

sweater jumper

mailbox postbox

bandaid plaster

drugstore chemist’s

soccer football

Grammar

Prepositions

The differences below are only a general rule. American speech has influenced Britain via pop culture, and vice versa. Therefore, some prepositional differences are not as pronounced as they once were.

American British

I’m going to a party on the weekend I’m going to a party at the weekend

What are you doing on Christmas? What are you doing at Christmas?

Monday through Friday Monday to Friday

It’s different from/than the others. It’s different from/to the others.

Past Simple vs Present Perfect

Americans tend to use the past simple when describing something that has recently occurred, while people in the UK are more likely to use the present perfect.

American British

I ate too much. I’ve eaten too much.

I went to the store. I’ve been to the shop.

Did you get the newspaper? Have you got the newspaper?

The past participle of "get"

In the UK, “gotten” as the past participle of “get” is considered archaic and was abandoned long ago in favor of “got.” However, in the US people still use “gotten” as the past participle.

American British

get – got – gotten get – got – got

I haven’t gotten any news about him. I’ve not got any news about him.

Collective Nouns: singular or plural?

In British English, a collective noun (like committee, government, team, etc.) can be either singular or plural, but more often tends towards plural, emphasizing the members of the group.

Collective nouns in the US, by comparison, are always singular, emphasizing the group as one whole entity.

American British

The government is doing everything it can. The government are doing everything they can.

My team is winning. My team are winning.

Regular or Irregular Verbs?

This is a subtle difference that can be easily overlooked in speech, but is obvious in written form. Many verbs that are irregular in the preterite in Britain (leapt, dreamt, burnt, learnt) have been made regular in America (leaped, dreamed, burned, learned).

Age: American English is actually older.

When the first settlers set sail from England to America, they took with them the common tongue at the time, which was based on something called rhotic speech (when you pronounce the r sound in a word).

Meanwhile, back in wealthy southern cities of the UK, people from the new higher classes wanted a way to distinguish themselves from everyone else, so they started changing their rhotic speech to a soft r sound, saying words like winter as “win-tuh” instead of “win-terr.” Of course, these people were posh and everyone wanted to copy them, so this new way of speaking – which British people now refer to as Received Pronunciation – spread across the rest of the south of England.

Many places outside the south of England still have rhotic pronunciation as part of their regional accents.

Influence: British English is more like French.

French has influenced English in more ways than English speakers would care to admit. The first time was when William the Conqueror invaded Britain in the 11th Century, bringing Norman French with him and making it the “high” language – used in schools, courts, universities, and the upper classes. It didn’t stick around, but instead evolved into Middle English, which was a combination of all the linguistic influences around at the time.

The second time was during the 1700s, when it became super trendy in the UK to use French-style words and spelling.

Of course, Americans were already living their lives across the Atlantic and didn’t take part in this trend at all. As a result, British English has more linguistic similarities to French than to American English.

Omission of Words: American English drops some words completely

Sometimes the differences in American English make no sense to speakers of British English – like when Americans remove entire words from a sentence.

When an American tells someone they’ll write a letter to them, they say, “I’ll write them.” When you ask an American if they want to go shopping, they might say, “I could.” In the UK, they would say “I’ll write to you” and “I could go.”

Americans might drop a word because they want to say things faster – or maybe it’s the British just like to spell out exactly what they’re saying. Nobody’s right here.

Different Evolutions: The two types of English have borrowed words from different languages

It’s clear that British and American English have evolved differently when you consider the cultural influences that have affected each language independently, and how they’ve borrowed words from those languages.

For some reason this is very common with words for food: examples include coriander (British, derived from French) and cilantro (American, derived from Spanish), and aubergine (British, derived from Arabic) and eggplant (American, so called because it looks like a purple egg).

There are many more examples, but the important thing to remember is to get it right in the country you’re studying in. After all, you don’t want to be asking British people for some aluminium foil and pronouncing it uh LOO-min um.