British and American English dier in grammar, spelling, pronunciation and, most of all, vocabulary.

The grammatical dierences between both varieties are very few. The most important are: In BrE, the verb have meaning possess is used with the particle got, especially in the colloquial style. In the negative and interrogative forms, it is used as an auxiliary verb (I have got, I havent got, have you got?); in AmE, the verb have is used without got and the negative and interrogative are formed with the auxiliary do (I have, I dont have, do you have?) AmE uses the past simple form of the verb in situations when BrE would use the present perfect (BrE: has he gone yet?; AmE: did he go yet?) On the other hand, the dierences in the vocabulary are numerous. An American word is usually accepted in British English, and vice versa, but the context usually marks the use of a term. The following table shows a short list of words which dier in British and American English.

As far as spelling is concerned, the main dierences are the following: BrE ending -our (colour, avour); AmE ending -or (color, avor) BrE ending -re (theatre, centre); AmE ending -er (theater, center) In verb ending in -l, BrE doubles the l when adding the endings -ing, -ed or -er (travelling, travelled, traveller); AmE does not double the l (traveling, traveled, traveler) The phonetic dierences are mostly found in the pronunciation of vowels. Apart from this, in BrE they do not pronounce the letter -r when it comes at the end of the word, as in teacher, car or year, or when it is in front of a consonant, as in carpet, eort or north. In some words, there is a change in the stress. For example, the word laboratory is stressed on the rst syllable in AmE (laboratory) and on the second in BrE (laboratory)