The Differences Between American and British English

Amirah Bilqis

17211144010

Language can not be separated from human’s life. language is use to

communicate between a group of people or more than that. Language is also
become an identity for some ethnic or country. Nowadays, English language
became the the most spoken languages worldwide in 2019. In 2019 there were
around 1.27 billion people worldwide who spoke English either natively or as a
second language, slightly more than the 1.12 billion Mandarin Chinese speakers at
the time of survey based on statista website.

English originates from England and belongs to Germanic of Indo-

European family. Under the influence of culture of various countries and regions,
English can be categorized into British English, American English, Australian
English, New Zealand English, Canadian English, Indian English, Irish English,
etc. However, at present, American English and British English are most
commonly used. American English and British English are similar in most of
aspects. Nevertheless, there are differences between American English and British
English in aspects of word spelling, pronunciation and grammar.

American english is actually oler than british. 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. It also explains why many places outside the south of
England still have rhotic pronunciation as part of their regional accents.
 So, what are the differences between british and american english? The
writer already described some of the key differences in the answers above, but
there are many other features that set the two dialects part. The first is accent.
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. Second is spelling. Third,
grammar. For example the preposition. American people would say I’m going to
a party on  the weekend. While british would say I’m going to a party at the
weekend. See? The preposition is different. American people would say on instead
of on. 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.

At last, we conclude that both of them have their uniquiness. Nothing

better or more perfect one another.

References

Bin, Zhang. 2008. Asian Social Science: On Grammatical Differences Between

Daily British and American English

Dylan, Lyons. 2020. Babel Magazine. What Are the Differences Between
American And British English

Mijwil, Maad. 2010. Researchgate. Brief History of the English language

Elly, Gelderen. John Benjamin Publishing Company. A History of the English

Language