Apresentação oral Inglês

The difference between american english and british english

Definição:
American English (AmE) is the form of English used in the United States.
British English (BrE) is the form of English used in the United Kingdom.
Diferenças:
Vocabulary: Vocabulary varieties are the most evident differences between UK and US
English. There is a big list of terms that sound completely different in these countries
including:

 Numbers and monetary amounts: twice vs. two times

 Prepositions: talk to vs. talk with
 Telling the time and building levels: quarter past vs. quarter after, ground floor vs.
the first floor
 Greetings: Happy Christmas vs. Merry Christmas
 Others.
Spelling: Spelling is another issue that makes these two English languages different.

Spelling peculiarities were identified by the American Noah Webster, he tried to spell words

the way they are pronounced. The brightest example is the word “spell” when Americans

add the suffix –ed to this word in the form of the past participle, while the British say

“spelt”.

Another examples: colour – color, centre – center, analyse – analyze, defence – defense.

Pronunciation: First of all, American English words have stress on the first syllable and
British people stress the second one.

Secondly, this is a pronunciation of affixes suach as -ary, -ery, -ory, -mony, -ative, -bury, -
berry. Americans pronounce the vowels as a full sound, while British speakers reduce it or
elide it. There are also some differences in the pronunciation of such endings as –ile, -ine.

Grammar: In BrE, a group of people is treated in the plural, in AmE – only in the singular.

Present Perfect in America can be replaced with Past Simple Tense and can use the
pluperfect in the conditional and subjunctive moods.
British people use both forms of verbs – regular and irregular, while Americans mostly
prefer the –ed form.
Americans will omit the use of 'and' between two verbs whereas British will put it.

Punctuation: Americans and British have also differences in punctuation:

1. Americans use a full stop after all abbreviations while British follow the rule that it
must be used only when the last abbreviation letter does not coincide with the last
letter of the full word.
2. British avoid using a hyphen in multiple-word adjectives, while Americans do.
3. Americans use double quotation marks (“), while the British opt for a single one (‘).
4. British people use a comma after the greeting, while Americans write a colon.

To conclude there are so many differences between these two languages and nowadays
British English has gained much from the American one. That happens because of the media
programs, films, music, so many US expressions have come into UK English too. There are
different opinions whether it is a positive or negative influence on the language, but still,
globalization and other factors will make their contribution to the changes and some of
them are noticeable right now.