Try to think of your middle school life. Easy classes,
unstable friendship foundations, a more easygoing atmosphere… Remember that
foreign language course from seventh and eighth grade? Learning another
language is hard, particularly when it comes to sentence structure,
subject-verb agreement, and nitpicky things such as spelling. Now think of
learning a different dialect of your current language. Just as there are many
differences between Hebrew and Italian, there are differences between Spanish
spoken in Mexico and Spanish spoken in Spain. The same applies to the English
language as well. English spoken here in the United States is similar to
English spoken in Britain. Of course, it would only be fair to remember that
English is a wonky language to begin with, having just as many rules as exceptions
to rules. This fact applies to both British English and American English. Only
certain things like spelling and minor grammar rules are different. My hope is
that anyone who reads these will walk away with a better understanding of the
differences between American English and British English (Note: Future Word War
III blogs will mostly feature the differences in structure and vocabulary
between American English and other foreign languages, but I would eventually
like to expand that to compare two foreign languages against each other) (Other
note: Expect all Word War III blogs to be relatively long).
So, the first and most obvious difference between American
English and British English is the spelling. Commonly, words that end in “-or”
in the United States will end in “-our” in Britain. Words like “color”, “flavor”,
and “honor” would be spelled with the “-our” ending across the pond (“colour”, “flavour”,
and “honour”). Some words that end with the letters “-er” in American English are
reversed in British English. For example, the American spelling of the word “theater”
is spelled “theatre” in Britain. The same rule applies to words such as “center”
(“centre”) and “meter” (“metre”). In America, words such as “patronize” or “hypothesize”
must be spelled with an “-ize” ending while in Britain it is acceptable to
spell them the American way or as “patronise” or “hypothesise”. Many other endings
of words are different, but the ones listed and explained above are the most
common spelling differences.
There are a lot of insane and complex rules in both American
grammar and British grammar. I don’t know them all, and I wouldn’t expect
anyone reading this to know all of them either (but if you notice that I make a
mistake, please let me know in the comments). So, let’s just go over the very
basic differences. In Britain, phrases usually use present perfect tense (a
tense used to relate events happening in the past to the present, as seen in
sentences such as “he has broken his leg.” {he broke the leg in the past, but
the past action is related to the present in that his leg is still broken}). In
America, present perfect tense is used in addition to the simple past tense (a
tense used to describe any event in the past, as seen in sentences such as “I
went to my grandfather’s house.”). These differences in sentence structure
drive the major differences in grammar. Without getting into specific
differences (because this blog is quickly approaching five hundred and fifty words),
British English seems to generally be more formal than informal while American
English usually has a more relaxed structure.
These differences between the English language gives all
English speakers the ability to remain unique within themselves as language-speakers.
We can determine a person’s nationality by their speech or text patterns (ex,
the difference between “grey” and “gray”, or “you needn’t fret” and “you don’t
need to fret”) unless personal preference of spelling takes over. Besides, it
just wouldn’t be any fun if we were all speaking the same language with no
variation. To me, the fact that there can still be so many regional differences
between a language without needing to consider them different languages is
complete amazing, and I know that there are others who believe this too.
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