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British and American English

by Ro Thorpe and others (Hayford Peirce, John Stephenson, Peter Jackson, Chris Day, Martin Baldwin-Edwards, and J. Noel Chiappa)

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Between British English and American English there are numerous differences in the areas of vocabulary, spelling, and phonology. This article compares the forms of British and American speech normally studied by foreigners: the former includes the accent known as Received Pronunciation, or RP; the latter uses Midland American English, which is normally perceived to be the least marked American dialect. Actual speech by educated British and American speakers is more varied, and that of uneducated speakers still more. Grammatical and lexical differences between British and American English are, for the most part, common to all dialects, but there are many regional differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, usage and slang, some subtle, some glaring, some rendering a sentence incomprehensible to a speaker of another variant.

American and British English both diverged from a common ancestor, and the evolution of each language is tied to social and cultural factors in each land. Cultural factors can affect one's understanding and enjoyment of language; consider the effect that slang and double entendre have on humour. A joke is simply not funny if the pun upon which it is based can't be understood because the word, expression or cultural icon upon which it is based does not exist in one's variant of English. Or, a joke may be only partially understood, that is, understood on one level but not on another, as in this exchange from the Britcom Dad's Army:

Fraser: Did ya hear the story of the old empty barn? Mainwaring: Listen, everyone, Fraser's going to tell a story. Fraser: The story of the old empty barn: well, there was nothing in it!

Americans would 'get' part of the joke, which is that a barn that is empty literally has nothing in it. However, in Commonwealth English, 'there's nothing in it' also means something that is trivial, useless or of no significance.

But it is not only humour that is affected. Items of cultural relevance change the way English is expressed locally. A person can say "I was late, so I Akii-Bua'd (from John Akii-Bua, Ugandan hurdler) and be understood all over East Africa, but receive blank stares in Australia. Even if the meaning is guessed from context, the nuance is not grasped; there is no resonance of understanding. Then again, because of evolutionary divergence; people can believe that they are speaking of the same thing, or that they understand what has been said, and yet be mistaken. Take adjectives such as 'mean' and 'cheap'. Commonwealth speakers still use 'mean' to mean 'parsimonious', Americans understand this usuage, but their first use of the word 'mean' is 'unkind'. Americans use 'cheap' to mean 'stingy', but while Commonwealth speakers understand this, there is a danger that when used of a person, it can be interpreted as 'disreputable' 'immoral' (my grandmother was so cheap). The verb 'to table' a matter, as in a conference, is generally taken to mean 'to defer', in American English, but as 'to place on the table', i.e. to bring up for discussion, in Commonwealth English.

English is a flexible and quickly-evolving language; it simply absorbs and includes words and expressions for which there is no current English equivalent; these become part of the regional English. American English has hundreds of loan words acquired from its immigrants: these can eventually find their way into widespread use, (spaghetti, mañana), or they can be restricted to the areas in which immigrant populations live. So there can be variances between the English spoken in New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco. Thanks to Asian immigration, a working-class Londoner asks for a cuppa cha and receives the tea he requested. This would probably be understood in Kampala and New Delhi as well, but not necessarily in Boise, Idaho.

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