Teach English in GuojiAtuo Jiedao - Chongqing

British English vs. American English American English started in 1607 when the British colonized America. Over the last 400 years the American English has diverged from the British English, though there are still many similarities, this paper is going to discuss some of the differences. The differences that will be look at are how it varies in grammar between British English and American English. In grammar, there are several subjects that are different between the British English (BrE) and American English (AmE). The British English nouns take on either the singular or plural verb forms while the American English nouns are almost always singular for formal and notional agreement usages. For example, BrE: The Bulls are a popular basketball team. AmE: The Bulls is a popular basketball team. The verb morphology, the BrE uses both irregular and regular forms, but for some words such as smell and leapt there is a strong tendency towards the irregular forms. In the AmE, the irregular forms are never or rarely used except for burnt, leapt and dreamt. In the use of tenses, BrE traditionally use the present perfect to talk about an event in the recent past using the words already, just and yet. In AmE, using these meanings can be shown with the present perfect or the simple past. For example, the BrE would use ?I?ve just arrive home.? while the AmE would use ?I just arrived home.? The verbal auxiliary, shall, is more commonly used in the BrE than in the AmE. The periphrastic future, ?be going to? is used twice as much in the AmE than in the BrE. In transitivity usage, the word ?agree? is transitive or intransitive in BrE, but usually just intransitive in AmE. For example, in BrE, ?agree a contact? while in AmE ?agree to or on a contract.? In complementation usage, some verbs can take either to + infinitive form or a gerund form. For example in BrE, with love, like, intend. In AmE with start, begin, omit, enjoy. For preposition and adverb, in AmE, the word through can mean ?up to and including? such as Monday through Friday while in the BrE, ?Monday to Friday? is used. Phrasal verbs, in the AmE forms are usually but not invariably filled out, but in the BrE form they are usually filled in. There are miscellaneous grammatical differences as well, in AmE; the word river usually comes after the name. In the BrE form the rivers it comes before. For example, in BrE, rivers are named River Thames, whereas in AmE, it?s Mississippi River. Lastly, grammar differences in word derivation and compounds. In AmE, they freely add the suffix ?s to day, night, evening, weekend, Monday, etc. to form adverbs. In BrE, the agentive ?er suffix is commonly attached to football. British English and American English though they different are the standard set for the rest of the world. There are still many other English dialects that branch off of British and American English, such as Canadian English and Australian English. All these English dialects will vary in different extents with respect to pronunciation, idioms and vocabulary, but will all have similar usages and meanings. References: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences 1. Even in vocabulary. "A British reader of Time or Newsweek would note distinctly American expressions only a few times on any page, matching the few distinctly British expressions an American reader of The Economist would note." Edward Finegan in Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-first Century. Eds Charles Albert Ferguson, Edward Finegan, Shirley Brice Heath, John R. Rickford (Cambridge University Press, 2004). p. 29. See also: David Crystal, the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language] (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 304. 2. "Standard English is essentially written, printed English, seen in the textbooks, newspapers, and periodicals of the world ? and also, these days on the WWW. It is largely identical in its global manifestation; we must allow only for the small amount of variation in vocab, grammar and spelling which make up the differences between Am, Br, Aus and other 'regional' standards." David Crystal, "The Past, Present, and Future of World English" in Andreas Gardt, Bernd-Rüdiger Hüppauf, Bernd Huppauf (eds) Globalization and the future of German (Walter de Gruyter, 2004). p. 39. 3. NB: "standard English" as used to describe written and spoken international English is a more contentious usage. "standard English: In Sociolinguistics, a much debated term for the VARIETY of English used as a communicative norm throughout the English-speaking world. The notion has become increasingly difficult to handle because of the emergence of differing national standards of usage (in vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and spelling) in areas where large numbers of people speak English as a first or second language." [sic] David Crystal, A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics (Blackwell Publishing, 2003). p. 431. 4. Kirby, Terry (2007-03-28). "Are regional dialects dying out, and should we care if they are?". The Independent 5. Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) 6. Labov, William; Sharon Ash; & Charles Boberg. (2006). Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change. Berlin/new york: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 311-016746-8. Compare with Labov, Ash, & Boberg. (1997). A national map of the regional dialects of American English. Linguistics Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania. [1]. Retrieved 16 April 2007. 7. "Canadian English." Brinton, Laurel J., and Fee, Marjery, ed. (2005). Ch. 12. in The Cambridge history of the English language. Volume VI: English in North America., Algeo, John, ed., pp. 422?440. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-521-26479-0, 9780521264792. On p. 422: "It is now generally agreed that Canadian English originated as a variant of northern American English (the speech of New england, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania)." 8. For the most part American vocabulary, phonology and syntax are used, to various extents, in Canada; therefore many prefer to refer to North American English rather than American English (Trudgill and Hannah, 2002). Nonetheless Canadian English also features many British English items and is often described as a unique blend of the two main varieties. 9. Indian English has actually more English-language speakers than the total of North American, British, Australian and New Zealand combined (Crystal, 2005). [2] Indian English speakers typically are learning multiple first languages within an English-as-a-foreign-language context, which has a decided impact on the phonological structure of Indian English. 10. See, for example, Krueger CL, Stade G, Karbiener K, Encyclopedia of British Writers: 19th and 20th Centuries Book Builders LLC Infobase Publishing ISBN 0816046700, p. 309