Phonetic and lexical peculiarities of the American English

6) Last but not least, there may be a marked difference in frequency characteristics. Thus, time-table which occurs in American English very rarely, yielded its place to schedule.

The trend to shorten words and to use initial abbreviations is even more pronounced than in the British variant. New coinages are incessant­ly introduced in advertisements, in the press, in everyday conversation; soon they fade out and are replaced by the newest creations.

The phrases boy friend and girl friend, now widely used everywhere, originated in the USA. So it is an Americanism in the wider meaning of the term, i.e. an Americanism "by right of birth", whereas in the above definition it was defined Americanism synchronically as lexical units peculiar to the English language as spoken in the USA. Particularly common in American English are verbs with the hanging postpositive. They say that in Hollywood you never meet a man: you meet up with him, you do not study a subject but study up on it. In British English similar constructions serve to add a new meaning.

3.1 Prepositions

There are also a few differences in preposition use including the following:

American English - on the weekend British English - at the weekend

American English - on a team British English - in a team

American English - please write me soon British English - please write to me soon

3.2 Spelling

Here are some general differences between British and American spellings:

Words ending in -or (American) -our (British) color, color, humor, humor, flavor, flavor etc.

Words ending in -ize (American) -ise (British) recognize, recognize, patronize, patronize etc.

3.3 Use of the Present Perfect

In British English the present perfect is used to express an action that has occurred in the recent past that has an effect on the present moment. For example:

I've lost my key. Can you help me look for it?

In American English the following is also possible:

I lost my key. Can you help me look for it?

In British English the above would be considered incorrect. However, both forms are generally accepted in standard American English. Other differences involving the use of the present perfect in British English and simple past in American English include already, just and yet.

British English:

I've just had lunch

I've already seen that film

Have you finished your homework yet?

American English:

I just had lunch OR I've just had lunch

I've already seen that film OR I already saw that film.

Have your finished your homework yet? OR Did you finish your homework yet?

3.4 Past Simple/Past Participles

The following verbs have two acceptable forms of the past simple/past participle in both American and British English, however, the irregular form is generally more common in British English (the first form of the two) and the regular form is more common to American English.

Burn Burnt OR burned

Dream dreamt OR dreamed

Lean leant OR leaned

Learn learnt OR learned

Smell smelt OR smelled

Spell spelt OR spelled

Spill spilt OR spilled

Spoil spoilt OR spoiled

3.5 Possession

There are two forms to express possession in English. Have or Have got

Do you have a car?

Have you got a car?

He hasn't got any friends.

He doesn't have any friends.

She has a beautiful new home.

She's got a beautiful new home.

While both forms are correct (and accepted in both British and American English), have got (have you got, he hasn't got, etc.) is generally the preferred form in British English while most speakers of American English employ the have (do you have, he doesn't have etc.)

 

3.6 The Verb Get

The past participle of the verb get is gotten in American English. Example He's gotten much better at playing tennis. British English - He's got much better at playing tennis.

4 Differences between standard British and standard American English

4.1 Lexical difference

Lexical differences of American variant highly extensive on the strength of multiple borrowing from Spanish and Indian languages, what was not in British English.

American variant                                                       British variant

Subway   «метро»   underground

the movies   «кинотеатр»             the cinema

shop     «магазин»  store

sidewalk   «тротуар»  pavement

line     «очередь»   queue

soccer               «футбол»   football

mailman   «почтальон»             postman

vacation   «каникулы»              holiday

corn    «кукуруза»  maize

fall    «осень»  autumn

Also claim attention differences in writing some words in American and British variants of language.

For instance, following:

American variant    British variant

honor     honor

traveler    traveler

plow     plough

defense    defense

jail      goal

center     centre

apologize    apologies

 

4.2 Grammatical difference

Grammatical differences of American variant consist in following:

1. In that events, when Britannia’s use Present Perfect, in Staffs can be used and Present Perfect, and Past Simple.

2. Take a shower/a bath instead of have a shower/a bath.

3. Shall is not used. In all persons is used by will.

4. Needn't (do) usually is not used. Accustomed form -don't need to (do).

5. After demand, insist, require etc should usually is NOT used. I demanded that he apologize (instead of I demanded that he should apologies in British variant).

6. to/in THE hospital instead of to/in hospital in BE.

7. on the weekend/on weekend instead of at the weekend/at weekend.

8. on a street instead of in a street.

9. Different from or than instead of different to/from

10. Write is used with to or without the pretext.

11. Past participle of "got" is "gotten"

12. To burn, to spoil and other verbs, which can be regular or irregular in the British variant, in the American variant ALWAYS regular.

13. Past Perfect, as a rule, is not used completely.

American English is currently the dominant influence on "world English" (cf. British English) largely due to the following:

1. Wealth of the U.S. economy vs. the U.K., & influences

2. Magnitude of higher education in America vs the U.K.

3. Magnitude of the publishing industry in America

4. Magnitude of global mass media and media technology influence

5. Appeal of American popular culture on language and habits

6. International political and economic position of the U.S. (cf. Kennedy)

American and British English are both variants of World English. As such, they are more similar than different, especially with "educated" or "scientific" English. Most divergence can be ascribed to differing national histories and cultural development, and the way in which the two national variants have changed correspondingly.

4.3 Punctuation

• Date writing, number/word order (never use only numbers!)

• Use of commas and periods inside quotation marks

• Business letter salutations, colons vs commas

Grammar

• His daughter was a thespian who matriculated at the state college. She came to the party with a homo sapiens! The dean said he was an extrovert. He masticated throughout the meal.

The R is a consonant, but it acts more like a vowel, because the tip of the tongue doesn't touch anywhere in the mouth. The middle T is what makes a word like meeting sound like meeting. As the most commonly used word in English is the word that is very important. Here are some very high-frequency. The words: the, these, those, they, them, there, they're, their, this, that and then. If these and those are pronounced with a D instead of a TH, it sounds like dese and dose, which is considered lower class in America.

 

5 American English is ‘very corrupting’

In 1995 His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales was reported by The Times as complaining to a British Council audience that American English is ‘very corrupting.’ Particularly, he bemoaned the fact that ‘people tend to invent all sorts of nouns and verbs and make words that shouldn’t be.’ By this time the barbarous use of bluff for a steep bank had been civilized by being adopted into the usage of the motherland, but doubtless if the Prince had lived about nine generations earlier, he would have agreed with Francis Moore that bluff was a word that shouldn’t be.

The Prince concluded: ‘We must act now to insure that English – and that, to my way of thinking, means English – maintains its position as the world language well into the next century." His concern seems to be as much commercial as merely ethnocentrically aesthetic, the English language being one of England’s most popular exports, along with gossip about the escapades of the Royals. The Prince, after all, was only doing his bit to keep the English pecker up.

One way Americans are ruining English is by changing it. Many of us, like Francis Moore and Prince Charles, regard what is foreign to us as barbarous and corrupt. We owe the term barbarous to the Greeks; they pitied the poor foreigner who could only stammer ‘bar-bar’  and hence was a ‘barbaros’. Barbarians are simply those who do not talk as we do, whether they are outsiders, Yanks or fellow countrymen and countrywomen whose style we do not admire.

In England, on the other hand, a perception that America is ruining the language pervades the discourse of the chattering classes. Indeed, a fair number of British intellectuals regard ‘new’,  ‘distasteful’, and ‘American’ as synonymous. A knowledgeable British author complained about the supposedly American pronunciation controversy and was surprised to hear that the antepenult accent is unknown in the States, being a recent British innovation. The assumption is that anything new is American and thus objectionable on double grounds.

Change in language is, however, inevitable, just as it is in all other aspects of reality. Particular changes will be, in the eyes of one observer or another, improvements or degenerations. But judgements of what is beautiful or ugly, valuable or useless, barbarous or elegant, corrupting or improving are highly personal idiosyncratic ones.

There are no objective criteria for judging worth in language, no linguistic Tables of the Law, no archetypical authority called ‘The Dictionary’, though there are wannabe authoritarians aplenty.

A language - or anything else that does not change - is dead

On the other hand, no one is required to like all or any particular changes. It is, in the great Anglo-American tradition, our God-given right to have our own opinions and to take it or leave it when it come to style in couture, diet, entertainment, religion and language.

British and American started to become different when English speakers first set foot on American soil because the colonists found new things to talk about and also because they ceased to talk regularly with the people back home. The colonists changed English in their own unique way, but at the same time speakers in England were changing the language too, only in a different way from that of the colonists. As a result, over time the two varieties became increasingly different, not so radically different that they amounted to different languages, as Italian and French had become a millennium earlier, but different enough to notice.

The differences between American and British are not due to Americans changing from a British standard. American is not corrupt British plus barbarisms. Rather, both American and British evolved in different ways from a common sixteenth-century ancestral standard. Present-day British is no closer to that earlier form than present-day American is. Indeed, in some ways present-day American is more conservative, that is, closer to the common original standard than is present-day British.

So is America ruining the English language? Certainly, if you believe that extending the language to new uses and new speakers ruins it. Certainly, if you believe that change is ruin.

There are thousands of differences in detail between British and American English, and occasionally they crowd together enough to make some difficulty. If you read that a man, having trouble with his lorry, got out his spanner and lifted the bonnet to see what was the matter, you might not realize that the driver of the truck had taken out his wrench and lifted the hood. It is amusing to play with such differences, but the theory that the American language is now essentially different from English does not hold up. It is often very difficult to decide whether a book was written by an American or an English man. Even in speech it would be hard to prove that national differences are greater than some local differences in either country. On the whole, it now seems probable that the language habits of the two countries will grow more, rather than less, alike, although some differences will undoubtedly remain and others may develop.

Studying foreign languages is important for everybody. People learn foreign languages from various reasons. They want to travel abroad a lot, they want to read foreign materials (books, newspaper, magazines..). Many people need knowledge of foreign languages for their work, for example translators, interprets airport staff, shop assistants, waiters etc. People working in so called tourist industry or in export section of a firm can’t work without knowing foreign languages. The students make the largest group of people who learn foreign languages.

Most students in the world study English. It is one of the compulsory subjects at school all over the world. English is the most widely spread language. It’s the mother tongue for people in the English speaking countries.

There are five main types of English which differ in pronunciation, spelling and vocabulary but the differences are not so crucial. There are: British English, American English, Australian English, Indian English and African English.

We met with some differences between British (so called “King’s “) English and American English. These two versions of English are the results of the different historical development of England and America.

We must not begin to mix the two, but to concentrate on learning either British or American English.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resources

1. http://www.alleng.ru/engl-top/603.htm
2. http://www.referat.ru/referats/view/14115
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_English
4. http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/words/be-ae.htm
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences