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Which is correct?
England has won the cup.
England have won the cup.
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AMERICAN ENGLISH & BRITISH ENGLISH
CONTRASTS AND SIMILARITIES
BY IRMA SHERYL CRESPO
DEFINITIONS
GRAMMAR – the study of morphology
and syntax
MORPHOLOGY – word formation;
deals with morphemes
SYNTAX – sentence construction;
involves words, phrases, clauses and
sentences
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SPELLING
-or/-our: honor (AmE) / honour (BrE)
-er/-re: center (AmE) / centre (BrE)
-log/-logue: dialog (AmE) / dialogue (BrE)
z
-ense/-ence: license (AmE) / licence (BrE)
-ize/-ise: organize (AmE) / organise (BrE)
-tion/-xion: inflection (AmE) / inflexion (BrE)
e/oe & ae: fetus (AmE) / foetus (BrE)
gynecology (AmE) / gynaecology (BrE)
SPELLING
For verbs ending in –ed and –ing :
l/ll: traveled, traveling (AmE)
travelled, travelling (BrE)
Long words shortened:
fulfill (AmE) , fulfil (BrE)
skillful (AmE) , skilful (BrE)
willful (AmE) , wilful (BrE)
Both AmE and BrE spell complexion with
–xion .
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SEMANTICS
vacation/holiday
AmE: “go on vacation”, Happy Holidays, Holiday Season
BrE: “go on holiday”, holiday cottages
mail/post
AmE: The letters would be in the mail this evening.
BrE: The letters would be in the post this evening.
AmE and BrE: the same meaning for e-mail
valve/tube
AmE: radio sets have tubes
BrE: radio sets have valves
AmE and BrE: television sets have tubes
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STRUCTURE
Verb Forms
Past Tense and Participles
[d] or [t] after voiced consonants
AmE: learned, learned; smelled, smelled; spelled, spelled
BrE: learnt, learnt; smelt, smelt; spelt, spelt
[i] and [d] or [e] and [t]
AmE: dreamed, dreamed; kneeled, kneeled
BrE: dreamt, dreamt; knelt, knelt
Other forms
AmE: dove, dived; proved, proven; got, got/gotten
BrE: dived, dived; proved, proved/proven; got, got
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Subject/Verb Agreement
Collective Nouns
AmE: The government has decided.
BrE: The government have decided.
AmE and BrE: staff and police take plural agreement
Pronouns pertaining to collective nouns
AmE: The team has a lot of confidence in their players.
BrE: The team have a lot of confidence in their players.
The generic pronoun, one
AmE: One must be careful about his investments.
BrE: One must be careful about one’s investments.
(AmE is moving towards the BrE form for political
correctness.)
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Determiners
a and an
AmE and BrE: The a is used before a consonant.
The an is used before a vowel.
a bottle , an apple
the
AmE: My son is at the university. / Das is in the hospital.
BrE: My son is at university. / Das is in hospital
AmE: in the fall
BrE: in (the) autumn
The Modal Shall Not
AmE: shall not (formal)
BrE: shan’t
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CONCLUSION
The features presented are just a few of the
predictable comparisons of American English and
British English.
American English may find its roots in British
English but when Americans acquired
independence, history bestowed a place of its own.
John Witherspoon, a Scottish - born American
statesman, confirms this autonomy in 1781,
“ Americanisms…different from the use of the
same terms or phrases, or the construction of similar
sentences, in Great Britain.”
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Which is American? Which is British?
England has won the cup.
England have won the cup.
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References
Biber, Douglas; Conrad, Susan; Leech, Geoffrey 2002. Longman Student
Grammar of Spoken and Written English, Harlow: Pearson Education
Limited.
Biber, Douglas; Conrad, Susan; Finegan, Edward; Johansson, Stig; Leech,
Geoffrey 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, Harlow:
Pearson Education Limited.
Hundt, Marianne 1998. New Zealand English Grammar:Fact or Fiction,
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Quirk, Randolph; Greenbaum, Sidney; Leech, Geoffrey; Svartvik 1985. A
Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language , London/New York:
Longman Group Limited.
Tottie, Gunnel 2002. An Introduction to American English,Malden/Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers Inc.
Tsardanelis, Georgios; Wong, Wai Yi Peggy 2001.Language Files, Ohio: The
Ohio State University.
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THE END
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