Teach English in Huaming Jiedao - Tianjin

British english (vs) American EnglishEnglish is spoken all over the world and depending on where you are, it has many dialects. The spread of english has its roots in British history. Through trade and colonization, The British Empire had control of almost a quarter of the world by the early 1900's. The empire dwindled by the end of World War II, but the language remains in those parts of the world formally under British rule as either a primary language or a second language. One of Britain's colonies was the Americas which was founded in 1607 in a town called Jamestown. After decades of British rule and taxes, the American colonists had enough of Britain and declared its independence in 1776 and became the united states of America. As part of its new found independence, a school teacher named Noah Webster wrote the American Dictionary as well as a reader, grammar book and a speller, to be taught in schools. Noah believed that a new country needed a new linguistic identity to separate the American people from their former rulers. Some of the changes included spellings, words such as favourite were now favorite. Colour changed to color as were other words with the ou combination became simplified to only an 'o'. Over the years, more and more grammatical changes and speaking tendencies further separated our dialect from the British. Soon dialects would sprout up all over America. The dialects are influenced by immigrants, such as the Dutch and the Germans, which cause a melting of accents, words and idioms into what we call American english today. Like any other country, we have accents in different regions, but we share common words and phrases. Grammatically there are many differences in how British english and American english are. I can only touch on a few, as explaining them all would be quite lengthy. One difference is how America would take an entity, such as a corporation, sports team, or a country and speak of it as a singular pronoun, although there are several individuals in that entity. For example, a British speaker would say, ? japan are the champions of the Woman's World Cup!? Whereas an American speaker would say, ? Japan is the champion of the Woman's World Cup!? The British recognize Japan as a plural pronoun as there were many people involved, but the Americans view Japan as a single being. Another difference in grammar is the usage of irregular verbs. Americans will say 'dreamed' or 'drempt', as will the British, and 'dwelt' and 'knelt' are used in both, but 'dwelled' and 'kneeled' are not common in Britain. A British man may have learnt that he smelt like the beer he spilled on himself at the pub, but an American will only have learned that he smelled of beer that he spilled on himself at the bar. The past participle gotten is not used in Britain, so the pissed man at the pub would of got a taxi to his flat. His American equivalent that got drunk at the bar would of gotten a taxi to his apartment. Other words that change are; Americans forget to take out the garbage cans while British have forgotten to put out the rubbish bins. Some words used in Britain may alarm or confuse someone from America and vise versa. Some common words and their counterparts include football, soccer in the US, but football everywhere else in the world. What the Americans call football is called American Football everywhere but in America. A bill refers to paper money or an invoice in the US, but only refers to an invoice in the UK and not to currency. In the UK, a biscuit isn't a flaky, buttery breakfast bread, but actually a scone, or as the Americans call it, a cookie! A rubber in the UK isn't a condom as it is in the US, but an eraser! Pants in the US refer to trousers in the UK while pants in the UK refer to underwear in the US. In the US, your car has a hood, windshield and a trunk and its driven on a highway. In the UK, a car has a bonnet, a wind screen, and a boot while its driven on a motorway. A truck may be in idle in a parking lot waiting to get some gas, but a Lorry in the UK would be ticking over in a car park waiting for petrol. American sedans, station wagons, overpasses, rural roads and on/off ramps are called saloons, estate cars, flyovers, B roads and slip roads in the UK. The differences in vocabulary and grammar are enough to write a book as big as a whole set of encyclopedias. Even keeping this short essay short was a challenge and I had to leave a lot of material out! In only a couple of hundred years, American english has developed into its own language and only the future will show just how different it will become from its original dialect. I plan on continuing to study this subject for I am already fascinated by British english, so that should be quite a joy for me.