American English Versus British English | Main Differences: Pronunciation, Grammar and Vocabulary

Hello everyone!

Today we’ll be talking about American English versus British English.

We’re going to discuss 5 main differences: 1) Pronunciation Differences

2) Spelling Differences 3) Differences between Collective nouns

4) Vocabulary Differences 5) Differences between Past tenses

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Pronunciation Differences 1) The first part we gonna talk about is,

of course, Pronunciation You probably know that British people and

American people pronounce things in extremely different ways

In Britain most people don’t pronounce the R sound.

The letter R is only pronounced when followed by a vowel,

like in the word RED or RISK And in the United States and Canada people

always pronounce the R sound.

вставка с квадратиками видео (или с переводчика)

either the R sound is in the middle or at the end of the word

park – park car – car

stare – stare care – care

fair - fair Well, in British English the R sound is dropped

if it goes at the end of the word, or after a vowel sound.

Another important thing is – the sound T in American English becomes D

if it goes between two vowels: Let’s look at the examples and compare American

accent to British accent: water – water

city – city potato - potato

reality – reality letter – letter

creative – creative

As you can hear, British English sounds completely different.

I love British accent, but American one is much easier for me

and I really enjoy the way it sounds it’s like music for my ears

And now let’s dive in the second part which is

2) Spelling Differences

You’ve probably worked with Microsoft Office it’s a program for creating documents

and if you write a word colour , the word gets underlined with a red line

like there is a spelling mistake, but this is not the case.

the reason is MS Office has American Dictionary as default.

And it’s extremely important to know spelling differences between American and

British English, and in this part I wanna teach you some of

them

In British English, for example, some words have extra letters

like in words Favor-favour

color-colour (Br) neighbor – neighbour

In American variant, we drop the u sound, because we don’t pronounce it

In American English we write verbs like analyze, organize, realize with ze (zi

i) at the end, and in British English it will be with se

(es i) like analyse, organise, realise

The next difference is -tre and –ter at the end of the words like

centre- center theatre -theather

so tre is American, and ter is British

The next part is 3) Differences between Collective nouns

In British English collective nouns can be either singular or plural

but in the most cases they are plural because when we are talking about a team,

a family, a band we mean a group of people

So in British English people say: My family are going to London tomorrow.

We’re using ARE because the noun family is plural.

But in American English collective nouns such as a family, a team, a band

is usually singular and it’s very common to say

My family is going to London tomorrow.

But there is one exception Police is always used as a plural noun in

American English So they always say “police are”

for example: The police are going to be here any second.

even when native speakers mean police as an organization,

as a department which is responsible for protecting people,

they never say Police is or a police That’s grammatically incorrect

Now let’s talk about 4) Vocabulary Differences

If you don’t know all the words and phrases with different meanings

you can find yourself in an embarrassing situation.

When I started to study English, I was focused on British one mostly,

and One day I had a text conversation with my

pen-pal from the United States and he sent me a message

where he wrote “I was pissed off because my mother took away my laptop

and told me not to play computer games anymore” And I was like “Oh my goodness, what does

he mean” I didn’t know what to say

because I opened Cambridge Dictionary and found this word

And the definition of the verb “pissed” was ‘drunk

And I didn’t really understand why is he drunk?

how come? he is only 16.

And I asked him Do you mean you drank much alcohol?

And he was like: What?

What alcohol?

And after a while, he explained to me that to be pissed off in American English means

to be annoyed, to be irritated And there are so many things

that have different meaning in American and British English

and we need to learn them because these differences are incredibly important

Here’s another example I got a flat.

In Great Britain a flat is a set of rooms for living in

that are part of a larger building.

And for a Brit that phrase has a positive meaning, right?

And in American English a "flat" means a flat tire, a tire without air inside:

When we're talking about cars and driving, a tire that the air has come out of.

So in American English the phrase I got a flat has a negative meaning.

Also British people can use flat as an adjective when they’re talking about the batteries

a flat battery is a battery with no electrical power left in it

Whereas in the US people say: a dead battery

Now let’s have a look at some words that have different names

in American and British English

American British subway underground

cell phone mobile phone elevator lift

apartment flat closet wardrobe

diaper nappy cookie biscuit

sneakers trainers eggplant aubergine

pacifier dummy French fries chips

sprinkles (for ice cream) - hundreds and thousands broil - grill

In American English to broil means to cook something under a very hot surface

in a cooker.

And in British English this thing called to grill

And cooking something over fire or hot coals, with the heat coming from directly above or

below the food The American would say, for example, broil

the steak for five minutes.

and British people would say Grill the steak for five minutes.

And now let’s talk about 5) Differences between Past tenses

There are also grammar differences with past forms of irregular verbs

in American and British English The past tense of learn in American English

is learned.

And in British English two variants can be used – either learned or learnt.

You can also make a choice - dreamed or dreamt, burned or burnt.

In American English the –ed endings are common

and the Brits tend to use the -t ending.

In American English the past participle form has

the –en ending for some irregular verbs.

For example, an American might say, “I’ve never gotten that opportunity.”

whereas a Brit would say, “I’ve never got that opportunity”

And let’s mind the pronunciation here, let’s say it with the British accent:

“I’ve never got that opportunity” Americans use both got and gotten in the past

participle.

Brits only use got.

Don’t worry about these small differences It’s not that important because

People in both countries can easily understand you,

if you say either learned or learnt, got or gotten.

And now let’s talk about some grammar aspects If you’re gonna go to the United States

please don’t forget that In America people don’t use tag questions

at all.

It’s nice weather, isn’t it?

This phrase is good for the British, and if you say this phrase in America it’s

gonna be kind of weird Americans never speak like this

It’s normal to say for Brits “Let’s have a picnic, shall we?”

But did you know that Americans never use "Shall we?" as a

tag question.

Sometimes Americans do use "right?" at the end of a sentence

but "right" is not so frequently used in the UK.

So, I’ve told you 5 important differences between American and British English.

It’s obvious that there’re more differences in terms of vocabulary and grammar

but I think it’s gonna be too much for one lesson.

Well that’s it for today I hope you enjoyed this video

And now I have a question for you: What is a new information you've learned in

today's lesson?

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