British vs American English | One Language, Two Accents | 4 Important Differences

- Hello everyone.

Today we're gonna compare British English

to American English

by looking at their four core differences,

accent, spelling, vocabulary and grammar.

Personally, I believe that vocabulary and grammar

are the most fun parts.

So make sure to watch this video until the very end.

(computer keys clicking)

So the first part we're gonna talk about

is of course, accents.

You probably already know that British accent

and American accent are extremely different.

If you watch a movie,

most of the time you can tell which accent it is.

Sometimes it's that obvious.

When we talk about accents as English learners,

we really have to remember one thing.

It is important to pick one accent and stick to it.

It doesn't sound good if you speak British English

and American English just in one sentence.

Some of the words you say are clearly British

and you pronounce them with a really good British accent,

but some of them are really American.

So my advice to you is just speak one accent

and try to really work towards it.

Personally, I picked American accent

because for me it's way easier than British English.

I think a lot of people agree that

British accent is extremely difficult.

There are a lot of sounds that are so complicated

and a lot of learners from a lot of different countries

are just not used to this kind of sounds.

That's why I picked American English.

The second reason for choosing American English

is that nowadays we're just bombarded

with all this information from the United States,

like movies, TV shows.

Everything we watch is mostly in American English.

So it means that it's just gonna be easier for you

and for me to improve our American accent.

And of course, here I would like to recommend the book

that I always talk about,

"How to Master the American Accent."

I genuinely love this book

because it once helped me improve my accent.

But actually sometimes I refer to this book

like once a month if I forget anything

or if I just need to brush up on my knowledge

of the American accent.

So now let's actually talk about the difference.

And the most obvious difference

for a lot of English learners is that in America

people always say the letter R and it is true,

but now a quick history lesson.

The differences between American and British accents

actually took place after the first settlers moved

to the United States when the America was first discovered.

Back then in Britain, all people talked using

a lot of R's in their speech.

So back then like a lot of years ago in Britain

people actually pronounced all the R sounds

and this kind of speech is actually called rhotic speech.

It's when you pronounce all the R's.

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom,

the middle classes decided to distinguish themselves

from the common masses by just dropping the R sounds

or by making them softer.

And that's how day by day British people

just started dropping their R's.

And now as you already know in Britain most people,

not all people obviously, but most British speakers

don't pronounce the letter R.

And to clearly illustrate this example

I'm gonna try to pronounce some words for you

and try to make them as British as possible

and of course, as American as possible.

Water,

water,

car,

car,

bear,

bear,

New York,

New York,

start,

start.

So this was just a rough example of how American English

is different from British English in terms of pronouncing

your R's or dropping your R's.

So probably as you can hear the British accent is like,

sounds to me more royal.

So of course, I can talk about American accent for hours

and that is why if you want like a more detailed lesson

you can check my lessons right here.

I have a whole playlist dedicated to training,

improving your accent

and making it sound as American as possible.

Now, let's compare the difference in accents

from these two iconic British and American movies.

- The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plaine.

- Didn't I say that?

- No Eliza you didn't say that,

you didn't even say that.

- Well, it was really sweet

and like the most romantic thing ever.

- Hey, well, here's to Phoebe

whose found the greatest guy in the world, to Phoebe and...

- And now let's talk about the second part

which is spelling differences.

While writing a text you may have found that

your text editor marked a word as incorrect.

You know like sometimes the word is highlighted

or there is like this cursive line under the word.

But then you check in the dictionary

and the word is actually correct.

Congratulations, this is where the differences in spelling

in British and American English are most obvious.

So, now let's take a quick look at the four most common

spelling differences in American and British English.

So the first one is O-U-R endings.

These are British.

So this is how we spell the words humour, colour,

behaviour in British English with O-U-R.

But in American English it's a little bit easier I guess,

it's just O-R so we drop the U.

We don't need it because we don't really pronounce it.

I mean, we don't pronounce it at all

so why would we need it?

That's why we just say humor, color, behavior.

The pronunciation is the same,

the difference is that just how we spell these words.

The next ending is gonna be T-R-E.

T-R-E is British like theatre, centre

and T-E-R is gonna be American, theater, center.

The next ending is gonna be I-S-E or Y-S-E.

So with the letter S is gonna be British

like specialise, localise, analyse.

And for American English is just gonna be I-Z-S

or Y-Z-S, analyze,

localize, specialize.

And the last spelling difference is gonna be

about E-L

or E-LL.

E-LL is British, like cancelled, marvellous.

E-L is American.

Like you can spell traveled with one L, canceled with one L

and marvelous with one L as well.

I advise you to use one option, right?

Just use American or British English.

Only one of them, don't mix them together

especially in your essays.

Guys, it's gonna look so ugly

if like half of the words you use

is gonna be with British English,

half of the words are gonna be American English

is just people know about these differences.

Native speakers they do know that you should spell

canceled with one L if it's American English

or localized with a Z if it's American English as well.

So please change the keyboard settings

on your computer to American English

or to British English and just stick to it.

And now let's talk about the third difference.

The difference in vocabulary,

this is actually my favorite part

because I love everything connected to words,

phrases, things like that.

And it's actually the easiest part.

So, you just have to memorize words, that's all,

it's actually pretty easy.

And it's also extremely interesting.

So in American English and in British English

people just use different words to refer to the same thing.

And I made a worksheet for you again,

because I think it's a really good reason

and it's a really good topic.

You can access the worksheet

via the link in the description to this video.

And when you go on that website you can notice that

the price is gonna be two plus dollars.

It means that you don't necessarily have to pay $2.

$2 it's just the minimum price.

You can pay five, you can pay three,

it doesn't make a difference.

Just the minimum price is $2.

I don't know, I just love this worksheet

and how it turned out.

I made everything myself from scratch

so it's just a really good resource.

So in this worksheet you can find 32 examples

but now I'm still gonna just teach you a couple of them

from this worksheet.

For example, in British English people say a flat,

to live in a flat.

But in America people say apartment,

yeah, this is my apartment, I live in an apartment.

Instead of saying lift, people in America say elevator,

instead of saying chips, people in America say fries.

Instead of saying holidays, people say vacations.

Trousers are gonna be pants in America

and a film is gonna be a movie.

You take out trash or garbage in American English

and not rubbish.

And when you wanna go run or workout

you put on sneakers and not trainers in America.

And the last example is gonna be sweets versus candies,

in American English people love eating candy and not sweets.

And now let's take a quick look at money in British

and American English.

The topic of money can get a little bit complicated

especially when we travel from like the United States

to the United Kingdom.

It can get a bit complicated

especially how sometimes people call

their currency.

Like it's not just dollars or it's not just pounds

there is way more to that.

The colloquial term for the British pound is quid,

this word is really important.

Even if you wanna focus your attention

on American English you should still know the word quid.

Instead of saying five pounds

people might just say five quid.

And in the United States dollars

are really often called bucks.

So instead of saying $10

you can say 10 bucks.

But unlike the British who call coins

smaller than one pound a pence,

in America people call them cents, but they go even further.

They often use the word nickel for 5 cents,

dime for 10 cents and a quarter for 25 cents.

And now let's about the fourth difference,

the difference in grammar.

So first let's talk about collective nouns.

These are just words like a team, family,

police, choir,

band, committee,

things like that.

So in British English collective nouns

are usually singular or plural,

but mostly they are plural pointing to the fact that

there are a lot of people in this group

like a band consists of some people, right?

Family as well, committee there are people there.

One, two, three, four, five people there.

So in British English it's way more common to say

my family are coming over tonight

so we are using are because family is plural.

But in American English collective nouns

are usually singular

so people will always say, my family is coming over tonight.

But one exception is police.

I didn't know why in America people always use police

as a plural noun.

Like, the police are all over the city today.

The police are, people rarely say the police is,

I personally never heard this expression.

So I think it's gonna be all for today's video.

Just now I taught you four core differences

between American and British English.

Of course, there are way more differences

and each sector like in grammar

there are way more differences and vocabulary

there are also more words.

So if you want to I can make part two of this video

really soon.

So don't forget to check out my worksheets.

Don't forget to subscribe, like this video,

as usual and follow me on Instagram.

Check out my Patreon page and see you next time.

Bye.

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