Peculiarities of British and American variants in the English Language

Greetings

Holiday greetings

When Christmas is explicitly mentioned in a greeting, the universal phrasing in North America is Merry Christmas. In the UK, Happy Christmas is also heard. It is increasingly common for Americans to say Happy Holidays, referring to all winter holidays (Christmas, Yule, New Year's Day, Hanukkah, Diwali, St. Lucia Day and Kwanzaa) while avoiding any specific religious reference, though this is rarely, if ever, heard in the UK. Season's Greetings is a less common phrase in both America and Britain.

Idiosyncratic differences

Figures of speech

Both BrE and AmE use the expression "I couldn't care less" to mean the speaker does not care at all. Speakers of AmE sometimes state this as "I could care less", literally meaning precisely the opposite. Intonation no longer reflects the originally sarcastic nature of this variant, which is not idiomatic in BrE.

In both areas, saying, "I don't mind" often means, "I'm not annoyed" (for example, by someone's smoking), while "I don't care" often means, "The matter is trivial or boring". However, in answering a question like "Tea or coffee?", if either alternative is equally acceptable, an American may answer, "I don't care", while a British person may answer, "I don't mind". Either sounds odd to the other.

In BrE, the phrase I can't be arsed (to do something) is a vulgar equivalent to the British or American I can't be bothered (to do it). To non-BrE speakers this may be confused with the Southern English pronunciation of I can't be asked (to do that thing), which sounds either defiantly rude or nonsensical.

Old BrE often uses the exclamation "No fear!" where current AmE has "No way!" An example from Dorothy L. Sayers:

Q.: Wilt thou be baptized in this faith?

A.: No fear!

-- from A Catechism for Pre- and Post-Christian Anglicans

This usage may confuse users of AmE, who are likely to interpret and even use "No fear!" as enthusiastic willingness to move forward.

Equivalent Idioms

A number of English idioms that have essentially the same meaning show lexical differences between the British and the American version; for instance:

British English American English

not touch something with a bargepole not touch something with a ten-foot pole

sweep under the carpet sweep under the rug

touch wood knock on wood

see the wood for the trees see the forest for the trees

throw a spanner (in the works) throw a (monkey) wrench (in the works)

skeleton in the cupboard skeleton in the closet

a home from home a home away from home

blow one's trumpet blow (or toot) one's horn

a drop in the ocean a drop in the bucket

storm in a teacup tempest in a teapot

flogging a dead horse beating a dead horse

haven't (got) a clue don't have a clue or have no clue

a new lease of life a new lease on life

if the cap fits (wear it) if the shoe fits (wear it)

lie of the land lay of the land

In some cases, the "American" variant is also used in BrE, or vice versa.

Titles and headlines

Sometimes, the words in titles of publications, newspaper headlines, as well as chapter and section headings are capitalized in the same manner as in normal sentences. That is, only the first letter of the first word is capitalized, along with proper nouns.

However, publishers sometimes require additional words in titles and headlines to have the initial capital, for added emphasis, as it is often perceived as appearing more professional. In AmE, this is common in titles, but less so in newspaper headlines. The exact rules differ between publishers and are often ambiguous; a typical approach is to capitalize all words other than short articles, prepositions, and conjunctions. This should probably be regarded as a common stylistic difference, rather than a linguistic difference, as neither form would be considered incorrect or unusual in either the UK or the US. Many British tabloid newspapers (such as The Sun, The Daily Sport, News of the World) use fully capitalized headlines for impact, as opposed to readability (for example, BERLIN WALL FALLS or BIRD FLU PANIC). On the other hand, the broadsheets (such as The Guardian, The Times, and The Independent) usually follow the sentence style of having only the first letter of the first word capitalized.

Conclusion

In the early part of the seventeenth century English settlers began to bring their language to America and another series of changes began to take place.

The settlers borrowed words from Indian languages for such strange trees as the hickory and persimmon, such unfamiliar animals as raccoons and woodchucks. Later they borrowed other words from settlers from other countries - for instance, chowder and prairie from the French, scow and sleigh from the Dutch. They made new combinations of English words, such as backwoods and bullfrog, or gave old English words entirely new meanings, such as lumber (which in British English means approximately junk) and corn (which in British means any grain, especially wheat). Some of the new terms were needed, because there were new and un-English things to talk about. Others can be explained only on the general theory that languages are always changing, and American English is no exception.

Aside from the new vocabulary, differences in pronunciation, in grammatical construction, and especially in intonation developed. If the colonization had taken place a few centuries earlier, American might have become as different from English as French is from Italian. But the settlement occurred after the invention of printing, and continued through a period when the idea of educating everybody was making rapid progress. For a long time most of the books read in America came from England, and a surprising number of Americans read those books, in or out of school. Moreover, most of the colonists seem to have felt strong ties with England. In this they were unlike their Anglo- Saxon ancestors, who apparently made a clean break with their continental homes.

A good many Englishmen and some Americans used to condemn every difference that did develop, and as recently as a generation ago it was not unusual to hear all “Americanisms” condemned, even in America. It is now generally recognized in this country that we are not bound to the Queen's English, but have a full right to work out our own habits. Even a good many of the English now concede this, though some of them object strongly to the fact that Americanisms are now having an influence on British usage.

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.

It also seems probable that there will be narrow-minded and snobbish people in both countries for some time to come. But generally speaking, anybody who learns to speak and write the standard English of his own country, and to regard that of the other country as a legitimate variety with certain interesting differences, will have little trouble wherever he goes.

Having studied the main peculiarities of British and American variants in the English Language we came to the conclusion that exist the following differences:

Lexical differences

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 honour

traveler traveller

plow plough

defense defence

jail gaol

center centre

apologize apologise

Grammatical differences

Grammatical differences of American variant consist in following:

1. In that events, when Britainians use Present Perfect, in Staffs can beused 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 BrE.

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.

I. English is the national language of England proper, the USA, Australia and some provinces of Canada. It was also at different times imposed on the inhabitants of the former and present British colonies and protectorates as well as other Britain- and US-dominated territories, where the population has always stuck to its own mother tongue.

II. British English, American English and Australian English are variants of the same language, because they serve all spheres of verbal communication. Their structural peculiarities, especially morphology, syntax and word-formation, as well as their word-stock and phonetic system are essentially the same. American and Australian standards are slight modifications of the norms accepted in the British Isles. The status of Canadian English `has not yet been established.

III. The main lexical differences between the variants are caused by the lack of equivalent lexical units in one of them, divergences in the semantic structures of polysemantic words and peculiarities of usage of some words on different territories.

IV. The British local dialects can be traced back to Old English dialects. Numerous and distinct, they are characterized by phonemic and structural peculiarities. The local dialects are being gradually replaced by regional variants of the literary language, i. e. by a literary standard with a proportion of local dialect features.

V. The so-called local dialects in the British Isles and in the USA are used only by the rural population and only for the purposes of oral communication. In both variants local distinctions are more marked in pronunciation, less conspicuous in vocabulary and insignificant in grammar.

VI. Local variations in the USA are relatively small. What is called by tradition American dialects is closer in nature to regional variants of the national literary language.

Bibliography

1. Abbot E.A. A Shakespearian Grammar. Ld., 1881.

2. Barber Ch. Linguistic Change in Present-day English. Ld., 1958.

3. Bartlett, John R. (1848). Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded As Peculiar to the United States. New York: Bartlett and Welford.

4. Bjцrkman E. Scandinavian Loan-Words in Middle English. Halle, 1900-1902.

5. Brook G.L. A history of the English Language. Ld., 1958.

6. Curme G.O. The development of verbal Compounds in Germanic. “Beitrage zur Geshichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur”. V.39. 1904.

7. Dobson E.J. English Pronunciation 1400-1600. Oxford, 1957.

8. Emerson O.F. A Middle English Reader. Ld., 1915.

9. Ferguson, Charles A.; & Heath, Shirley Brice (Eds.). (1981). Language in the USA. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

10. Finegan, Edward. (2004). American English and its distinctiveness. In E. Finegan & J.R. Rickford (Eds.), Language in the USA: Themes for the twenty-first century (pp. 18-38). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

11. Finegan, Edward; & Rickford, John R. (Eds.). (2004). Language in the USA: Themes for the twenty-first century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

12. Frazer, Timothy (Ed.). (1993). Heartland English. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

13. Garner, Bryan A. (2003). Garner's Modern American Usage. New York: Oxford University Press.

14. Glowka, Wayne; & Lance, Donald (Eds.). (1993). Language variation in North American English. New York: Modern Language Association.

15. Jespersen, Otto. A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. Copenhagen, 1942. Part VI.

16. Kellner L. Historical Outlines of English Syntax. Ld., 1882.

17. Kenyon, John S. (1950). American pronunciation (10th ed.). Ann Arbor: George Wahr.

18. Kortmann, Bernd; Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Mesthrie, Rajend; & Upton, Clive (Eds.). (2004). A handbook of varieties of English: Morphology and syntax (Vol. 2). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

19. MacNeil, Robert; & Cran, William. (2005). Do you speak American?: A companion to the PBS television series. New York: Nan A. Talese, Doubleday.

20. Marchand H. The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation. Wiesbaden, 1960.

21. Mathews, Mitford M. (ed.) (1951). A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

22. McCue G.S. A Graphic History of English Stressed Vowels. Denver (Col.), Swallow, 1958.

23. McKnight G.H. Modern English in the Making. New York - London, 1928.

24. Mencken, H.L. (1936, repr. 1977). The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (4th edition). New York: Knopf. (1921 edition online: www.bartleby.com/185/)

25. Mincoff M. English Historical grammar. Sofia, 1967

26. Mustanoya T.F. A Middle English Syntax. Helsinki, 1960.

27. Nist J.A Structural History of English. New York, 1966.

28. Partridge E. The World of Words. Ld., 1938.

29. Schlauch, Margaret. The English Language in Modern Times. Warszawa, 1965.

30. Schneider, Edgar (Ed.). (1996). Focus on the USA. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

31. Schneider, Edgar W.; Kortmann, Bernd; Burridge, Kate; Mesthrie, Rajend; & Upton, Clive (Eds.). (2004). A handbook of varieties of English: Phonology (Vol. 1). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

32. Simpson, John (ed.) (1989). Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

33. Thomas, Erik R. (2001). An acoustic analysis of vowel variation in New World English. Publication of American Dialect Society (No. 85). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

34. Thompson, Charles K. (1958). An introduction to the phonetics of American English (2nd ed.). New York: The Ronald Press Co.

35. Wardale E.E. An Introduction to Middle English grammar. Ld., 1937.

36. Webster's Third New International Dictionary of Ihe English Language. Springfield, Mass.. 1961.

37. Wolfram, Walt; & Schilling-Estes, Natalie. (2005). American English: Dialects and variation. 2nd Edition. Malden, MA: Basil Blackwell.

38. www. wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences

39. www.esl.about.com/od/toeflieltscambridge/a/dif_ambrit.htm

40. www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=aeroplane&searchmode=none

41. www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aeroplane

42. www.onestopenglish.com/grammar/grammar-reference/american-english-vs-british-english/differences-in-american-and-british-english-grammar-article/152820.article

43. www.us2uk.tripod.com/

44. www.uta.fi/FAST/US1/REF/usgbdiff.html

45. www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/questions/americanbritish.html

46. www.xomba.com/the_differences_between_american_and_british_english

47. www2.gsu.edu/~wwwesl/egw/jones/differences.htm

48. Wyld H. C.A History of Modern Colloquial English. Oxford, 1936.

49. Гинзбург Р.С., Хидеккель С.С., Князева Г.Ю., Санкин А.А., Лексикология современного английского языка (на англ. яз.) М., 1968.

50. Ильиш Б.А. История английского языка. М. 1968

51. Каращук П.М. Аффиксальное словообразование в английском языке. М., 1965.

52. Плоткин В.Я. Динамика английской фонологической системы. Новосибирск, 1967.

53. Смирницкий А.И. История английского языка (средний и новый периоды). М., МГУ, 1965.

54. Соссюр Ф. де. Труды по языкознанию/Пер. с фр. М., 1977.

55. Чейф У.Л. Значение и структура языка/Пер. с англ. М., 1975.

56. Швейцер А.Д. Очерк современного английского языка в США. М. , 1963.

57. Ярцева В.Н. Развитие национального литературного английского языка. М., 1969.

Appendix

The following phonetic differences should be mentioned:

1. Vowel system:

[ж] is used in AE where in BC they have [a:], as in plant, grass, half, bath

[Л] occurs in AE where in BE [o], is implied as in body, shot, hot.

[І] or [?] is used in AE where the BE uses [ai], as in civilization, specialization, but in some cases the reverse can be observed, when the BE monophthongs is diphthonized in AE, as in simultaneously, direct.

[u] is used in AE instead of [ju] in BE, as in suit, duty, knew, Tuesday, student.

2. Consonant system:

[t] Is voiced in the intervocalic position and before “l”, as in letter, little, bitter, battle.

[t] Is lost after “n”: twenty, wanted.

[l] Is clear or soft in BE and in AE as in lamp, luck, look.

[r] Is pronounced in such positions as father, dirt, far, car.

The grammatical system of the language is more or less stable. Still we can find some differences there:

1. Verb system:

Some verbs regarded as irregular in British English, are treated as regular in American English.

BE: learnt, dreamt, spelt, smelt

AE: learned, dreamed, spelled, smelled

2. Usage of prepositions:

British English American English

In the street On the street

Nervous of doing something Nervous about doing something

Membership of Membership in

Chat to Chat with

From June to December From June through December

At the weekend On the weekend

Generally speaking, Americans tend to omit prepositions where British carefully insert them. This tendency to simplify grammatical constructions can be illustrated by different forms of grammatical tenses and moods:

British English American English

Have you got a pencil? Do you have a pencil?

He said that I should go with him. He said to go with him.

In colloquial speech Americans very often omit auxiliary “have” in the constructions: I had better go (АА: I better go) or use adverbs without -ly:

British English American English

He went out slowly. He went out slow.

I felt awfully sleepy. I felt awful sleepy.

In the sphere of vocabulary the difference between British and American English lies in the intensity of the process. American English is more open to neologisms. Among the most productive ways of word-formation conversion must be mentioned. Back formation is also very productive:

to bus, to edit, to laze, to fax etc.

All kinds of shortenings are very popular with the Americans:

ad, copter (helicopter), motel, auditeria etc.

It is possible to distinguish three types of vocabulary in American English:

1. General English word-stock

2. Common ideas, expressed by different words

3. The same words having different meanings

4. Words, expressing realia, with no counterpart in the other variant:

British English	American English
to fly into rage	to blow one's top
to work at a second job	to moonlight
to take over a plane, ship or motor vehicle by force	to hijack

Nowadays the difference in the vocabulary is very difficult to trace because a great number of Americanisms are borrowed into British English.

Spelling differences

British English American English

break-down breakdown

make-up makeup

blow-up blowup

Thus, we can see that the most popular tendency in American English is to simplify spelling, grammar and phonetics. American English has its own peculiarities and can be distinguished between other variants of the English language.

Размещено на Allbest.ru