Lecture 8

Variants of the english language

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1. British English and American English as the main variants of the English language.

2. Morphological peculiarities of American words.

3. Grammar peculiarities of American words.

4. Lexical peculiarities of the two variants.

5. The future of the English language.

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1. British English and American English as the main variants of the English language

It is natural that the English language is not used with uniformity in the British Isles and in Australia, in the USA and in New Zealand, in Canada and in India, etc. The English language also has some peculiarities in Wales, Scotland, in other parts of the British Isles and America. Variants of a language are regional varieties of a standard literary language characterised by some minor peculiarities in the sound system, vocabulary and grammar and by their own literary norms.

We treat American English (AE) as the original variety of English. It’s not a separate language because it shares similar features with British English (BE) in the fields of phonetics, grammar and vocabulary. AE has a literary norm of its own which differs from BE.

The American English is “an important part of American history, of social history, and of the biography of us all” (Stuart Berg Flexner). The first great American contribution to the English language, in the 1600s, came from the need to name North American animals and plants. Some of the new names came from English words like corn and catfish, others like raccoon and moose were borrowed from the languages spoken by the Indians. In the nineteenth century appeared know-how, and the first skyscrapers.

Until the 18^th century, British and American English were similar with almost no variation. Immigration to America by other English peoples had changed the language by 1700.

The variation between American and British English is considerable: the differences concern the vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation, and stress.

2. Morphological peculiarities of American words

Spelling. There are several differences between British and American spelling, such as the “-re” endings became “-er” and the “-our” endings became “-or”.

American English tends to prefer -ize and -ization whereas British English prefers -ise and -isation. American English retains the noun/verb distinction in advice / advise and device / devise. Also, British defence, offence, pretence; American defense, offense, pretense. Britons usually write the noun form with “-our” (e.g. labour, behaviour) while Americans write without “u” (labor, behavior).

Pronunciation. There are several differences between Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American (GA), such as the pronunciation of final /-r/. RP has many words in [a:] which are pronounced with [æ] in GA, e.g. bath, class, dance, example, pass, etc. In British English the sound [о] corresponds to the American [Λ], e.g. hot.

Punctuation. In American English a period (.) is used after initials or abbreviations. Americans tend to write “U.S.”, “U.N.”, “Mr.”, “Mrs.”, “Dr.” etc., while most British will write “US ”, “UN ”, “Mr”, “Mrs”, “Dr”, etc.

When starting a formal letter, Americans usually write a colon after the greeting (“Dear Sir:”) while Britons usually write a comma (“Dear Sir,”).

Numbers. When saying or writing out numbers, the British will put an “and” before the last part, as in “one hundred and fifty-six” and “two thousand and seven”, whereas Americans go with “one hundred, fifty-six” and “two thousand, seven”.

Americans also have a tendency to read numbers like 1123 as “eleven twenty-three”, which would be “one thousand, one hundred and twenty-three” in Britain unless discussing the year 1123, when “eleven twenty-three” would be the norm.

When referring to the number 0, Americans use the term “zero”, whereas Britons would use “nought” or “oh” as well.