Out of sight, out
of Ear, as the saying might go. Despite
sharing a common language, American and British English sound distinctive from
each other. To be fair, each of the
regional variances in these countries also has a unique quality, but that does
not change the truth. In terms of
speech, over time, Yankees and Limies learn to understand each other quite well
(maybe with the help of a local interpreter).
In terms of writing, writers must take into account the differences
between the US and UK in composing texts.
The first
aspect to come to mind is spelling. The
actual differences are minor but nevertheless noticeable. The American ize is written with an ise
in England, as in rationalize/rationalise and capitalize/capitalise. The English add the letter u in the
middle of the or combination, creating honour and flavour. Finally, Americans insist on double letters
in certain words while the British are satisfied with only one, as in
fulfill/fulfil and enroll/enroll. There
are many others, such as center/centre, but these words remain highly
recognizable to people from both sides of the Atlantic.
In terms of
vocabulary, there is a long list of items that have been given different words
in the two dominant forms of English.
Some are specific to the country. For example, a bonnet, lorry, flat,
and sweets in London are a car hood, truck, apartment, and dessert in
Washington D.C. Specific fields, such as
accounting, have quite a long list of differences. Trickier, some words used by
both sides have different meanings. The
classic example is when a Yorker eats chips and crisps, a New Yorker is
consuming fries and chips. Slang is by
definition local, even within a country.
For the writer,
a more important difference is the accepted writing styles. American paragraph writing emphasizes a very
strong topic sentence, the first sentence in a paragraph, declaring the topic
and subtopics to be discussed, with a general summary sentence at the end. By contrast, British paragraphs often begin
with a vague opening statement but end in a thorough restatement. Also, American usage allows a comma (,)
before the words and and or in a series of items, but British
usage does not require it as in blood, sweat and tears.
Writers need to
be aware of these differences. However,
in terms of actual difficulty, they are a drop in the bucket as compared to the
overall challenge of writing good English even for a native speaker. So, as the French say, vive la difference!
