What to read after a Guide to Differences Between British and American English, Glenn Darragh, 2000?

 

This book is intended for Americans and

Britons who want to understand each

other better, and for foreign students of

either American or British English who

want to familiarise (or familiarize)

themselves with the other main variety

of the language. According to George

Bernard Shaw, the United States and

England are two great nations separated

by a common tongue. In fact, most of

the time the two peoples understand

each other fairly well, or think they do.

The accent is different, of course, but it

presents no more of a barrier than any

regional accent would. Differences in

grammar, syntax and spelling are

relatively minor. The main differences,

and they are huge, are lexical and

cultural.

This state of affairs is reflected in the

structure and content of the present

book, which makes no pretence (or

pretense) of being exhaustive, but which

does try to be comprehensive. Short

initial chapters outline the historical

background and the differences in

pronunciation, spelling and grammar.

The main part of the book, however,

consists of a dictionary of British

vocabulary and cultural references which

someone from the United States might

have trouble understanding, and of a

dictionary of American vocabulary and

cultural references that might present

problems to someone from the British

Isles. As the book is not aimed at

academics, but at laymen (or

laypersons) who are curious about

language, phonetic differences are

shown, when necessary, by a figured

pronunciation. The A to Zed section is

written to be read by Americans, the/4

to Zee section by Britons. Finally, a

number of older terms have been

retained in both sections of the

dictionary for the benefit of the small

number of Americans and Britons who

happen to be complete novices in the

study of English as a foreign language.

Introduction: Why are they so different?

When a Briton and an American meet,

even though they are far from mutually

unintelligible, each is soon aware of

differences in the speech of the other.

First, the accent is different:

pronunciation, tempo, intonation are

distinctive. Next, differences in

vocabulary, idiom and syntax occur, as

they would in a foreign language:

individual words are misunderstood or

not understood at all, metaphorical

expressions sound bizarre, subtle

irregularities become apparent in the

way words are arranged, or in the

position of words in a sentence, or in

the addition or omission of words. It is

estimated that some 4,000 words and

expressions in common use in Britain

today either do not exist or are used

differently in the US. These differences

are reflected in the way British and

American English are written, so that

variations in spelling and punctuation

also emerge. Finally, there are immense

cultural divergences, ranging from

different trademarks for everyday

products to different institutions and

forms of government. Little wonder,

then, that even in this age of global

communications, we are still able to

misunderstand each other. Before

examining each of these major

dissimilarities in detail, it may be useful

to consider how they have arisen.

In fact, many of the distinctive phonetic

features of modern American English

can be traced back to the British Isles.

To take a single example, the r at the

end of words is pronounced in markedly

different ways in the 'standard' varieties

of American and British English. In the

'received pronunciation' of GB, it is

barely sounded at all, so that words like

there and water are pronounced theah

and watuh. This pattern is characteristic

of the south-eastern part of England,

which is where, in the early 17th century,

the first British colonists originated.

Their peculiar treatment of the final r

survives in New England and the South,

but it is exceptional in the US as a

whole. The distinctive American r, a kind

of muffled growl produced near the back

of the mouth, is fully sounded. It is very

similar to the r still pronounced in parts

of the west and north of England, and in

Scotland and Ireland, and was almost

certainly brought to America by

subsequent colonists from those parts.

Since most of the British settlement in

North America in the 19th century came

from the north and west of England and

from Ireland, especially from the

northern counties of Ulster, rhotic

speech, as it is called, eventually spread

across the continent. In many other little

ways, standard American English is

reminiscent of an older period of the

language. For example, Americans

pronounce either and neither-with the

vowel of teeth or beneath, while in

England these words have changed their

pronunciation since the American

colonies were founded and are now

pronounced with an initial diphthong,

like the words eye and nigh. (For a

fuller discussion of these and other

pronunciation differences, see Part 2.)

It is said that all emigrant languages are

linguistically nostalgic, preserving

archaic pronunciations and meanings.

The word vest provides an interesting

example of one of the ways in which the

vocabularies of Britain and America

were to grow apart. The first recorded

use of the word occurs in 1666 (in the

diary of Samuel Pepys), referring to 'a

sleeveless jacket worn under an outer

coat'. The direct descendant of this

usage is the modern American vest,

A TO ZED, A TO ZEE STANLEY v

meaning waistcoat. In the intervening

centuries, however, the meaning of the

word has shifted in Britain, so that it

now applies to 'a piece of clothing worn

on the top half of the body underneath a

shirt'. Americans have retained a

number of old uses like this or old words

which have died out in England. Their

use of gotten in place of got as the past

participle of get was the usual form in

England two centuries ago; in modern

British English it survives only in the

expression ill-gotten gains. American

still use mad as Shakespeare did, in the

sense of angry ('Don't get mad, get

even.'), and have retained old words like

turnpike, meaning a toll road, and fall as

the natural word for the season. The

American I guess is as old as Chaucer

and was still current in English speech in

the 17th century. The importance of such

divergences was compounded by two

parallel processes. Some words which

the pilgrims and subsequent settlers

brought to the New World did not

transplant, but in England they survived:

e.g. fortnight, porridge, heath, moor,

ironmonger. Far more important,

however, was the process by which,

under the pressure of a radically

different environment, the colonists

introduced innovations, coining new

words and borrowing from other cultures.

Many living things, for example, were

peculiar to their new environment, and

terms were required to describe them:

mud hen, garter snake, bullfrog, potato

bug, groundhog. Other words illustrate

things associated with the new mode of

life: back country, backwoodsman,

squatter, clapboard, corncrib, bobsled.

This kind of inventiveness, dictated by

necessity, has of course continued to

the present day, but many of the most

distinctive Americanisms were in fact

formed early: sidewalk, lightning rod,

spelling bee. low-down, to have an ax

to grind, to sit on the fence, to saw

wood, and so on. At the same time,

other words were being assimilated

ready-made into the language from the

different cultures the settlers came into

contact with. Borrowings from the

Indians include pecan, squash,

chipmunk, raccoon, skunk, and

moccasin', from the French, gopher,

pumpkin, prairie, rapids, shanty, dime,

apache, brave and depot; from the

Spanish, alfalfa, marijuana, cockroach,

coyote, lasso, taco, patio, cafeteria and

desperado; from the Dutch, cookie,

waffle, boss, yankee, dumb (meaning

stupid), and spook. Massive immigration

in the 19th century brought new words

from German (delicatessen, pretzel,

hamburger, lager, check, bummer,

docent, nix], from Italian [pizza,

spaghetti, espresso, parmesan,

zucchini] and from other languages.

Jews from Central Europe introduced

many Yiddish expressions with a wide

currency in modern America: chutzpah,

kibitz, klutz, schlep, schmaltz, schlock,

schnoz, and tush. Likewise, many

Africanisms were introduced by the

enforced immigration of black slaves:

gumbo, jazz, okra, chigger. Even

supposedly modern expressions like

with-it, do your thing, and bad-mouth

are word-for-word translations of

phrases used in West African languages.

Eventually many of these enrichments

would cross the Atlantic back to

England, but by no means all of them.

Those that did not cross back form the

basis of the differentiation that has

taken place between the American and

the British vocabulary (Parts 4 and 5, for

an examination of current lexical

differences and explanations of many of

the terms cited above).

A further important change was to take

vi STANLEY A TO ZED, A TO ZEE

place, in the domain of spelling. In the

years immediately following the

American Revolution, many Americans

sought to declare their linguistic as they

had their political independence. In

1780, John Adams, a future president of

the United States, proposed the

founding of an 'American Academy for

refining, improving, and ascertaining the

English Language'. The plan came to

nothing but it is significant as an

indication of the importance Americans

were beginning to attach to their

language. The more ardent patriots were

demanding the creation of a distinctly

American civilization, free of the

influence of the mother country. Defence

of this attitude was the life-work of

Noah Webster (1758 - 1843), author of

The American Spelling Book, first

published in 1783 and destined to sell

an estimated 80,000,000 copies over

the next hundred years. This work, from

which countless immigrants learnt their

English, introduced such typical

spellings as honor, color, traveler,

defense, offense, center, theater, ax,

plow, and jail. The influence of

Webster's American Spelling Book and

of his later American Dictionary of the

English Language (1828) was

enormous. It is true to say that the

majority of distinctively American

spellings are due to his advocacy of the

principles underlying them. (The main

differences are outlined in Part 1.)

Moreover, some of the characteristics of

American pronunciation must also be

attributed to Webster, especially its

relative homogeneity across so vast a

continent and its tendency to give fuller

value to the unaccented syllables of

words (see Part 2).

As regards the basic grammar and

structure of the language, there are

surprisingly few major differences. On

the whole, however, Americans, as

though impelled by an urgent need to

express themselves, appear less

constrained by the rules of grammatical

form. For instance, they tend to bulldoze

their way across distinctions between

the various parts of speech. New nouns

are compounded from verbs and

prepositions: fallout, blowout, workout,

cookout, the runaround, a stop-over, a

try-out. Nouns are used as verbs - to

author, to fund, to host, to alibi (an

early example of the practice was to

scalp] - and verbs are used just as

casually as nouns: an assist, a morph.

Any number of new verbs can be

created by adding the suffix -ize to a

noun or to the root of an adjective:

standardize, fetishize, sanitize,

prioritize, diabolize. If the exuberance

of American English is reminiscent of

anything, it is of the linguistic energy of

the Elizabethans. In the early part of the

20th century, H.L. Mencken was already

making the point. American English, he

said, 'still shows all the characteristics

that marked the common tongue in the

days of Elizabeth I, and it continues to

resist stoutly the policing that ironed out

Standard English in the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries'.

The present geopolitical, technological,

financial and commercial supremacy of

the United States unquestionably

underlies the expansiveness and spread

of its language, nowhere more so than

on the level of colloquial or popular

speech. Occasionally words in British

English become fashionable enough to

cross the Atlantic, but the vast majority

of words - like the vast majority of

films, television programmes, best

sellers, news magazines, and pop music

lyrics which convey them - no longer

A TO ZED, A TO ZEE STANLEY vii

travel westwards, but eastwards. This

situation is not without irony. In the

1780s, some patriots were proposing

that English be scrapped altogether as

the national language and replaced by

another: French, Hebrew and Greek

were candidates. The last of these was

rejected on the grounds that 'it would

be more convenient for us to keep the

language as it was, and make the

English speak Greek'. Two hundred and

some years later, it seems fairly obvious

that the Americans will keep and

develop their variety of English just as

they please, and the British will have to

adapt as best they can. It is a process

that is already well under way, with

thousands of words and expressions

that were exclusively American a few

years ago now part of the written and

spoken language in both its varieties.

But there is no reason to deplore this

fact. It is simply a sign that the language

is doing what it has always done: it is

changing and revitalizing itself.

Viii • STANLEY A TO ZED, A TO ZEE

P A R T O N E

P A R T TWO

Spelling 2

1. The color/colour group 3

2. The center / centre group 3

3. The realize / realise group 4

4. The edema / oedema group 5

5. The fulfill / fulfil group 6

6. One letter differences 7

7. Miscellaneous 8

Pronunciation 9

1. Pronunciation of 'r' 9

2. Pronunciation of 'a' 10

3. Pronunciation of 'o' 10

4. Pronunciation of 'u' 11

5. Pronunciation of 't' 11

6. Pronunciation of particular words 12

7. Stress and articulation 14

THREE

Grammar and Usage 15

1. Irregular verbs 16

2. Use of Past Simple

and Present Perfect tenses 17

3. Auxiliary

A TO ZED, A TO ZEE

A GUIDE TO THE DIFFERENCES

BETWEEN

BRITISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH

A TO ZED, A TO ZEE

A GUIDE TO THE DIFFERENCES

BETWEEN BRITISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH

WRITTEN BY

GLENN DARRAGH

PUBLISHED BY

EDITORIAL STANLEY

LAYOUT

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ISBN: 84-7873-346-9

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