What is the difference between american and british english

Auxiliary verbs , also known as helping verbs, are verbs that help form a grammatical function. Brits sometimes use shall to express the future. It seems very formal. When Americans want to express a lack of obligation, they use the helping verb do with negative not followed by need.

The past tense of learn in American English is learned. British English has the option of learned or learnt. The same rule applies to dreamed and dreamt, burned and burnt, leaned and leant. In the past participle form, Americans tend to use the —en ending for some irregular verbs. Brits only use got. People in both countries can easily understand both ways, although Brits tend to think of the American way as incorrect.

A tag question is a grammatical form that turns a statement into a question. The tag includes a pronoun and its matching form of the verb be , have or do. Tag questions encourage people to respond and agree with the speaker. Americans use tag questions, too, but less often than Brits. You can learn more about tag questions on a previous episode of Everyday Grammar. There are hundreds of minor spelling differences between British and American English.

You can thank American lexicographer Noah Webster for this. Noah Webster, an author, politician, and teacher, started an effort to reform English spelling in the late s. He was frustrated by the inconsistencies in English spelling. Webster wanted to spell words the way they sounded. Spelling reform was also a way for America to show its independence from England.

Webster dropped the letter u from these words to make the spelling match the pronunciation. Whilst American English spellings are based mostly on how the word sounds when it is spoken. English was introduced to what is modern day America in the 17 th century by the British settlers.

Since then the language has evolved and has been influenced by the many waves of immigration to the USA. The spelling of British English words were cemented by Samuel Johnson in what is considered to be one of the most famous dictionaries in the world.

British English words that are spelled with the double vowels ae or oe tend to be just spelled with an e in American English: Although there are exceptions to the rule. For example archaeology is spelt in the same way as British English but archeology would be acceptable in America but is incorrect in the UK.

If you liked this article head to GB Mag. The differences in British and American spelling. How did this change occur? Webster wanted to make American English more distinct, in order to take control of the language from the British.

A Texan and a New Yorker are both Americans, but have very different accents. The same goes for British accents in London, Manchester and Glasgow. However, some very general distinctions can be made. There are also differences between American and British English in the areas of spelling, vocabulary and grammar. Here are just some of the examples. The differences below are only a general rule.

American speech has influenced Britain via pop culture, and vice versa. Therefore, some prepositional differences are not as pronounced as they once were. Americans tend to use the past simple tense when describing something that has recently occurred, while people in the U.

In the U. In British English, a collective noun like committee, government, team, etc. Collective nouns in the United States, by comparison, are always singular, emphasizing the group as one whole entity. This is a subtle difference that can be easily overlooked in speech, but is much more apparent in written form. Many verbs that are irregular in the past tense in Britain leapt, dreamt, burnt, learnt have been made regular in America leaped, dreamed, burned, learned.