Question:
I think one of my new year resolutions is to improve my English. I started
to last year but it kinda tapered off... lol I am mostly going to be
learning from web sites and places like this :) I was thinking of maybe
buying a book or two. My question: What is the difference between American
and British English? My thinking is that they are pretty much the same and
that the only difference is spelling and some small rules of punctuation? Is
this correct? Can I learn English from an American book or web site and then
just find out the differences later? I would like to know both anyway.
Lastly, anybody have any good book recommendations? My English is pretty
basic so I would be wanting something that takes me from that up to a good
standard with easy to understand text
Answer:
At the basic level, there's not much difference between them. The grammar is
much the same, and the spelling and punctuation differences fall mostly into
standard patterns (the -or/-our ending being the most obvious). However, at
the level of word usage, it's much more difficult. Of course there are the
well-known hazardous ambiguities such as 'vest', 'pants' and 'suspenders',
'rubber', 'fanny' etc, and many phrases that are equally comprehensible to
both groups will be used more or differently on one side or the other (my
favourite is the example mentioned by Stephen Fry in Making History, where a
character's use of 'named after' instead of 'named for' marks him out as
British).
Very few speakers of either variant can speak fluently in the other. What's
more, there isn't really any one version of English on either side of the
pond - a Londoner and a Brummie will speak very differently, as will a New
Yorker and a Texan.
My (probably bad) advice would be to read texts of both kinds and learn a
hybrid language. Then you'll be equipped for both, and you'll probably find
yourself automatically adjusting according to which other people you're
talking to.
Submit Your
Own Answer!
