What is the difference between American English and British English?

What is the difference between American English and British English?

by Ela Britchkow, Speech-Language Pathologist, Accent Modification Specialist

American pronunciation

When people talk about “learning American pronunciation”, they mean learning General American or Standard American English pronunciation. General American is the accent that is most often spoken on national television in the United States. Educated Americans usually speak Standard American English and that is what you’ll hear 90% of what you’ll hear on American TV, radio, podcasts, movies, Web videos, etc.

There are differences in regional accents, but in general, differences between American regional accents are small compared with the regional differences within Britain.

General American pronunciation is rhotic /’roʊtɪk/, which means that the letter R is always pronounced.

British pronunciation

When people talk about learning British pronunciation, they usually think of Received Pronunciation (RP). RP is the pronunciation of the British upper class – people who went to universities like Oxford and Cambridge. Only about 5% of Britons speak RP — these are upper-class people, academics, actors, TV personalities, politicians and English teachers. Most Britons speak with their local accents. If you go anywhere else than the south-east of England and talk to people on the street, you will most likely hear something quite different from RP, which can be very hard to understand to untrained ears. Sometimes cities that are only 20 km apart have very different accents.

RP is non-rhotic, which means that the letter R is usually “silent”, unless it is followed by a vowel. For example: car will sound like “cah” and inform will sound like “infom”. In words like red, foreign, print, R is pronounced (R is followed by a vowel). R is also pronounced at the end of a word, if the next word starts with a vowel, for example: number eight, far away. Most RP speakers also insert an R in phrases like: the idea(r) of, Africa(r) and Asia, law(r) and order. This R is not in the spelling; they just use it to separate two vowels.

The following pairs sound exactly the same in RP: or–awe, court–caught,sore–saw, farther–father, formerly–formally. In Standard American, they all sound different.

There are a few words in British English where the stress is put in a different part of the word. For example:

Note: the capital letters symbolize where the sound is stressed.

The differences in pronunciation of other words lie in the vowel sounds, not in differently-stressed syllables. For example:

The British use some vocabulary words that are different than Americans use.

Some Words Ending in -ILE are Different in British and American English

In some words, the letter “A” is pronounced differently in British and American English

The -IZATION ending is different in British and American English

The letter “T” in the middle of a word can be pronounced like a soft “D” in American English and as a clear /t/ in British English.

British	American
water	wader
hated	haded
writing	wriding
bottom	bodom
little	liddle
better	beder
matter	madder
letter	ledder

Some words are spelled differently in British English than in American English. Here are just a few common words that are spelled differently:

British	English
colour	color
theatre	theater
travelling	traveling
jewellry	jewelry
proramme	program
skilful	skillful
checque	check
moustache	mustache
aeroplane	airplane
neighbour	neighbor
Gaol (pronounced jail)	jail
pyjamas	pajamas
learnt	learned

By Ela Britchkow, Speech and Language Pathologist
©2016 Ela Britchkow

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