Differences between American and British English

Ø 1) Use the examples from the text and disagree with / prove the statement: “American English and British English are mutually incomprehensible.”

Which variety of English do you use, American English (AmE) or British English (BrE)? Whatever your choice is, the most important rule is to be consistent in your usage. For example in the sentence “The color of the orange is also its flavour, ” “color” is American spelling and “flavour” is British. The following guide points out the principal differences between these two varieties of English.

Present Perfect and Past Simple. In BrE the Present Perfect is used to express an action that has occurred in the recent past that has an effect on the present moment. For example, “I’ve lost my key. Can you help me look for it? ” In AmE the following is also possible: “I lost my key. Can you help me look for it? ” In BrE this would be considered incorrect. However, both forms are generally accepted in standard AmE.

Other differences include the use of “already, ” “just, ” and “yet.” In BrE people say “I’ve just had lunch. I’ve already seen that film. Have you finished your homework yet? ” In AmE these sentences can be equally used with these ones: “I just had lunch. I already saw that film. Did you finish your homework yet? ”

“Have” and “Have got.” There are two forms to express possession in English, and both of them are correct. However, “have got” is generally the preferred form in BrE (Have you got a car? He hasn’t got any friends.) while most speakers of AmE employ the form “have” (Do you have a car? He doesn’t have any friends.)

Prepositions. There are also a few differences in the use of prepositions (the first preposition is BrE, the second is AmE): “at / on the weekend, ” “in / on a team, ” “write to me soon / write me soon.”

One Vocabulary – Different Meanings. Probably the major differences between AmE and BrE are in the choice of vocabulary. Some words mean different things in the two varieties, for example:

Spelling. American spelling is often simplified, as can be seen from the examples in which the first word is BrE and the second is AmE: colour / color, favourite / favorite, theatre / theater, realise / realize, dialogue / dialog, traveller / traveler, cheque / check, jewellery / jewelry, tyre / tire, and more.

One Meaning – Different Vocabulary. Many words are also used in one form and not in the other. Here are some examples:

Past Simple / Past Participle Verb Forms. Some English verbs have two acceptable forms of the Past Simple / Past Participle. In BrE, however, the irregular form is generally more common: “burnt, dreamt, leant, learnt, smelt, spelt, spilt, spoilt.” The regular verb form is more common to AmE: “burned, dreamed, leaned, learned, smelled, spelled, spilled, spoiled.”

“Get.” The Past Participle of the verb “get” is “gotten” in AmE, for example “He’s gotten much better at playing tennis.” In BrE the Past Participle would be “got” as in the example “He’s got much better at playing tennis.”

As you can see, there are really very few differences between standard BrE and standard AmE, the largest difference being probably the choice of vocabulary.

Ø 2) Find more examples of the differences between American and British English.

1.8 RUSSIAN- ENGLISH “FALSE FRIENDS”

Ø 1) What does the title of the article mean?

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(1) “False friends” are pairs of words in two languages (e.g. Russian and English) or two dialects of the same language (e.g. British and American English) that look and/or sound similar, but differ in meaning. “False friends” can cause difficulty for students learning foreign languages because students can misidentify the words due to their linguistic similarities. The following words represent only a partial sampling of English and Russian “false friends”:

(2) Other Russian-English “false friends” include: “аккуратный” vs. “accurate, ” “артист” vs. “artist, ” “аудитория” vs. “auditorium, ” “декорация” vs. “decoration, ” “интеллигентный” vs. “intelligent, ” “комплекция” vs. “complexion, ” “композитор” vs. “compositor, ” “марка” vs. “mark, ” “новелла” vs. “novel, ” “оператор” vs. “operator, ” “проспект” vs. “prospect, ” “фамилия” vs. “family, ” “физик, ” vs. “physique, ” and dozens more.

(3) Interestingly, it should be noted that the meaning of the Russian word in many of these “false friend” pairs usually has the same meaning as was ascribed to the original word from which both words were borrowed. Of course, blaming English today for linguistic inconsistency is now useless because these “false friends” will remain false friends and nothing is going to change that.

Ø 2) Give a definition to the word combination “false friends.”

Ø 3) Find English equivalents to the words in commas in the second paragraph.

Ø 4) Make a summary of the article.