Divergences Between General American and British English: a General Outline

Министерство науки и высшего образования  
Российской Федерации 
Федеральное государственное  образовательное  
учреждение высшего образования 
 «ЮЖНЫЙ ФЕДЕРАЛЬНЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ» 
 
Институт филологии, журналистики и межкультурной коммуникации 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

А. Г. АКОПЯН, С. Г. НИКОЛАЕВ 

 

DIVERGENCES BETWEEN AMERICAN ENGLISH AND BRITISH 

ENGLISH: A GENERAL OUTLINE 

 

Учебное пособие 

по курсу «Английский язык в его национальных вариантах» 

для студентов старших курсов филологических факультетов 

 

 

 

 

Ростов-на-Дону – Таганрог 
Издательство Южного федерального университета 
2018 

 

УДК 811.111 
ББК 81.2 Англ   
     А39  

Печатается по решению кафедры английской филологии Института 
филологии, журналистики и межкультурной коммуникации Южного 
федерального университета (протокол № 6 от 25 января 2018 г.) 

 
Рецензенты: 
доцент кафедры английской филологии Института филологии, 
журналистики и межкультурной коммуникации ЮФУ, кандидат 
филологических наук, доцент М. А. Сухомлинова; 

доктор филологических наук, профессор, зав. кафедрой русского языка        
и культуры речи Ростовского Государственного Экономического 
Университета (РИНХ) Э. Г. Куликова 

 

     Акопян, А. Г. 

А39          Divergences Between General American and British English: a General 
Outline  : учебное пособие / А. Г. Акопян, С. Г. Николаев ; Южный 
федеральный университет. – Ростов-на-Дону ; Таганрог : Издательство 
Южного федерального университета, 2018. – 124 с.  

 ISBN 978-5-9275-3000-7 

Пособие предназначено для студентов старших курсов Института 

филологии, журналистики и межкультурной коммуникации в качестве 
источника дополнительной информации по дисциплине «Английский язык 
в его национальных вариантах». 

Цель изучения дисциплины – рассмотреть и классифицировать 

варианты 
английского 
языка 
в 
мире, изучить 
их фонетические, 

грамматические, лексические и фразеологические особенности, установить 
сходные и отличительные черты по отношению к английскому языку 
Великобритании. 

Цель пособия – систематизировать материал по рассматриваемой 

проблеме и познакомить студентов с особенностями американского 
варианта английского языка, его отличиями от британского варианта. 
Различия рассматриваются по таким аспектам языка, как орфография, 
фонетика, грамматика и лексика. 
 
ISBN 978-5-9275-3000-7                                                                  УДК 811.111 
ББК 81.2 Англ   
© Южный федеральный университет, 2018 
© Акопян А. Г., Николаев С. Г., 2018 

 

CONTENTS 

 

Preface: Is There Really A Language Named American?  
 
 
5 

Varieties of English. Expansion of English  
 
 
 
 
11 

The history and development of American English. 

Historical factors influencing the differences between 

American English and British English 
 
 
 
 
 
15 

The sources of the spelling irregularities 
 
 
 
 
 
23 

Spelling reform 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
26 

Differences in spelling  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
27 

Differences in pronunciation 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
38 

Differences in grammar  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
42 

Differences in vocabulary 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
53 

Most Distinctive Dialects of GA and BE 
 
 
 
 
     6 2  

Supplement 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
8 8  

Supplement 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 91 

Supplement 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
104 

Bibliography 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
121 

 
 

Введение 

Данное учебное пособие предназначено для студентов старших 

курсов 
Института 
филологии, 
журналистики 
и 
межкультурной 

коммуникации в качестве источника дополнительной информации по 

дисциплине «Английский язык в его национальных вариантах». 

 
Цель изучения дисциплины – рассмотреть и классифицировать 

варианты 
английского 
языка 
в 
мире, 
изучить 
их 
фонетические, 

грамматические, лексические и фразеологические особенности, установить 

сходные и отличительные черты по отношению к английскому языку 

Великобритании. 

В результате изучения дисциплины обучающиеся должны 

знать: смысл терминологических корреляций - вариант–эталон, вариант–

инвариант, 
вариант-константа; 
лексические, 
грамматические 
и 

орфоэпические различия в разных вариантах английского языка; 

уметь: анализировать и сравнивать варианты английского на всех уровнях 

языка; выявлять влияние различий на формирование характера и картины 

мира носителя того или иного варианта;  

владеть: навыками поиска, отбора и использования научной информации 

по Апроблемам курса; расширенным словарным запасом в пределах 

специально 
отобранной 
тематики 
и 
углубленными 

лингвокультурологическими знаниями, способствующими повышению 

коммуникативной компетенции обучаемых. 

Цель пособия – систематизировать материал по рассматриваемой 

проблеме и познакомить студентов с особенностями американского 

варианта английского языка, его отличиями от британского варианта. 

Различия рассматриваются по таким аспектам языка, как орфография, 

фонетика, грамматика и лексика. 

PREFACE: 

IS THERE REALLY A LANGUAGE NAMED AMERICAN? 

As we know, the American Declaration of Independence was adopted on 

July 4, 1776. Soon after that landmark, in the year 1789, renowned American 

lexicographer Noah Webster had reasons to strongly believe that what was called 

and is still called these days British English and American English would finally 

be two separate languages. In extenuation of this idea he pointed at former 

Germanic dialects that had turned into the Dutch, Danish, Swedish, German, and 

other modern languages. ‘Several circumstances render a future separation of the 

American tongue from the English, necessary and unavoidable’, he wrote. More 

than 200 years have passed, yet these expectations have not been confirmed, and 

the present state of British English and American English seems to show no 

indications that this will happen in the future. Thus we conclude today that what 

we refer to as two Englishes, British and American, should be considered as one 

and the same national language, yet two of its variants, or varieties. 

Meanwhile it must be clearly realized that the very notions of British 

English and American English are incorrect as they do not reflect the true state 

of affairs with the verbal means of communication used by the two major 

English speaking nations. Neither British English, nor American English exist 

since both countries under discussion are too large to use a single vernacular 

each. Thus, the language used in London, Birmingham, Manchester and 

Liverpool (all by the way located in England) differ, to say nothing of the 

English language spoken in Edinburgh, Cardiff, Dunlin. The same would be true 

if said about the language used in New York and, say, San Francisco. This is all 

of course English, yet embodied is a large number of its dialects. Then perhaps 

one should consider that British English is in fact King’s (or Queen’s) English, 

but then is this notion not too far from actual life communication practices? 

However, coming back to the terms recognized by us as ‘inadequate’, we 

must state that at every level of a linguistic analysis, British-American contrasts 

are evident and unquestionable. Thus, in the area of phonology, the British 

Received Pronunciation and General American differ a lot. Lexical oppositions 

are notorious and provide the material for numerous vocabulary lists and 

dictionaries (should we not call them bilingual?). Oh, grammar! Sure enough, 

most linguists of today would say that British and American share the same 

grammar system. (Why then should we have books like ‘Oxford English 

Grammar’ by Sydney Greenbaum, Oxford University Press, 1996, and, on the 

other hand, ‘The New Webster’s Grammar Guide’, Career Institute, 1968, 

hinting upon two grammar systems?). 

To avoid complete confusion, one should stick to the trite but perhaps true 

statement according to which ‘accent divides, and syntax unites’. 

American English: a Glimpse of History 

The English language spoken by the first settlers along the Atlantic coast 

was the one spoken by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Marlowe. English was going 

through a great period of change, the period later named Early Modern English, 

the time when the East Midland dialect was becoming the written standard 

throughout England. Shakespeare’s time was also during the time when English 

borrowed significantly from other languages, as the language was insufficient on 

its own, but there were also many regional varieties of dialect and accent that 

were used, and speakers of these varieties settled in America. A few syntactic 

structures from this period still survive in Present Day American English, for 

example the relic form “gotten” now supplanted in Britain by “got”, the past 

participle of “get”. 

From this huge mix of differing communities, cultures and dialects, the 

population comprised peoples from varying social classes too. Soldiers, deported 

prisoners, refugees and Royalists were just some of the types of people involved. 

The largest single immigrant group, however, was the forced immigration 

of thousands of Africans, brought into America through the Slave Trade, which 

began in the seventeenth century until its abolition in the nineteenth century. 

Quite surprisingly, the influence on the language from the Africans was 

relatively small. This was due to the diversity of the tribes involved, and the fact 

they were slaves afforded them no respect or value for language or tradition. 

Slaves were forced to learn English as a Lingua Franca (in terms of the 21st 

century linguistics), a way to communicate with their masters. This form of 

Pidgin English has developed into one of the most characteristic forms of 

American 
English, that 
of 
African 
American 
Vernacular 
English 
or 

Black English, with over 25 million speakers in the United States. More recent 

immigration occurred during the mid-twentieth century from Mexico, and other 

Hispanic countries. 

All the shown facts and many others produced their impact on the 

historical formation of American English, but as African American was among 

the most widespread, linguistically specific and pragmatically idiosyncratic, it 

definitely deserves some special attention here. 

African American English 

This is a language variety that has also been identified at different times in 

dialectology and literary studies as Black English, black dialect, and Negro 

(nonstandard) English. Since the late 1980s, the term has been used 

ambiguously, sometimes with reference to only Ebonics, or, as it is known to 

linguists, African American Vernacular English (AAVE; the English dialect 

spoken by many African Americans in the United States), and sometimes with 

reference to both Ebonics and Gullah, the English creole spoken by African 

Americans in coastal areas of South Carolina and Georgia and on the offshore 

Sea Islands.  

In the 20th century much of the scholarship on African American English 

revolved around questions of how extensively it was influenced by the native 

African languages and whether it is in fact an English dialect, an archaic survival 

of the colonial English spoken by indentured servants on the plantations of the 

North American Southeast, or a descendant of 17th-century West African Pidgin 

English. The possibility that the structure of modern Ebonics is the result of 

decreolization 
has 
also 
been 
widely 
studied. 
(Decreolization, 
or 

debasilectalization, is the process by which a vernacular loses its basilectal, or 

“creole” features under the influence of the language from which it inherited 

most of its vocabulary. The basilect is the variety that is the most divergent from 

the local standard speech.) The consensus among linguists is that Ebonics is an 

American English dialect differing from other dialects primarily in the higher 

statistical frequency of nonstandard features, such as the merger of 

hasn’t/haven’t and isn’t/aren’t (even didn’t/don’t in the case of Ebonics) in the 

form ain’t and the omission of the copula in constructions such as Jesse very tall 

(‘Jesse’s very tall’). The latter feature makes Ebonics typologically closer to 

Gullah and Caribbean English creoles. It has therefore been interpreted by some 

linguists as evidence that Ebonics must have creole origins. No consensus has 

been reached on this issue. 

Since the late 1960s, Gullah has been treated as a separate language, 

because it shares more structures with Caribbean English creoles (e.g., usage of 

bin as a past tense marker in he bin go [‘he/she went’], or usage of he in the 

possessive function, as in he bubba [‘his/her brother’]). It can be argued, 

however, that since most such creole features (i.e., those associated today with 

creoles) come in this case from English itself, their attestations in Caribbean 

English creoles are not conclusive evidence for stipulating that Gullah is a 

separate language. The fact that creoles bear heavier influence from black 

African languages than does Ebonics does not make the hypothesis more 

compelling, in part because external influence on other nonstandard English 

varieties, for instance, Yiddish English – has not made such divergent varieties 

separate languages. (It is also significant that Gullah speakers do not use the term 

creole in reference to their variety.) More research is now devoted to describing 

structural peculiarities of both Ebonics and Gullah in detail, which may 

eventually shed more light on the origins and typological affiliations of African 

American English. 

 

 
 

“England and America are two countries separated by a common language” – 
George Bernard Shaw 
"We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of 
course, the language" –  
Oscar Wilde 
 
These quotes by still ring true today and various differences between British and 

American English remain. Native speakers of both varieties have relatively few 

problems understanding one another, but there are several points at which British 

and American diverge. 

 

 

DIALECTS versus VARIANTS 

There exists a great diversity in the spoken realization of the language and 

particularly in terms of pronunciation.  

The varieties of the language are conditioned by language communities 

ranging from small groups to nations. Speaking about the nations we refer to the 

national variants of the language. According to A.D. Shweitzer national 

language is a historical category evolving from conditions of economic and 

political concentration which characterizes the formation of a nation. (М. 1983, 

38). In other words national language is the language of a nation, the standard 

of its form, the language of a nation’s literature.  

Though every national variant of English has considerable differences in 

pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, they all have much in common which 

of course gives us ground to speak of one and the same language – the English 

language.  

It is of great importance to emphasize that national standards are not fixed 

and immutable. They undergo constant changes due to various internal and 

external factors. Pronunciation, above all, is subject to all kinds of innovations. 

Therefore the national variants of English differ primarily in sound, stress and 

intonation.  

It is important to state that every national variety of the language falls into 

territorial and regional dialects. Dialects are distinguished from each other by 

differences in pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. Local dialects are 

varieties of the English language peculiar to some districts and having no 

normalized literary form. Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called 

variants.  

For example, in Great Britain there are two variants, Scottish English and 

Irish English, and five main groups of dialects: Northern, Midland, 

Southeastern, Southwestern and Southern. Every group contains several (up to 

ten) dialects.  

Dialects are said to undergo rapid changes under the pressure of Standard 

English taught at schools and the speech habits cultivated by radio, television 

and cinema 

We must make clear that when we refer to varieties in pronunciation only, 

we use the word accent. So local accents may have many features of 

pronunciation in common and consequently are grouped into territorial or area 

accents. In Britain, for example, Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire accents 

form the group of ‘Northern accents’. 

For certain geographical, economic, political and cultural reasons one of 

the dialects becomes the standard language of the nation and its pronunciation 

or accent – the received standard pronunciation. This was the case of London 

dialect, whose accent became the RP OF BRITAIN. 

As a result of certain social factors, Standard English is exerting an 

increasing powerful influence on the regional dialects of Great Britain. In fact its 

pressure is so strong that many people are bilingual in a sense that they use an 

imitation of RP with their teachers and then lapse into their native local accent 

when speaking among themselves.  

This state of linguistic duality in which the standard literary form of a 

language and one of its regional dialects are used by the same individual in 

different social situations is called DIGLOSSIA. This phenomenon should not 

be mixed up with BILINGUALISM that is the command of two different 

languages.  

Comprehension questions: 

1. What is the difference between a dialect and a variant? 

2. What does the term accent refer to? 

3. How is diglossia different from bilingualism? 

 

VARIETIES OF ENGLISH. EXPANSION OF ENGLISH 

English is the national language of Great Britain, the USA, Australia, New 

Zealand and Canada.  

English was originally spoken in England and south-eastern Scotland. 

Then it was introduced into the greater part of Scotland and southern Ireland. In 

the 17th and 18th centuries it was brought to North America. Later in the 18th and 

19th centuries English was exported to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa 

owing to colonial expansion. A flow of emigrants who went to invade, explore 

and inhabit those lands came mostly from the south-eastern parts of England.  

English became wide-spread in Wales at about the same time. Welsh 

English is very similar to southern English, although the influence of Welsh has 

played a role in its formation. Then in the 20th century American English began 

to spread in Canada, Latin America, on the Bermudas, and in other parts of the 

world. Thus nowadays two main types of English are spoken in the English
speaking world: English English and American English. 

According to British dialectologists (P. Trudgill, J. Hannah, A. Hughes 

and others) the following variants of English are referred to the English-based 

group:  

English English 

Welsh English 

Australian English 

New Zealand English