British & American English

Audio: 5 min. 35 sec.

When studying English, you will probably hear people talking about BRITISH (UK) English and AMERICAN (US) English.

Although both forms of English are perfectly fine, you might be wondering how they are different and if one is better than the other.

The truth is outside of those two countries, people tend to speak a mix of UK and US English.

This blog will explain the key differences and let you know when you should use one or the other.

PRONUNCIATION

The most obvious difference is in how the two forms sound.

Thanks to Netflix and movies, it has become quite easy to tell if media was created in the United States or the United Kingdom.

One well-known word that highlights these differences is WATER.

In British English, when the letter R comes after a vowel sound we usually do not pronounce it, and it becomes more of an H sound.

Some examples of this is SORE (Ss owh), BAR (Baah) and TARGET (Tah git).

In American English, the R in these words is pronounced more clearly (S orr, Ba rrh and Tarr git).

As well as this, vowel sounds in British English tend to be extended more than in the US.

Compare the word market in the UK (Maaah kit) versus the US (Marr kit).

There are many other sounds that are hard to compare due to the fact there are many accents inside of these two countries, but the above differences are universal.

SPELLING

For those of you who want to study in English speaking countries, this is a very important part of English to remember.

Britain is the country responsible for spreading the English language, but when the United States were formed as a country, American textbook writer Noah Webster (Of Webster’s Dictionary) decided to make some changes to make the language more AMERICAN.

The biggest of these changes was removing the letter U from words that had an OU spelling (Flavour/Flavor, Colour/Color, etc.) and changing words that ended in RE to ER (Centre/Center, Meter/Metre, etc.).

Webster could not have known that these changes would end up making some difficulties for universities and schools.

The IELTS exam and other Cambridge English exams accept both spellings as long as they are the same across the test.

While American universities want American spelling, most universities outside of the United States prefer British spelling.

VOCABULARY

There are a handful of words in that have the same meaning but are used almost exclusively in British English only or American English only.

People will understand what you mean if you use a word from the other dialect, but they may wonder why you chose to use it.

Here are some of the most common differences, with the UK word first and the US word second:

Apartment/Flat
Chips/French Fries
Rubbish/Trash
Biscuit/Cookie
Lolly/Candy
Lift/Elevator
Holiday/Vacation
Trousers/Pants
Shop/Store
University/College

GRAMMAR

Yes, even grammar can be a little different between these two dialects.

Just like with vocabulary, using a form that is more common in the other dialect is still correct but might raise a few eyebrows.

British English is generally considered to be more formal and polite, while American English has some reduced language and is more casual.

In UK English when we talk about possession, we usually use HAVE GOT.

For example, “I have got a car”, or “have you got the medicine?”. In the US, we just use HAVE; “I have a car”, and “do you have the medicine”.

When making a suggestion or invitation with multiple people, British English uses SHALL, which is considered to be more polite. For example, “Shall we have dinner?”.

American English is a little bit more direct, using SHOULD or WANT; “Should we have dinner?” or “Do you want to have dinner?”.

Even prepositions can be different.

Americans will talk about what they did ON the weekend, but British people will talk about what they did AT the weekend.

Generally, if you live in the United States or plan to travel there to learn English, it’s best to use the above US English forms.

In most other countries outside of the American continent, it is more common to use UK English.  

Some countries even combine the two, so try to make a note of whether it's common to use both in the country you are in, or not!