American english VS British english
By neo_matrix
@neo_matrix (884)
India
December 19, 2009 1:02pm CST
hey is country has its own versions of english i suppose.like the Indian version includes many a words that had found place in the oxfords.but what i am interested to know here in this post is the subtle differences in the American and British version of english
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2 responses
@leeloo (1492)
• Portugal
19 Jan 10
I was once discussing this with a friend and we found this page on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences
it has a large list of words and the different spellings, note like with anything on Wikipedia it is always better to double check to make sure it is accurate. I have noticed a problem that I have, is that because I read both British and American literature and especially on the net I start mixing spelling from both types of words in the same sentence. The worst part is things like :
Pants(UK means underwear) in the US means trousers(UK)
Apartment(US) vs flat(UK)
Elevator(US) vs lift(UK)
bonnet - part of car(UK) vs hat(US)
among others
I will sometimes use both words or jump between them and they mean totally different things to different people sometimes it's confusing.
@neo_matrix (884)
• India
21 Jan 10
i do understand the kind of confusion it creates.infact i didn't noticed much of it before except that british english had some extra letters in the spellings,till i came across a quiz question where i came to knew that "!" is called exclamation point (exclamation mark in UK) ,"." is called a period (full stop in UK).then i realised my English happens to be a mixture of both as i too read literature of both types and never bothered beyond that.it was confusing for me.
thanks a lot for your help.happy lotting!
@Galena (9110)
•
20 Dec 09
lots of things have completely different words.
Pavement / sidewalk
Bath / tub
Tap / ...errrm forgotten what that one is
Boot (on a car) / Trunk
Mobile Phone / Cellphone
Holiday / Vacation
Rubbish / Trash
the last letter of the alphabet is Zed / Zee
and some words have different meanings. in the UK if someone is Smart it means they are well dressed and tidy looking, rather than intelligent.
I think it's a great shame that in the UK a lot of children are now starting to use more American style English. it would be really boring if everywhere became the same
@neo_matrix (884)
• India
20 Dec 09
thanks for your response.this is real helpful.i got to know so many new things.each culture brings its own influence to the language used.that makes them so rich.
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