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Adela Monafu

American versus British English on a lexical level

As George Bernard Shaw said once, England and America are two countries
separated by a common language. But this common language though, has
numerous differences, which makes the two nations visibly different, on a
linguistic level. This paper aims at analyzing reciprocal comprehension
between American and British English native speakers. Separation and
commonness are two very useful keywords to describe the relationship
between American and British English, which has a dual nature because of
the American characteristics of continuity and divergence from its mother
country, Great Britain. John Hurt Fisher (2001:59) noticed that the
separation of the American nation from England after 1776 is schizophrenic,
characterized on the one hand by violent rejection of English tyranny, as it
was regarded by the American revolutionaries and on the other by acute
nostalgia for their English culture.
But firstly, let us take a look at a historical background to spot the roots of
the differences between the American and British English. According to
Baugh and Cable, The English language was brought to America by colonists
from England who settled along the Atlantic seaboard in the seventeenth
century.1 It was therefore the language spoken in England at that time, the
language spoken by Shakespeare and Milton and Bunyan. In the peopling of
this country three great periods of European immigration are to be
distinguished. The first extends from the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 to
the end of colonial times. This may be put conveniently at 1787, when
Congress finally approved the Federal Constitution, or better, 1790, when the
last of the colonies ratified it and the first census was taken. (2002; 331)
There were three major periods of immigration from England to the actual
United States, according to Ioana Morar. The first period, the above
mentioned, resulted in 13 colonies that comprised four million English
speakers. The second one covered the expansion of these 13 colonies, and
the immigration of a great number of Irish people, owing to the British
oppressive policy and to the potato famine of 1845. After the European
Revolution (1848) there were also numerous immigrations from Germany.
This period closed with the Civil War, in 1865. The third and final one was
marked by the arrival of the Scandinavians, Slavs, and Italians. They were
soon followed by immigrants from Eastern Europe. Also, Chinese and
Japanese settled on the Pacific Coast, so that the cosmopolitan character of

the United States became more and more accentuated. Further, Negroes
from Africa have come to number over twelve million.
From a linguistic point of view, we consider the first period to be the most
important, because it brought to North America the language that nowadays
still exists on the territory. The other colonists who arrived in America
assimilated the existing language, though bringing their influence on it.
In spelling, in pronunciation, in vocabulary or lexis, and in the syntax of colloquial
speech, divergences persist between American English and British English, but they
are unessential. The Preface to Websters New World Dictionary of the American
Language rightly points out that formal American English and formal British
English, although they are separated by 3,000 Atlantic miles vary far less than the
local dialects of Yorkshire (cited from Iarovici, 1973: 296)

On the other hand, the earliest changes in the English language in America,
distinguishing it from the language of the mother country, were in the
vocabulary. These have already been
mentioned. From the time when the early colonists came, however,
divergence in
pronunciation began gradually to develop. This has been due in part to
changes that have
occurred here but has resulted still more from the fact that the pronunciation
of England
has undergone further change and that a variety of southern English has
come to be
recognized as the English received standard. At the present time American
pronunciation
shows certain well-marked differences from English use. (Baugh & Cable,
2002, 352)
Considering all of the above, what we are going to closely pay attention to in
this paper is the vocabulary, which has the most numerous and striking
differences. As the English language was spreading to America, it was but
natural that local peculiarities should arise. As soon as the settlers landed in
America, they found objects, such as plants and animals which were new to
them. Even the landscape was different from the English countryside. The
land was inhabited by people who spoke a strange language and who lived
by customs different from anything the English had ever seen. Names had to
be provided for all these aspects of their new life. Under new natural,
economic and political conditions, it was rather difficult for settlers to provide
names for the numerous formerly unknown objects they came across, so they
used old words in order to name the new concepts. That is why changes of
vocabulary occurred in their language from the very beginning:

The word corn was transferred to an entirely new cereal: in British

English it means crops such as wheat and barley. In American
English it means maize.
Clerk in British English is an official but in American English it has a
wider meaning, that of a shop - assistant (extension of meaning).
Rock in British English means a large mass of stone. In American
English it means a small piece of stone, e.g. Protesters threw rocks at
the police.
To figure in American English means not only to calculate, to
compute, but also to think, to consider, e.g. I figured youd be late
(= I thought).

Contact with the Indians brought into English a number of words having
particular reference to the Indian way of life. Thus, they borrowed wigwam (=
a hut of the American Indians); squaw (Indian woman, wife), canoe,
toboggan, moccasin, tomahawk, hominy (ground maize prepared as food by
boiling with water, corresponding to the Romanian mmlig), to scalp, etc.
From the Indians the American settlers also borrowed names for certain
animals such as: moose, raccoon (a flesh-eating animal with a bushyringed
tail), skunk (a black and white striped animal, which protects itself with a
foul-smelling spray} (fig. a despicable person); opossum (a nocturnal
marsupial animal that lives in trees and that carries its young in a pouch);,
chipmunk, etc.
The English language assimilated words from other colonists too, such as
French, Spanish, Dutch and German, which of course were shipped across
the Atlantic along with the immigrants. Thus, both American and British
English use words like bureau, cache (French), canyon, patio (Spanish), boss,
dope, cookie (Dutch) and pretzel, noodle, hamburger (German).
Another quality often attributed to American English is archaism, the
preservation of old features of the language which have gone out of use in
the standard speech of England.
An important number of Americanisms are in fact words which have
either become obsolete in England except in certain dialects or have lost
in England a meaning which is maintained in the United States. From the
point of view of British English, these Americanisms are therefore archaisms
and provincialisms.

What is called now The Government in Britain, was known there as

The Administration, down to the middle of the 19 th century. The term
Administration has been preserved in America.

Baggage in the sense of luggage occurred in Britain in the 17 th and

18th centuries. It is still in current use in the United States, whereas in
Britain it refers only to portable army equipment, or to someones
emotional problems.

The verb to guess in the meaning of to suppose, to think occurred

in Britain in the 14th and 15th centuries. G. Chaucer, describing the
young squire writes Of twenty years of age he was, I gesse. This
sense is extremely frequent in the United States: e.g. I guess youre
right. = I suppose youre right.

To quit is rarely used in England now. In the United States it is in

everyday use, in the meaning of to give up, to leave, to stop: to
quit a job; Quit making that noise!

Sick underwent a change of sense in Britain (it is restricted to

nausea) that was not carried over to America. Shakespeare uses it in
the modern American sense in his play Henry V: e.g. He is very sick
and would to bed. (The British use ill)

The picturesque old word fall has been kept in America as the natural
word for the season autumn (used in England).

The fact that numerous Americanisms are actually words which in Britain
have become archaisms in the meantime or are just provincialisms has
resulted in the assertion that American English is more conservative than
British English.
Indeed, American English has preserved certain older features of the
language which have disappeared from Standard English in England. But it
has also introduced a large number of innovations equally important.
Besides resorting to borrowing from other languages and changing the
meaning of existing words, the settlers introduced a large number of
innovations, resorting to composition, affixation or conversion.
a)Composition
The first settlers often made up descriptive compounds for naming the
unknown plants, animals and natural phenomena they came across in their
new homeland.
E.g. blue-grass (grass with bluish-green stems)
back-country (district not yet populated)

Little by little, composition was also resorted to for naming less concrete,
abstract notions, qualities, etc. Many of the later compounds are based on
metaphor:
Disk - jockey (an employee of a broadcasting station who conducts a
programme of recorded music); hard - boiled (= callous, tough, shrewd: a
hard-boiled detective); drive in - movie (a cinema where you can see a film
without getting out of your car); sky-scraper (a very tall building); hot-dog
(hot sausage in a long bread roll); horse-sense (common sense).
Whereas early America compounds were often self-explanatory, recent ones
are frequently rather elliptical. Thus, soap opera is a television or radio series
about the imaginary lives of a group of people.
Other terse metaphors are: wire pulling, to have an ax to grind, to be on the
fence. The Americans early manifested the gift, which they continue to show,
of the imaginative, slightly humorous phrase: to bark up the wrong tree, to
face the music, fly off the handle, go the whole hog, paint the town red, and
many more.
b) Affixation has not been quite as productive as composition in American
English.
Prefixes have been resorted to far less often than suffixes, with a few
exceptions, such as: anti-, de-, re-, semi-, up-: anti-federalist, to debunk, to
revamp (to arrange things, to improve), semi-centennial, to update.
c) Conversion is another means of forming new words. It is very frequent in
British English too, but in England conversion is not carried to such extremes
as in American English.
While composition and affixation have given American English numberless
nouns, conversion has provided American English mostly with verbs derived
from nouns. Practically speaking any noun may be converted into a verb:
e.g. to boom (to increase in trade); to contact, to style, to engineer (to act as
an engineer, to arrange something skilfully, such as to engineer a plot).
OK (also spelled okay) is the most grammatically versatile of words, able to
serve as an adjective, a noun or interjection: e.g. The meeting was OK.
(adjective); I need your OK on this. (noun); We seemed to have worked okay
together (adverb); His wife wouldnt OK the holiday (verb); OK, Ill be there.
(interjection).

The difference between British and American vocabulary today is lessened

by the fact that many American words have made their way into English use,
and their number appears to be increasing rather than diminishing.
Different words in American versus British English in the natives everyday
life:
Food
Recipes demonstrate how many differences in food and cooking terminology
there are. For instance, a British biscuit is an American cookie, and
American biscuit is a British scone. Also some fruit and vegetables terms
are different, such as the American eggplants and blueberries which in
British are aubergines and bilberries.

Some others are chop, ground meat, and tenderloin steak which in British
are called cutlet, minced meat, and fillet steak. As regards seafood, what
Americans call shrimp are prawns in Britain; other examples are the
American canned tuna, crawfish, and fish sticks that for the British are
tinned tuna, crayfish, and fish fingers.
Numbers

Finally, the system of saying and writing numbers is a little different. The
British insert and before the tens and the units, as in two hundred and fifty
. Americans are more likely to read numbers like 1,456 as fourteen fifty-six
instead of one thousand, four hundred and fifty-six, unless they are referring
to years. Also monetary vocabulary is often said differently. For amounts over
the dollar, an American would say both dollars and cents or drop both
denominations as in three twenty or three dollars and twenty cents for
$3.20. In Great Britain the form three pounds twenty is the most heard. The
British slang form quid is a sort of equivalent of the American buck for the
round amounts, as in 50 quid, or fifty bucks

Shopping
Going shopping might be quite confusing in the two countries if some lexical
differences are unknown. First of all, the nouns shop and store are used
somewhat differently in American and British English. In general, Americans
use store the way British use 'shop. Most British shops would be called

stores in the US where the noun shop is more often used to mean a small
retail establishment, such as an antique shop or a gift shop. British go to
the chemists, while Americans go to a 68 Scotto di Carlo, G. drugstore or a
pharmacy, where they can buy medicines and other items, such as body
care products, stationary, and cigarettes. To describe clothing, many
differences have a on to one equivalent, such as the American bathrobe,
nightgown, sneakers, and tuxedo, which are dressing gown, nightdress,
trainers, and dinner jacket in British. In other cases, the same word has a
different meaning: the word jumper exists in both American and British
English, but British use the word jumper for knitted clothing that covers the
top half of the body whereas for Americans it is a sleeveless dress worn over
shirt or a blouse. The British vest is an American undershirt, and what
Americans mean with vest, is the British waistcoat.
Transport
Many differences between American and British English are related to
transport vocabulary. Whereas in British people take a couch, Americans say
they would take a bus; Americans take subways, whereas in Great Britain
this means of transport is called an underground. Americans would go by
train or railroad, which is the American equivalent of the British term
railway. Baggage car, caf car, one-way ticket, round.-trip ticket,
railroad are the American equivalents of baggage van, buffet car, single
ticket, return ticket, and railway carriage in British. Other vehicle
differences are the American motorcycle, station wagon, and truck
against the British motorbike, estate (car), and lorry. Reminding that
British people also drive on the opposite side to Americans, in the UK, the
term outside lane refers to the higher speed passing lane closest to the
centre of the road, while the term inside lane refers to the lane closer to the
edge. In American English these terms have the opposite meaning. As
regards other street objects, parking meter, pedestrian, and traffic are
shared by the two varieties. However, Americans use the terms crosswalk,
gas station, overpass, sidewalk, and stoplight and British pedestrian
crossing/zebra crossing, petrol station, flyover, pavement, and traffic
lights respectively, only to mention the most evident differences.
As language is the soul of a culture, major awareness can be a strategy to
improve mutual intelligibility and respect between the two cultures. All these
differences raise questions about what can truly be considered correct
English, and even if it is right to talk about a proper or improper English
variety. Therefore, it can be said that only a direct contact with the other

language or a specific study on the differences can improve mutual

intelligibility between the two varieties of English, admitting and respecting
their differences.
Bibliography

Baugh, Albert C. & Cable, Thomas. 2002. A History of the English

Language. London. Pearson Education
Crystal, David. 1994. An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Language and
Languages.
Oxford. Blackwell
Iarovici, Edith. 2002. Engleza Americana. Bucuresti. Ed.Teora

Siteography

Macmillan English Dictionary Magazine (MED), accessible online at:

http://www.macmillandictionaries.com/MED-Magazine/January2004/15feature-ukus-shopping.htm (Last accessed January 2016)
SMITH, Jeremy. American to British Dictionary, accessible online at:
http://members.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionaryclassic/ (Last accessed
January 2016)