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Specificity of American English

The present degree work is devoted to the problem of the specificity of American English and its differences from British English.
Generally, it is agreed that American and British English are both variants of World English. But the problem of characterizing and analyzing the system of the differences between them hasn’t been solved yet, as well as the question about relationship and hierarchy between these two varieties of English.
Therefore this degree work is to contribute to solving the problems concerning the specificity of American English and its main differences from British English.
The research has been conducted in 2005
The aim of this work is to review the principal difference between British English and American English. The following hypothesis has been offered: American English has some peculiarities that distinguish it from British English.
The following tasks have been solved in the present work:
1. The history of exploring American English has been briefly reviewed.
2. The modern status of American English has been described.
3. Relationship between British and American English has been reviewed in the light of the intersystem approach.
4. Phonetic, grammatical, lexical, orthographic differences between modern British and American English have been described.
5. The practical research of the main differences between modern British and American English has been conducted.
According to the scientific works we have been reviewed, American English and British English have many differences, but they are not systematic and so one cannot consider AE a separate language. At the same time the differences between AE and BE cannot allow one consider AE a dialect of BE.
There are many differences in detail between British and American English, and occasionally they crowd together enough to make some difficulty. In our degree work we have described the main differences between AE and BE in their phonetics, orthography, grammar and vocabulary. Let us briefly mention them.
There are some phonetic features that distinguish British and American English. The most significant differences in British and American phonetics is distribution of vowels. Stressed vowels are often lengthened more in American English than in British, so that British people thinks Americans “drawl” and Americans think British speech is “clipped”. Vowels are often nasalized in American English, and they are not in most British pronunciations, so this makes the two accents sound very different The articulation of the phoneme [r] is one of the most characteristic features of American English pronunciation. The American [r] is more sonorous than [r] in British English.
Grammatical structures of British English and American English have much in common. The grammatical differences between the two varieties are revealed in use of: articles; plural/single forms of nouns and verbs; prepositions and adverb particles; irregular verbs forms; have and do; modal verbs; grammar tenses; subjunctive; some adverbs and adjectives. There many small differences in the use of prepositions and adverb particles in British English and American English. But in the whole British and American English have the same grammatical structure, and the existent grammatical differences are insignificant.
As far as orthography is concerned, the American orthography is simpler than the British one. For example they omit the letter u in words like colour, harbour.
Probably the major difference between British and American English is in the choice of vocabulary. We have reviewed some major lexical differences between American and British English.
Sometimes different words are used for the same idea, for example American apartment and British flat; or the same word has different meanings in the two varieties, for example mad means angry in American English and it means crazy in British English/
Lexical differences of American English highly extensive on the strength of multiple borrowing from Spanish and Indian languages, what was not in British English. They are: canoe, moccasin, squaw, tomahawk, wigwam, etc. and translation loans: pipe of peace, pale-face.
The main lexical differences between British English and American English are caused by the lack of equivalent lexical units in one of them, divergences in the semantic structures of polysemantic words and peculiarities of usage of some words on different territories. One if the most distinguishing features of the colloquial style is using informal words. There are a lot of slang words in modern American English, which are not common in more conservative British English. It should be noted that non-standard colloquial words are unstable.
We have also reviewed words connected with educational systems of Great Britain and the USA. Some differences have been found.
For example:
BE AE
1. primary school 1. elementary school
2. secondary school 2. high school
3. further education 3. higher education
In the practical research we have explored the main differences between American and British English. We found 306 examples of such differences and divided them into three groups. The first one includes lexical differences, the second – orthographical differences, and the third one – grammatical differences (namely specificity of using propositions).
The first group turned out to be the largest group among the three. It includes 24 sub-groups, such as people, jobs, clothes, house, transportation, and others. Let us give some examples:
АЕ ВЕ Перевод
Buck Dollar Доллар
Zipper Zip fastener Застежка молния
Pants Trousers Брюки
Classmate Class fellow Студент
Buddy Mate Приятель
drugstore chemistry Аптека

The second and the third groups include much less number of examples.
The orthographical differences are as follows:
Favor favour
Humor humour
Labor labour
traveled traveled
Theater theatre

The differences in the use of prepositions are the following:
Wait on table wait at table
Home at home
on the street in the street
Around about
aside from apart from
Out out off
To fill out to fill in
Get by get off

So we can conclude that the most significant difference between American and British English is in their vocabulary.
As a consequence a conclusion is made that British English and American English are two varieties of the modern World English. Their phonetic systems, grammar structures, word-stock and orthography are essentially the same, although there are some insignificant differences. The most significant difference between American and British English is in their vocabulary. These two varieties of English are constantly communicating and exchanging their peculiarities.