Разница между британским и американским английским языком. Взгляд носителя языка

Деловой портал www.delo.ua совместно с British Council реализует новый проект «Английский язык on-line». В рамках проекта на портале появляются видеоинтервью с преподавателями British Council.

Тематика видеоинтервью – новые методики и подходы в изучении английского языка, интересные факты и практические советы по улучшению произношения и увеличению словарного запаса.

Тема сегодняшнего интервью – отличия между британской и американской версией английского языка. Интервью дает старший преподаватель British Council Джоел Раштон.

Преподаватель выделяет несколько блоков.

1. Разница в написании слов. Ключевой пример – разница в написании слова «цвет».  ‘colour’ – в британской версии и ‘color’ – в американской версии. Также не всегда совпадает склонение отдельных глаголов. К примеру, 'to burn' в британской версии в прошлом времени меняется на ‘burnt’, а в американской – ‘burned’. 
2.  Разница в произношении.  
3. Особенности использования словарного запаса. Слово «капот» в Британии будет звучать как ‘hood’, а в США – ‘bonnet’. 
4. Разница в использовании разговорных выражений (colloquial expressions).       

Текст интервью

Hello, my name is Joel Rushton, I work for the British Council. I'm here to talk to you today about some of the differences between the British English and American English. The four main things I'm going to briefly talk about is: spelling, pronunciation, word choice and also colloquial expressions.

If you start first of all with spelling, there are some differences between American English and British English. To give you some examples of this... Key one for example is 'colour'. The word 'colour' in English is spelt with 'our' at the end, while in America it's spelled with 'or' (' color '). Some regular verbs actually finish in an irregular way with British English. For example if you take the verb 'to burn', in British English it's finished with 'burnt' in the past tense however in American English it's 'burned'. Again, with the other verbs, for example 'learned' - 'learnt'. There are also many other differences here with the spelling.

As we move on to pronunciation - in pronunciation there are some changes as well. Especially with the words for example like 'missile' and 'mobile'. In British English I will say /ˈmɪsaɪl/ /ˈməubaɪl/, in America they say /ˈmɪs(ə)l/ /ˈməub(ə)l/. This is quite common for words that end in 'ile'. Other differences are British English tend to swallow our t’s, for example instead of saying bottle, in English we'd say /ˈbɑtl/, Americans would say /ˈbɑ:tl/. So they pronunce their ‘t’s quite strongly. Other words... for example 'car'. In British English I would say /kɑː/ which sounds like 'ka'. In American English they would say /kɑːr/ and really pronounce the 'r'.

Other thing to talk about is word choice. There are quite some differences there as well. In american English for example if you take a car... Americans would call the front where the engine is the 'hood', in British English we call it a 'bonnet'. Also the back of the car... Americans will call it the 'trunk' while in Britain we would call it a 'boot'. So there are quite some different words that are different as well.

One other last thing I wanna talk about then was colloquial expressions. Now a good one for this is for example a British person may offer 'I'll give you a lift'. Now, an American person who is not familiar with British English will think that they are saying 'I'll give you a lift' [raising hands up]. Also, if they're not familiar with the word lift, which in America is an 'elevator' in Britain we call it a 'lift'. So you can imagine some of the confusion you might have if someone says 'I'll give you a lift' and you're expecting them to give you an elevator. No, that’s you need to.. I’ll drive you somewhere in my car.

Finally, there are lots and lots of differences between American English and British English. It's never really too much of a problem. But you know sometimes you may have some miscommunication. I would recommend, if you are intrigued about this or you are going to Britain on a business trip or America for that reason, it'd be a good idea just to go onto Wikipedia because there’s plenty of information on it there.