British English Essay

British English is spoken in the British Isles, which includes the United Kingdom and Ireland is the original dialect of English. It is considered more formal and traditional than other English dialects. There are a few regional dialects that differ depending on which country in the Isles you are in however there is a great deal of uniformity in the written language with most contrasts found in the spoken language. The Voices project conducted by the British Broadcasting Company and the University of Leeds shows how pronunciation and use of words and slang differs by region in the United Kingdom. The University of Leeds, who have previously done work on the English dialect during the 1950’s, collected the data, which include questionnaires

American English is not exactly an evolution of British English but rather it kept many phonological characteristics that British English eventually lost. One of the largest pieces of evidence is that most American English speech is rhotic, which refers to English speakers pronouncing the consonant /r/ in all situations while non-rhotic speech would be when a speaker drops the /r/ sound. During the colonial era British English was considered to be rhotic dialect but in present day is viewed as a non-rhotic dialect. Along with the colonization of America by Great Britain, the history of America as the land of opportunity and a cultural melting pot with immigrants coming from all over the world also has had a strong influence on American English arising from British English as a separate dialect. German, Dutch, Irish, Spanish, and the many other languages of immigrants settling in the United States fusing together created the development of a unique English dialect. Many of the languages features supported the phonological variations the US adopted during colonization. Most English speaker in the United States uses an alveolar or retroflex sound when pronouncing the

Most of the variation is in the pronunciation of vowel sounds. British English places emphasis most often on the first syllable, whereas in America it is placed on the second half of the word. Australian English often eliminates sounds and syllables altogether. British English and Australian English are non-rhotic dialects meanwhile American English is a rhotic dialect. American English and British English have several spelling differences with Australian English often taking after British English spelling conventions rather American English. For example, the use of -our vs. –or and -re and -er suffixes. British English often uses –our and –re in words such as colour and centre meanwhile American spelling uses color and center as standard spelling. Syntax between all three for the most part is the same, however in England it is acceptable to use a collective noun such as family as a plural word for example a well formed sentence in British English would be the family are coming to dinner, while in America collective nouns are only used as singular nouns, for example the same sentence in American English would be the family is coming to dinner. “mention