Can you tell the difference between British and American English? Check out these words, then tell us which variety of English you tend to use by leaving a comment below.
Words
British - American
1. Pavement – sidewalk
2. Rubbish – trash
3. Football – soccer
4. Biscuit – cookie
5. Sweets – candy
6. Tube – subway
7. Full stop – period
8. Autumn - fall
9. Flat – apartment
10. Lift – elevator
11. Chips – fries
12. Petrol – Gas
13. Motorway – highway
14. Jam – jelly
15. Cinema – movie theatre
16. Trousers – pants
17. Car park – parking lot
18. Jumper – sweater
19. Holiday – vacation
20. Post code – zip code
Discuss
Over the past 400 years, the form of the language used in the United States – and that used in the United Kingdom and the rest of the British Isles have diverged in many ways, leading to the dialects now commonly referred to as American English and British English. Differences between the two include pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, idioms, formatting of dates and numbers, and so on. A small number of words have completely different meanings between the two dialects or are even unknown or not used in one of the dialects.
This divergence between American English and British English once caused George Bernard Shaw to say that the United States and United Kingdom are "two countries divided by a common language"; a similar comment is ascribed to Winston Churchill. Likewise, Oscar Wilde wrote, "We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, the language."
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