Grammer a Week 17: Differences Between American and British English · 3:11pm Mar 10th, 2016
This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I soapbox about a grammar subject I find interesting. You might, too! This week's installment is about the differences between American and British English. Just because we speak the same language doesn't mean there aren't a laundry-load of differences between our dialects. This post will cover some of the more interesting differences between the two.
Before I start, let me clarify that I am Canadian, but I speak and write with American English exclusively. All my Grammer a Week posts also are in adherence to the American English standard (with footnotes on alternatives where appropriate). True Canadian English is actually something of a mishmash between American and British. And to avoid getting hit by flying tomatoes, I'll refer to neither language as just "English"; as far as this blog post is concerned, American and British are two dialects of the same English. In comparisons, the American form will always appear first.
Most of you are probably aware of some of the gross spelling differences between British and American, given that they're relatively conspicuous. Most words that end in -er in American end in -re in British: center vs. centre, for instance. A lot of words that end in -or in American end in -our in British: color vs. colour. Some words that end in -se in American end in -ce in British: defense vs. defence.*
There are quite a few less obvious spelling differences as well. Vowel digraphs, for instance, are fairly common in British but simplified in American: estrogen vs. oestrogen, encyclopedia vs. encyclopaedia, etc.† Some words in British with doubled consonants have also been made single in American: traveled vs. travelled. To make things more confusing, there are some words that have doubled consonants in American but are single in British: enroll vs. enrol. And of course, there are a handful of spelling differences that really don't have any trends and are just, well, different: sulfur vs. sulphur, ton vs. tonne.
Then there are the many terms in English that go by different words in American and British. Elevator vs. lift as a mechanized increaser of gravitational potential energy, truck vs. lorry as a large cargo locomotive, garbage can vs. dusbin as a refuse receptacle, zucchini vs. courgette for a cucumber look-alike vegetable. Click here more some more differences in a cringe-inducing song.
Time for a few grammatical differences. As I've already described in a previous post, American will always include periods and commas within quotes, whereas other punctuation are placed according to logic. In British, all punctuation, including commas and full stops, are placed according to logic:
Fluttershy wasn't exactly "angry."
Fluttershy wasn't exactly "angry".
In American, the present perfect tense is used less than in British:
Rainbow slumps to the ground. She trained too much.
Rainbow slumps to the ground. She has trained too much.
But the subjunctive mood is used far more:
Rarity suggested we rush to the train station.
Rarity suggested we rushed to the train station OR Rarity suggested that we should rush to the train station.
On to a few final miscellaneous differences. In American, dates are quoted as month/day/year. But in British, they're quoted as day/month/year. (This is particularly confusing if you encounter a date like 4/10/15. April 10th, or 4 October?‡) In American, the abbreviations of Mister, Doctor, and other such words are written with a period, but in British, they're not (Dr. vs. Dr).
All these differences underscore significant cultural differences between the USA and Great Britain, and these differences are by no means the only ones. In all honesty, it's not really required for you to know any of these differences in most circumstances: if you're American and you're writing for an American audience, you should write in American English. I just happen to know a lot of these both from my own research and my conversations with our own Loganberry, who probably knows a lot more of these than I do. With reference to Fimfiction, most of its readers are American . . . but knighty is British. So just write in whatever dialect you'd like.
* Note that I'm massively simplifying here. There are plenty of British and American words that don't follow these spelling rules (anger, for instance). There are even some words in British that change their meaning depending on their spelling when they mean the same thing in American (license being used as a verb and noun in American, but a licence vs. to license in British being distinct).
† Some of these changes to American English were instigated by Noah Webster (you know, the dictionary guy) in a quest for spelling reform. Some changes persist today (the aforementioned digraph simplifications), but plenty of them didn't (wimmen to replace women, tung to replace tongue).
‡ This is awful in Canada, where no one can agree on what date form to use, and the two are used interchangeably (why?).
Thanks for reading! If you have any questions or comments, please post them below. I'm always open to suggestions for future Grammer a Week posts.
Yay, I've been waiting for this instalment! (Hey, another spelling difference.) Thanks for typing all this out -- it's a pretty good read all round. And thanks for the name-check!
IUPAC has now ruled that everyone should use "sulfur", but that's generally only followed by actual scientists. "Sulphur" is still much more common in general use. To balance things out, IUPAC has also mandated "aluminium" worldwide.
This one is actually a difference of meaning, though not a hugely important one these days. An (imperial) ton is 2,240 pounds, which works out at 1.016 (metric) tonnes. The imperial measure hasn't been used officially since 1985, but you're still more likely to read "I've got tons of stuff" than "I've got tonnes of stuff" if there's no particular reason to choose one form over the other. (The 2,000 pound "short ton" is almost unknown in the UK.)
"Truck" is now very common here, and may even push out "lorry" in the next few decades. On the other hand, "dustbin" (with a T) still reigns supreme over "garbage can".
Enough people still use the full stop that I don't really notice either way, but it is getting rarer as time goes on. I always write "Dr" unless there's a good reason to do otherwise -- which is almost never.
The problem is that I can't. It would make my life a lot easier if I could write all my ponyfic in British English, but it would make dialogue seem ridiculous. Apart from Fancy Pants and Pipsqueak, nopony speaks British English in canon. I have seen one editor suggest that putting a spelling like "colour" in the mouth of a pony like Applejack is distracting, and that it might be better for British writers to use "color" etc -- but I think that's going too far and would rebel against any editor of mine who suggested it. So narrative in BrE and dialogue in AmE it will stay!
The Once and Future Date Format is year-month-day, as heralded by the prophets, ISO 8601 and RFC 3339!
Day/month/year is almost tolerable, but sorts horribly. I hope everyone using month/day/year steps on a Lego.
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Hehe, I knew you would be.
And point taken on the dialogue thing. Leave it to someone who's used American English all his life to not need to give a crap about how he writes dialogue. Then again, I wouldn't say Applejack spouting Britishisms is even a matter of style at all; that just seems out of character. Though so long as you stay firmly within the "I, not Ah" camp, I think your Applejack dialogue will go over just fine.
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ISO standards really do sort wonderfully when listed alphabetically, which is why I use it for my own personal bookkeeping. Too bad the rest of the world is so slow in adopting it. I'm a part time receptionist, and I can say that concerning the dates on the paperwork I work with, almost none of it goes yyyy-mm-dd. It's always one of the other two, without any indication of what standard they used. And it's such a headache needing to call people back just to ask them how they write dates down that I normally just guess.
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True. Though, as I mentioned in a comment on Chris's blog recently, she is in fact the only character to use the word "whilst" in the show! (Early in "Look Before You Sleep".)