Main lexical and grammatical divergences of the British and American variants - Доклад

Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University Institute of Foreign Philology Applied Linguistics Report on the course English lexicology Main lexical and grammatical divergences of the British and American variants Olha Artyshchuk Lutsk 2013 Introductory British English is the form of English used in the United Kingdom. It includes all English dialects used in the United Kingdom. American English is the form of English used in the United States. It includes all English dialects used in the United States. Written forms of British and American English as found in newspapers and textbooks vary little in their essential features, with only occasional noticeable differences in comparable media. This kind of formal English, particularly written English, is often called standard English. The spoken forms of British English vary considerably, reflecting a long history of dialect development amid isolated populations. In the United Kingdom, dialects, word use and accents vary not only between England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but also within them. Pronunciation refers to a way of pronouncing Standard English that is actually used by about two percent of the UK population. It remains the accent upon which dictionary pronunciation guides are based, and for teaching English as a foreign language. It is referred to colloquially as the Queens English, Oxford English and BBC English. An unofficial standard for spoken American English has also developed, as a result of mass media and geographic and social mobility, and broadly describes the English typically heard from network newscasters, commonly referred to as non-regional diction, although local newscasters tend toward more parochial forms of speech. Despite this unofficial standard, regional variations of American English have not only persisted but have actually intensified. The English language was first introduced to the Americas by British colonization, beginning in 1607. Then the language spread to numerous other parts of the world as a result of British trade and colonization elsewhere. Over the past 400 years the form of the language used in the Americas-especially in the United States-and that used in the United Kingdom have diverged in a few minor ways, leading to the versions now occasionally referred to as American English and British English. Differences between the two include pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, idioms, formatting of dates and numbers, although the differences in written and most spoken grammar structure tend to be much less than those of other aspects of the language in terms of mutual intelligibility. A small number of words have completely different meanings in the two versions or are even unknown or not used in one of the versions. 1. Main grammatical divergences 1.1 Nouns In British English (BrE), collective nouns can take either singular (formal agreement) or plural (notional agreement) verb forms, according to whether the emphasis is on the body as a whole or on the individual members respectively.