English, a language being widely used all over the world, could be however spoken quite differently in distinct areas. For instance, English spoken in Australia could be dramatically different from English spoken in the Republic of the Philippines. In the seventeenth century, as Great Britain first set foot in America and built their colonies, they brought English to the land. Following the United States Declaration of Independence in the eighteenth century, the partition between the countries has caused the language to divide into two different varieties as well. To this day, the differences between American English (AE) and British English (BE) are relatively obvious. There are two main differences I’d like to discuss in this article.

  First of all, the pronunciation and the ways of speaking in AE and BE have gone through great changes throughout the years. A BE speaker tends to put more stress on the stressed vowels which are often in the first syllable while AE speakers tend to speak more softly and mingle the words together. Therefore, some BE speakers consider the American accent to be lazy. Moreover, speaking in a British accent usually means that the “R” sound is dropped. For example, the tongue curl at the end of “sugar” could be dropped. Consequently, British people would pronounce “sugar” as “suga”. On the other hand, it is reported that BE speakers tend to have a more formal vocabulary usage in their speech such as “shall” whereas Americans tend to say “should”. Thus, I think it is safe to say that AE and BE vary greatly when it comes to how they’re used in daily speeches.

  Secondly, the vocabulary could vary greatly between the two alternatives of English. There are numerous examples of a word that spells the same but refers to different meanings. Obviously, there are also various examples of two words that spell differently but refer to the same meaning. For instance, the word “garbage” is used in AE. And BE, on the other hand, would utilize the word “rubbish” to refer to the same item, which is trash. Additionally, “flat” in AE simply means to have a leveling surface; nevertheless, “a flat” could also mean an apartment for BE users. More examples are like“crisps” in BE, which equals to “potato chips” in AE, “sweets” in BE and “candies” to AE, there is also “taxi” in AE, while BE uses “cab”. And the list goes on and on. Not only are there differences in meaning, but there are also spelling differences. Take “color” for example. AE spells it as I did, but in the BE spelling, it would be “colour” instead. The same method goes to “odor” and “favorite” as well, which is represented as “odour” and “favourite” in BE.

  In conclusion, the two English varieties used in the two nations vary mainly in how they are spoken and the vocabularies in my opinion. Although the two countries both utilize English in their daily lives, it is quite different when it comes to speaking and writing. However, regardless of the differences, no language variety or dialect is more superior to the others; all are equal and as functional.