AMERICAN
ENGLISH
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They
eliminated the syllables which are not pronounced. For more information: Spelling
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Singular
nouns which refer to collectives always use singular verbs. In British the verb
can be plural or singular. Ex.: The
police is very useful (American).
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The present
perfect is not used when referring to actions in the past. Ex.: I ate an apple
(American) // I have eaten an apple (British).
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Americans
don’t use ‘’have got’’ to referring possession. The use ‘’have’’ only.
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The past
participle of ‘’get’’ in British is ‘’got’’, but in American is ‘’gotten’’.
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Some verbs
have two forms of past: one regular and one irregular. British uses the
irregular form and American uses the regular form. Ex.: BURN (burnt and burned,
respectively).
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Americans
use different words which have other names in British. See this page: Words
HIBERNO
ENGLISH (IRELAND)
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They never
use ‘’yes’’ or ‘’no’’ when answering questions. Ex.: Do you want cake? I do.
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Irish
people use some archaic expressions such as ‘’tis’’ (it is), ‘’tisn’t’’ (it
isn’t), ‘’ye’’ or ‘’yous’’ (you), ‘’amn’t’’ (am not).
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They don’t
have the past perfect, so they use the past continuous with after. Ex.: They
had gone to my house when I was outside (British) // They were after going when
I was outside (Irish).
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The Irish
finish the sentences with words like ‘’no?’’ or ‘’yeah’’.
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They use
the expression ‘’to have’’ as a synonym ‘’to speak’’. Ex.: I speak English
(British) // I have English (Irish).
SCOTTISH
ENGLISH
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It has
fewer diphthongs than British English.
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The modal
“will” can be used as a substitute for “shall” and “may”.
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Just like
in Ireland, the abbreviated from of “I am not” is “I amn’t” instead of “I’m
not”.
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Future
negation always requires the presence of an independent “not”, instead of the
correspondent negative form of the verb. Example: “I won’t study for the exam.”
(British) // “I’ll not study for the exam”. (Scottish).
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Its
vocabulary contains words inherited from Gaelic (“loch” for “lake”, “cailleach”
for “old woman”) and Old Norse (“bern” for “child”).
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It also
contains expressions inherited from Scots, a language variety spoken in Lowlad
Scotland. For example, “outwith” for “outside of” or “janitor” for “caretaker”.
Curiously, “janitor” is also accepted in American English.
I thought that there were less differences between these varieties of English. In my opinion that rules are confusing to people that are studying English because they are different in Britain, Scottland and America.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you Naira! There are many differences between these types of English, but these rules are the most important but there are many more. If you are interested in this topic, you can visit the pages that we mentioned above.
ReplyDeleteHi, guys!
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate the fact that you tackled this issue.
In my own experience, since I'm used to watch American TV series and films, whenever I express myself in English I often tend to use the American word for a concept rather than the corresponding British form. With regard to the Scottish variety, I tried to watch an Scottish film called "Trainspotting" a few years ago in its original version with no subtitles at all... And I turned it off after 30 minutes because it was too difficult for me to understand it.
Anyway, thank you for gathering this interesting information!
In my opinion, this topic is very interesting because it's important to know that the English isn't the same in all countries.
ReplyDeleteI didn't have any idea about all of these differences. I didn't think that there were so many.
This is an interesting reflection of national differences, Andrés, Lorena and Sonia – so in a sense we’re not learning and teaching English, so much as Englishes, don’t you think? I’d be interested to know more about what drew you to this topic, why you think it’s important... For example, what are the implications for yourselves as future teachers? Should learners be taught all these varieties or should we just stick to teaching the Queen’s English☺?
ReplyDelete