What are the differences between American and British English?
(1) Pronunciation: Brits slur their vowels, as “libr’y”, Americans their consonants, “hod wader boddle”– except Rs (which Brits only pronounce before a vowel, “star and gartugh”), and Hs before Ws (which our crazy spelling writes as “wh”). The Y before a long U which all forms of the language have lost before R and L (troo, bloo), is largely lost elsewhere too in North America (noo York)–whence the American semantic confusion of “mute” with “moot.” School ma’ams (and immigrants battling a new language) have led to many spelling pronunciations: “clerk,” “Berkeley.” (2) Speed of enunciation: all European languages slow up as they cross the Atlantic, and English slows down even more as one travels further west, especially when used by the male gender. (3) Vocabulary differences abound. “Creek” means “stream” because inlets of the sea which appeared to be the early explorers to be creeks (just inlets) often turned out to be the mouths of small watercourses. Puritan evasiveness substitute
