Vocabulary

Speaking about the lexical differences between the two variants of the English language, the following cases are of importance:

1. Cases where there are no equivalent word in one of the variants. For example, British English has no equivalent to the American word drive-in.

2. Cases where different words are used for the same denotatum are shown in Table 9.

Table 9.

3. Cases where some words are used in both variants but are much commoner in one of them. For example, shop and store are used in both variants, but the former is frequent in British English and the latter – in American English.

4. Cases where one (or more) lexico-semantic variant(s) is (are) specific to either British English or American English. For example, both British and American English have the word faculty, but denoting ‘all the teachers and other professional workers of a university or college’ this word is used only in American English. As a rule, such words may have analogous oppositions to one of these lexico-semantic variants in another variant of English or in Standard English, e.g. AmE faculty – BrE teaching staff.

5. Cases where one and the same word in one of its lexico-semantic variants is used oftener in British English than in American English. For example, the most common British meaning of the word brew is ‘a cup of tea’ while in American English this word is mostly used in the meaning ‘a beer or coffee drink’.

6. Cases where the same words have different semantic structure in British English and American English. For example, the word homely used to describe a person in British English means ‘home-loving, domesticated, house-proud’, while in American English this word denotes ‘unattractive in appearance’. Other examples are drawn in Table 10.

Table 10.

In some cases the connotational aspect of meaning of such words comes to the fore in one of the variants. For example, the word politician in British English possesses the meaning ‘a person who is professionally involved in politics’, thus it is rather neutral, whereas in American English this word is derogatory as it means ‘a person who acts in a manipulative and devious way, typically to gain advancement within an organization’.

Differences in the organization of education lead to different terms. British public school is in fact a private school. It is a fee-paying school not controlled by the local education authorities. American public school is a free local authority school. Elementary school and secondary school in British English are grade school and high school in American English. In British English a pupil leaves a secondary school, in American English a student graduates from a high school. In British English you can graduate from a university or college of education, graduating entails getting a degree.

A British university student takes three years known as the first, the second and the third years. An American student takes four years, known as freshman, sophomore, junior and senior years. While studying a British student takes a main and subsidiary subjects. An American student majors in a subject and also takes electives. A British student specializes in one main subject, with one subsidiary to get his honours degree. An American student earns credits for successfully completing a number of courses in studies, and has to reach the total of 36 credits to receive a degree.

Besides, British English and American English have their own derivational peculiarities that are usually confined to the frequency used in American English are: -ee (draftee), -ster (roadster), super- (supermarket). American English sometimes favours words that are morphologically more complex, whereas British English uses clipped forms, cf. AmE transportation – BrE transport. In some cases the formation of words by means of affixes if more preferable in American English while in British English the form is back-formation, cf.: AmE burglarize – BrE burgle (from burglar). Shortening and postpositivation are highly productive ways of word-building in American English, e.g. to cable up ‘to become connected to a cable TV system’.

On the British Isles there are some local varieties of English which developed from Old English local dialects. There are six groups of them: Lowland (Scottish), Northern, Western, Midland, Eastern, Southern. These varieties are used in oral speech by the local population. Only the Scottish dialect has its own literature.

One of the best known dialects of British English is the dialect of London – Cockney. Some peculiarities of this dialect can be seen in the first act of “Pigmalion” by B. Shaw, such as: interchange of [v] and [w], e.g. [wery vell] for very well; interchange of [f] and [θ], [v] and [ð], e.g. [fing] for thing and [fa:ve] for father; interchange of [h] and [-], e.g. [’eart] for heart and [hart] for art; substituting the diphthong [ai] by [ei] e.g. day is pronounced [dai]; substituting [au] by [a:], e.g. house is pronounced [ha:s], now [na:]; substituting [ou] by [ɔ:], e.g. don’t is pronounced [dɔ:nt] or substituting it by [ə] in unstressed positions, e.g. window is pronounced ['wində].

Another feature of Cockney is rhyming slang: hat is “tit for tat”, wife is “trouble and strife”, head is “loaf of bread”, boots is “daisy roots”, etc. There are also such specifically Cockney words as tanner ‘sixpence’, puckish ‘hungry’, balmy, barmy ‘mentally unbalanced’, up the pole ‘drunk’.

The English, public school leavers speak, the so called “marked RP”, it has some characteristic features: the vowels are more central than in English taught abroad, e.g. [bleck het] for black hat, some diphthongs are also different, e.g. house is pronounced [hais]. There is less aspiration in [p], [b], [t], [d].

The American English is practically uniform all over the country, because of the constant transfer of people from one part of the country to the other. However, three major dialectal varieties are distinguished in the USA: New England, Southern and Midwestern (Central, Midland). Dialects markedly differ on the phonemic level: one and the same phoneme is differently pronounced in each of them. For example, some peculiarities in New York dialect can be pointed out, such as: there is no distinction between [æ] and [a:] in such words as ask, dance, sand, bad, both phonemes are possible. The combination ir in the words: bird, girl, ear in the word learn is pronounced as [ɔi], e.g. [bɔid], [gɔil], [lɔin]. In the words duty, tune [j] is not pronounced [du:ti], [tu:n].

There is also one ethnic variety in the United States, African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, also called Ebonics), that has gained national prominence and influenced usage from coast to coast. This dialect is used in many African-American communities in the USA, especially in urban areas. It has been widely used in popular entertainment and has spread in informal settings, especially among the young and with the emphasis on trendy slang, verbal games, and such music related activities as jazz and rap. It has its origin in the culture of enslaved Americans and also has roots in England. AAVE is largely based on the Southern American English variety.

Some of the characteristics of AAVE, particularly where phonology is concerned, are shared with other dialects of American English, and it is difficult to point features as characteristic of AAVE only. However, some of the phonological features of AAVE are: consonant-cluster reduction word-finally, e.g. test [tes], desk [des]; deletion of postvocalic liquids (frictionless continuants), e.g. help [hep]; change of [ð], the man [ða mæn].

The morphosyntactic features of AAVE are: the - s morph marking the possessive, the third person singular present, and the plural may be absent (she sing, he talk, Bob car, two cat). AAVE shares with some other varieties of English the possibility for multiple negation (He don’ know nothin’). AAVE has a much richer aspectual system than Standard English: She bin married. I bin known him. The stressed bin denotes a state, condition, or activity begun in the remote past and continued to the present. In AAVE, habitual be is used to mark a repeated state, condition, or frequent actions (the coffee be cold (= always); they songs be havin’ a cause), and use done for completed actions (you done missed it), and be done for future perfect or hypothetical events (Lightning be done struck my house). Copula (linking verb) deletion is used for a temporary action: He in the kitchen. They frequently delete is and are in sentences where Standard English requires it (We _ confrontational). Come is used in AAVE to express the speaker’s annoyance or indignation, for example, She come goin’ in my room without knokin’.