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Characteristics and advantages of American English. |
With more than 320 million native speakers in the USA and Canada the American English is spoken by more people than the British English and by the US-dominated Internet this language version is spreading rapidly.
American English differs from British English mainly in pronunciation and parts of the vocabulary, in some cases also in grammar and spelling. Many words in British spelling ending with "re-" are wrote with "er“ in the U.S., such as "centre / center," "meagre / meager," etc.
The British ending "-our" corresponds to the American "or" in words like colour / color and favour / favor. In some words the British "ce" corresponds to the American "-se", eg. 'licence / license" and "defence / defense“, but where the American uses „practice“ for both the noun and the verb, the British writes "practice" for the noun and "practise" for the verb.
The prononciation in the AE ...
One of the most striking features is the so-called flapping: in the American a "t" or "tt" between two vocabularies is pronounced as a barely audible, voiceless "d". The constriction or "swallowing" of individual syllables is also widely spread, so "probably" is often pronounced as "probly" or even as "prolly", and "February" as "Febury“.
AE all over the world?
Because of the multicultural composition of the population a big amount of words from other languages are used more in the AE as in the BE, including many German words (well-known examples are "Kindergarten", "Blitzkrieg", "Angst", "Lust" and many more).
The "export" of the AE in the world is much bigger: because of the worldwide presence of the Americans after the second World War and now just by using the Internet hundreds of AE-words are incorporated into other languages, especially into German. Because of the permanent use, these words are no longer perceived as foreign.
