Louis McKinney - British to American English: A Dictionary and Guide to the English Language

BRITISH TO AMERICAN ENGLISH:

A DICTIONARY AND GUIDE TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

BY

Hi ESL

British to American English: A Dictionary and Guide to the English Language 2017 by Hi ESL. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information or storage and retrieval system, without the permission of the publisher.

Introduction

Introduction

The words British, Brit or Briton refer to natives of the United Kingdom. They may be from Scotland, Wales, England or Ireland. In this book we use the words interchangeably. Now and then we refer to the English (not the language but the people) or the Englishman. Then we mean someone particularly from England. The Americans are natives of the US, the States or the United States and they speak a dialect of English we will call US English. It is interesting how divergent the two dialects can be as we explore in the next few pages. First we go on a guided trip back in time to the formation of English, and then through its evolution on both sides of the Atlantic. Then we take a fleeting look at the cultural differences of the two nations and their customs. Included is a helpful guide to some common idioms that are completely different in the two dialects. Also, you will find a glossary of common words that mean something completely different over the water. The spelling can also be quite different so near the end you will find a spelling guide.

Preface

A road has been excavated from out of Middlesborough that winds through the Lake District to the sea at Kent and washes out into the Atlantic. But in the history of England all roads lead to London. This one doesn't. The reason is that when it was built London wasn't important. The year was 827AD. At that time England was ruled by a king, but not one who spoke any English. At that time, English did not exist. Britons had become Britons by migrating from Wales, Cornwall and Central mainland Europe to the isle. They were Celts and spoke Celtic.

Then, the Romans invaded the isle in 43AD and by 50AD built a city on the isthmus between the Thames and the Atlantic opening a center of commerce and trade to the European mainland. The Roman province of Britannia was Latin.

Within four centuries Anglo-Saxons invaded Britannia. The Germans took over. Some suggest they unleashed a massacre on the Celtic-Roman population and effectively wiped them out. This might be true but at any rate, after 449AD the Roman never again recaptured Britannia after it was lost.

The Anglo-Saxons were a mix from all over Europe whose native languages influenced the Germanic tongue they held in common. And they settled on the isle until interrupted by the Vikings from Northern Europe. About 1% of the English we speak is squarely derived from Norse. Then in 1066 the Normans who felt entitled to succeed King Edward the Confessor who had just died, invaded. The Normans were from Normandy where French was spoken. Right now, more than half of English is derived from French. That the French were the ruling class and the Anglo-Saxons were the working class can be seen in the words for beef (French: boeuf), mutton (French: mouton), pork (French: porque) being meat on the table as served to the elite able to afford meat. But the Saxon words cow, sheep and pig are the live versions, because the Saxons were the herders of the livestock.

The Hundred Years war began in 1337 and as the ruling class declined in strength, the use and importance of French declined. A mixture of Anglo-Saxon, French and Germanic languages from the native Britons starts to become English. During those years Geoffrey Chaucer chooses to write a history of his land not in French, nor in Latin (the languages of the literate), but in a strange new language with none of the prestige or security of those languages. It was a chance for Chaucer to take. How would anyone be able to read his work a century or two later when no one spoke English anymore? French and Latin were the language of the educated. The Plantagenet king of England himself scarcely knew English. The Bible, the central text of European culture of that time, was in those languages. Who knew whether this upstart creole would be around in a few generations? Chaucer may have considered the risk of writing such an expansive work as the Canterbury Tales in so transient a language as English. But the bet paid off handsomely. Not many years after he started it in 1343, John Wycliffe began to translate the Bible into this new language from Latin.

In Germany, Gutenberg had perfected his press and shipped it to England and throughout Europe. And so the stage was set for a new era of knowledge, exploration and discovery. The loosing of the grip of the clergy and the availability of the Bible and other literature thanks to the lower cost of printing meant that intellectuals, statesmen, merchants and travellers all over Europe could meet each other and share ideas. So it was that English again drew influence from French, but also Greek, Italian, Spanish and other languages. New territories were being discovered. Much like today India and China were the production houses for goods the European market were prepared to pay for and trade routes crisscrossed the globe. Africa and the Americas were discovered. The opportunities for commerce were suddenly immense. Slaves were kidnapped and delivered as free labour for the booming economy of Europe. The British navy decimated the naval powers of Spain, Netherlands and France. So rose the Anglo world power and the Empire that now included the vast new North America, Africa, India and Australia. This Empire covered the globe, 1 in 4 humans were subject to it. And as the colonies sprawled continents, imported natives from the subjugated lands brought their Oriental and Occidental languages to Britain and more exotic linguistic influences were felt.

The British colonies spread all across the globe. Of these colonies were "The Americas". What are now Canada and the United States were colonies of the Empire until the late 1700s. Their language was largely imported by colonial power and education. But the politics of America was very different to Britain. It governed itself. It rejected the rulership of an elite aristocratic class in favour of a republican model where the citizens had the vote. There was an unpleasant fight over tea imports taxed by the colonists off the coast of Massachussetts and so began a fight that divided America from the British Empire.

And so George Bernard Shaw could rightly call England and America 'two countries divided by a common language'. The English pilgrims migrated west and settled across a vast landscape. They farmed. They eventually built factories. They very reluctantly joined WWI in the last minute. From that point forward the world domination was shared by a dual power - England and America - the Anglo-American world power. America attracted immigrants from all over the globe. They made money. Their stock market crashed. The Great Depression hit. Then after WWII, which devastated mainland Europe and much of the United Kingdom, the United States emerged as an enforcer of might or right for the rest of the world. It exercised a different brand of domination. America exported its culture across the earth through radio, television and more recently the Internet.