History

The British cringed over new American accents, coinages and vulgarisms. Prophets of doom flourished; the English language in America was going to disappear. “Their language will become as independent of England, as they themselves are,” wrote Jonathan Boucher, an English clergyman living in Maryland. Frances Trollope, mother of the novelist Anthony Trollope, was disgusted by “strange uncouth phrases and pronunciation” when she travelled in America in 1832. “Here then is the ruination of our classic English tongue,” mourned the British engineer, John Mactaggart. Even Thomas Jefferson found himself on the receiving end of an avalanche of British mockery, as The London Magazine in 1787 raged against his propensity to coin Americanisms: “For shame, Mr. Jefferson. Why, after trampling upon the honour of our country, and representing it as little better than a land of barbarism – why, we say, perpetually trample also upon the very grammar of our language? … Freely, good sir, will we forgive all your attacks, impotent as they are illiberal, upon our national character; but for the future, spare – O spare, we beseech you, our mother-tongue!”

But such protests did not stop Americans from telling the British to mind their own business, as they continued to use the language the way they felt they needed to in building their nation.

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Independence, it was felt by many, was a cultural as well as political matter that could never be complete without Americans taking pride in their own language. On the part of the more zealous American patriots like Thomas Jefferson and Noah Webster, the goal was national unity fostered by a conviction that Americans now ought to own and possess their own language. Jefferson led the charge by declaring war against Samuel Johnson’s famous Dictionary of the English Language, which continued to reign supreme for a century after its publication in 1755. Unless Johnson were toppled from his perch as the sage of the English language, he argued, America could remain hostage to British English deep into the 19th century. Webster, the self-styled grammarian who egotistically claimed for himself the role of “prophet of language to the American people,” was by far the most hostile to British interference in the development of the American language. He wrote an essay entitled, “English Corruption of the American Language,” casting Johnson as “the insidious Delilah by which the Samsons of our country are shorn of their locks.”

“Great Britain, whose children we are,” he claimed, “and whose language we speak, should no longer be our standard; for the taste of her writers is already corrupted, and her language on the decline.”

Yet, not all Americans were on board with Webster’s ideas and many Americans fought back, thoroughly and lastingly mocking him for his egregious reforms of the language, especially spelling, as a way of banishing the persistent American subservience to British culture. Pointing to him, one of his many American enemies remarked, “I expect to encounter the displeasure of our American reformers, who think we ought to throw off our native tongue as one of the badges of English servitude, and establish a new tongue for ourselves. … the best scholars in our country treat such a scheme with derision.”

We have to give it to Webster that he did write, as he made a point of putting it in his title, the first comprehensive unabridged “American” dictionary of the language. That effort, such as it was, 30 years in the making, brought on the golden age of American dictionaries — that is, those written in the U.S. The great historical irony, in light of decades of British ridicule of what Americans were doing with the language, is that Americans, like Webster’s superior and forgotten lexicographical rival Joseph Emerson Worcester, quickly surpassed British writers of dictionaries and continued to do so for more than half a century, until the birth of the monumental Oxford English Dictionary finally began to replace Johnson’s as Britain’s national dictionary.

Nonetheless, the flow of bad blood shed throughout the tortuous language and dictionary wars in the 19th century continued well into the 20th century, confirming that America and Britain were then and still are, as is often said, two nations “divided by a common language.” Divided, indeed, as with the same language they have always been able to understand their insults of one another.

Peter Martin is the author of the book The Dictionary Wars: The American Fight over the English Language (Princeton University Press 2019). He is also the author of the biographies Samuel Johnson and A Life of James Boswell. He has taught English literature in the United States and England.

Vocabulary

The greatest difference between British and American English is the difference in vocabulary, and there are several reasons for these discrepancies. Both countries have to a large extent been influenced by their neighbouring countries and by people settling within their borders. One example is the British name for the herb 'coriander', which has been adopted from French ('coriandre'). But if you move to the United States, they would use the Spanish word 'cilantro', reflecting their proximity to Mexico. Another example is the names of the vegetable 'courgette' (BrE) or 'zucchini' (AmE). Again, the British word is taken from French, while the American name this time comes from Italian immigrants who introduced the vegetable into American cooking.

Some of the differences in vocabulary are merely results of different preferences. You probably know that 'fall' and 'autumn' mean the same thing, but that the former is American English and the latter British English. These two words were in fact used side by side in both countries for a long time. But over time, the originally French word 'autumn' became the preferred word in Britain, while the United States gradually began to prefer the word 'fall'.

For the most part, the lexical differences have developed as an inevitable result of centuries of separation and independent development. Whenever people on one side of the Atlantic needed a new word, they simply invented one without bothering to investigate whether speakers on the other side of the Atlantic used another word for the same thing. Words like 'railway'- / -'railroad', 'film'- / -'movie', and 'car'- / -'automobile' have developed independently on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

The interesting thing is that many words that we today categorise as typically American words are, in fact, words that historically were used in Britain first. For example, words like 'gotten', 'diaper', 'soccer', 'trash', 'sidewalk' and 'candy' all have British origin. While British English have found other words describing the same things, these words have become the preferred words in North America.

Spelling

Also when it comes to spelling, the American version is sometimes closer to the original. For example, the suffix -ize ('organize', 'realize', 'civilize'…) was in fact the original British spelling until around the 18th century. In America, they kept the original spelling, but in Britain they also allowed for the suffix -ise ('organise', 'realise', 'civilise'…). The same thing happened to words ending in -er ('theater', 'center'…). The British spelling was changed to -re ('theatre', 'centre'), giving it a French touch, while the Americans kept the original spelling.

However, Americans have also been responsible for some changes. When America received their independence from Britain in 1776, an American academic, Noah Webster, saw that political independence also provided an opportunity for linguistic independence, and he compiled the famous Webster Dictionary. Webster wanted American English spelling to be straightforward and easy, and he attempted to simplify the language by dropping what he felt were unnecessary letters. He also wanted American English spelling to be different from British spelling as a way of demonstrating that America was an independent country – almost like a form of political protest. As a result, American and British spelling is today different in words like 'flavor'- / -'flavour', 'armor'- / -'armour', 'anemic'- / -'anaemic', and 'catalog'- / -'catalogue'.

Pronunciation

Listening to British and American English, the most distinct difference in pronunciation is the /r/ sound. Standard British English is a so-called non-rhotic variant, which means that the consonant /r/ disappears from speech everywhere except before a vowel. American English, on the other hand, is a rhotic language, where the /r/ sound is pronounced throughout the word. You can easily hear the difference in words like 'far', 'dark', 'bird' and 'further', where Americans would pronounce the /r/ sound while a Standard British speaker would leave it out. (However, it should be noted that there are regional exceptions to these patterns, as some of the accents of south-eastern England, plus the accents of Scotland and Ireland, are rhotic. Also, some areas of the American Southeast, plus Boston, are non-rhotic.)

Interestingly, the British accent used to be rhotic, like the present-day American accent, but the /r/ has now completely disappeared from Standard British English. This change started at the end of the 17th century or early 18th century, and Americans who returned to Britain at the end of the 18th century reported with surprise this significant change in the pronunciation of the language.

The pronunciation of American English has most likely evolved less than British English since the first settlers arrived in America, and it has retained many elements of the language that used to be spoken in Britain before the colonisation. So, perhaps the plays of Shakespeare would sound more authentic performed in Chicago than in London?