A
There is an old saying that America and Britain are “two nations divided by a common language.” No one knows exactly who said this, but it reflects the way many Brits feel about American English. But are American and British English really so different?
Vocabulary
The most obvious difference between American and British English is vocabulary. There are hundreds of everyday words that are different. For example, Americans go on vacation while Brits go on holidays; New Yorkers live in apartments while Londoners live in flats. There are far more examples than we can talk about here. Fortunately, most Americans and Brits can usually guess the meaning through the context of a sentence.
Past Tense Verbs
You’ll also find some differences with past forms of irregular verbs. The past tense of “learn”
in American English is “learned”. British English has the option(选择) of “learned” or “learnt”. The same rule applies to “dreamed” and “dreamt”, “burned” and “burnt”, and “leaned” and “leant”. Americans tend to use the -ed ending; Brits tend to use the-t ending.
Spelling
There are hundreds of slight spelling differences between British and American English. Noah Webster, an author, politician and teacher, made an effort to reform English spelling in the late 1700s.
Webster wanted to spell words the way they sounded. You can see Webster’s legacy(遗产) in
the American spelling of words like color (from colour), honor (from honour), and labor(from labour).
Not So Different After All
British and American English have far more similarities than differences. With the exception
of some regional dialects, most Brits and Americans can understand each other without too much difficulty. They watch each other’s TV shows, sing each other’s songs and read each other’s books. They even make fun of each others’ accents.
21．Which of the following is a group of American words?
A. Vacation; apartment. B. Vacation; holiday.
C. Apartment; flat. D. Holiday; flat.
22．What do we know about British and American English from the last paragraph?
A. Their differences have little effect on communication.
B. They connect people of the two countries.
C. They are affecting people using them.
D. They both have some strange words.
23．What can be the best title for the text?
A. Difficulty for Brits and Americans to understand each other.
B. Ways to tell British English from American English.
C. Differences between British and American English.
D. Development of British and American English.
