短文内容
British English and American English
Many students want to k now about the differences between American En glish and British English. How d id these differences come about? There is no quick answer to this question. At first the language in Britain and America was the same. In 1776 America became an independent country. After that the lan guage slowly began to change. For a long time, the language in America stayed the same, while the language in England changed. For example, 300 years ago the English talked about "fall". Today most British p eople talk about "autumn", but Americans still talk about "fall".
At the same time, British English and American English started borrowing words from other languages. For example the British took "typhoon" from Chinese, while the Americans took "tornado" from Spanish.
In 1828 Noah Webste r published the first American dictionary. He wanted to make American English different from British English. So he changed the spelling of many words. Except for these differences in spelling, written English is almost the same in both British and American English.
The difference s are greater in the spoken language. Howe ver, most of the time people from the two countries do not have any difficulty in understanding each other.
1．America stopped being a part of England in _________.
A. 1707 B. 1828 C. 1776 D. 1991
