Abstract:British English and American English are the most important varieties of English language. There are some differences between them. This paper aims to analyze the lexical and grammatical differences between British English and American English. The lexical differences are shown in pronunciation, spelling and meaning. There are also some words only existing in either British English or American English. The grammatical differences are analyzed from the following aspects: tense, subjunctive mood, verbs, nouns, articles, prepositions, adjectives and adverbs. We need to understand the differences in order to avoid some misunderstandings arising from the differences between them. But we can not take the differences too far since they rooted from the same language and share the basic phonetic, lexical and grammatical systems. 

Key words: British English; American English; lexical differences; grammatical differences

CONTENTS

Abstract

中文摘要

1. Introduction .1

2. Reasons for Differences between British English and American English.2

3. Lexical Differences Between British English and American English.3

3.1 Differences in Pronunciation

  3.1.1 Differences in Vowels

  3.1.2 Differences in Consonants

  3.1.3 Differences in Word Stress 

  3.2 Differences in Spelling

    3.2.1 Simplification 

    3.2.2 Changes of Alphabets

  3.3 Differences in Meaning

3.3.1 Same Objects or Ideas Expressed by Different Words

3.3.2 Same Words with Different Meanings

  3.4 Words Without Counterparts

 4. Grammatical Differences Between British English and American English9

4.1 Differences in Tense

4.2 Differences in Subjective Mood

  4.3 Differences in the Use of Verbs

    4.3.1 Differences in Past Participle of Verbs

4.3.2 Differences in the Use Modal Verbs

4.3.3 Differences in the Use of “Have”

  4.4 Differences in the Use of Nouns

4.5 Differences in the Use of Articles

4.6 Differences in the Use of Prepositions

  4.7 Differences in the Use of Adjectives and Adverbs

5. Conclusion 14

Bibliography14 

Acknowledgments.16