The Lexical Differences Between American English and British English
Abstract
With the development of the two countries—America and the U.K., the differences in some fields are clear and are also reflected in their languages. Even though there are many similarities in both variants, there are many differences in lexicology becau of different regions, social backgrounds, the ways of people’s thinking, etc. This paper discuss the differences in lexicology between British English and American English and their tendency through the historical development of the two variants.
hard什么意思中文意思
Key Words
American English; British English; the lexical difference
摘 要
美国是一个移民国家，美国英语主要是十七世纪英国英语在美国的进一步发展。美国英语和英国英语虽然有很多相同之处，但是由于历史文化和社会背景及人们的思维方式导致了很多的不同。随着社会的发展，美国英语与英国英语的差别越来越显著。本文通过回顾分析英国英语和美国英语的历史演变和发展
过程，论述了美国英语和英国英语在词汇方面存在的主要差异，通过了解两种英语在词汇方面存在的差异，使英语学习者比较容易地掌握某一种英语以及正确地表达英语包含的丰富的知识。本文同时还指出了美国英语以其独有的特点和语言艺术魅力越来越受到人们的关注，从而探讨英语的发展趋势。
diz关键词
美国英语；英国英语；词汇差异
Introduction
Among the thousands of different languages in the world there is only one that can claim to be a more or less universal language—English. It is estimated that there are over 300 million native speakers, of whom some 200 million live in the United States and some 50 million in the United Kingdom. In addition to native speakers there are about 500 to 700 million people using English, which makes the total number of speakers nearly one-forth of the world’s population. Today, American English is particularly influential; there are many other varieties of English around the world, including, for example, Australian English, New Zealand English, Canadian English, South African English, Indian English and Caribbean English. Among the different variants of English the two best known are American English and British English. There do exist differences between the tw
o, just as many differences in the varieties within themlves. To be consistent in the u of English, and more importantly, to be understood, the nonnative speaker needs to know which words have distinct meanings and pronunciations depending on whether they are ud by an Englishman or an American. This is necessary not only for sake of communication, but also to avoid embarrassment. This paper will focus on how American English came to be different from British English in lexicology.
Ⅰ. Historical Background of British and American Engl
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A. The History of British English
The history of the English language can be dated from the arrival of three Germanic tribes to the Britain during the 5th Century AD. Angles, Saxons and Jutes crosd the North Sea from what is the prent day Denmark and northern Germany to Britain. The inhabitants of Britain previously spoke a Celtic language. However, it was quickly displaced by the language brought with the invaders. Most of the Celtic speakers were pushed into Wales, Cornwall and Scotland. One group migrated to the Brittany Coast of France where their descendants still speak the Celtic Language of Breton today. The Angles were named from Engle, their land of origin. After experiencing constant development, i
gcwmmigrates’ language had changed into the current English. Up to now, it has more than one thousand five hundred years, which some scholars divided into veral stages in order to illustrate the history of English. However, they did not divide it in the same way. “Here quotes the way of American professor Kennedy who divided historical process of period into such three stages” (Guo Boyu 5).
1. The Period of Old English
The period from 450 to 1100 is known as the Old English. The earliest period begins with the immigration of certain Germanic tribes from the continent to Britain in the fifth century A. D., though no records of their language survive from before the venth century, and it continues to the end of the eleventh century or maybe a bit later. As having been en that English language did not simply spring into existence; it was brought from the Continent by Germanic tribes who had no form of writing and hence left no records. Philologists know that they must have spoken a dialect of a language that can be called West Germanic. By that time Latin, Old Nor (the language of the Viking invaders), and especially the Anglo-Norman French of the dominant class after the Norman Conquest in 1066 had begun to have a substantial impact on the lexicon. The following brief sample of Old English pro illustrates veral of the significant ways in which English has transformed. A fe
w of the words will be recognized as identical in spelling with their modern equivalents -- he, of, him, for, and, on etc., and some of words are familiar to modern words, which can be easily guesd, such as w?re to were, w?s to was, of which only the who have made special study of Old English can understand what their meanings are.
2. The Period of Middle English
The period of Middle English extends roughly from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. This period was marked by important and significant changes in the English language, especially in the vocabulary. The Norman Conquest was the cau of the changes. The change of this period had a great effect on vocabulary. In this period many Old English words were lost, but thousands of words borrowed from French and Latin appeared in the English vocabulary.breezy
Becau the Normans who conquered the Britain were government administrators or lords, meat was their most main dishes. Such words as beef, mutton, veal, and calf, etc. came into English vocabulary. That is to say, the influence of French upon the English lexicon continued throughout this period. “English had also strong influence from Latin (mostly through the church and scholars) and the Norman invasion of England brought about significant changes in the language” (Guo Boyu 6).
台湾猕猴
3. The Period of Modern English
Modern English period extends from fifteenth century to the prent day. Modern English developed by the efforts of literary and political writings. From 1500 to 1700 is the early modern English. During this time, the chief influence of this time was great humanistic movement of the Renaissance. Since the 16th Century, becau of the contact that the British had with many peoples from around the world, and the Renaissance of Classical learning, many words have entered the language either directly or indirectly. New words were created at an increasing rate. Shakespeare coined over 1600 words. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries are a period of rapid expansion for the English vocabulary in the history of the English language. Other important developments at this period include the stabilizing effect on spelling of the printing press and the beginning of the direct influence of Latin, Greek on the lexicon. Later, as English came into contact with other cultures around the world and distinctive dialects of English developed in the many areas which Britain had colonized, other numerous languages made small but interesting contributions to the language vocabulary. Lexical improvement in this process has grown rapidly. Therefore, the vocabulary of English is the largest of any language.
会计上岗证培训The historical aspect of English really encompass more than three stages of development above
mentioned. English has what might be called a prehistory as well. English is just one relatively young member of an ancient family of languages who descendants cover a fair portion of the globe. During the English development, there are numerous words borrowed from abroad. Borrowed words include names of animals, clothing, food, scientific and mathematical terms, drinks, religious terms, sports, vehicles, music and art, weapons, political and military terms, and astronomical names.
Languages that have contributed words to English include “Latin, Greek, French, German, Arabic, Hindi (from India), Italian, Malay, Dutch, Farsi (from Iran and Afghanistan), Sanskrit (from ancient India), Portugue, Spanish, and Ewe (from Africa)” (Quark 4). Even with all the borrowings the core of the language remains the Anglo-Saxon of Old English. Only about 5000 words from this period have remained unchanged but they include the basic building blocks of the language: houhold words, parts of the body, common animals, natural elements, most pronouns, pre
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positions, conjunctions and auxiliary verbs.
B. The Development of American English on the Basis of British English
The history of American English can be divided into the colonial (1607-1776), the national (1776-1898), and the international (1898-prent) periods. During nearly four hundred years of u in North
America, the English language changed.
hujiangAmerican English began in the venteenth century. At the beginning of the 17th century the English language was brought to North American by colonists from England. They ud the language spoken in England. “George P. Krapp, a professor in Columbia University of American, indicated in his book that the British people had brought the Shakespeare and Milton’s English into American. That is, Elizabethan English, the language ud by Shakespeare, Milton and Banyan” (Guo Boyu 61). At first the language stayed the same as the language ud in Britain, but slowly the language began to change. Sometimes, the English spoken in American changed but sometimes the language spoken in the place stayed the same, while the language in England changed. The development of the English language in America can be parated into three periods: The first period extends from the ttlement of Jamestown in 1607 to the end of colonial times. In this period the population in America numbered about four million people, 90 percent of them came from Britain. The cond period covers the expansion of the original thirteen colonies. This period may be said to clo with the Civil War, about 1860. This period was marked by the arrival of the new immigrants from Ireland and Germany. The third period, since the Civil War, is marked by an important change in the source from which the European immigrants came. They came from northern and southern Europe in large numbers.
Following American independence, famous persons like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Webster began to consider that the country should have a language of its own. English in America has developed a character of its own, reflecting the life and the physical and social environment of the American people. As time went on, the English language gradually changed on both sides of the Atlantic. The Americans adopted many words from foreign languages and invented large number of new words to meet their various needs.
Ⅱ.Reasons for the Development of American English
A. Being in Different Regions
British English changed after the emigrants left their homeland while American English formed after the colonists ttled on the continent. The Origin of American English was in the Colonial Period in the 17th century when the English language first came to America with the colonists. After arriving in the new continent-North America, the early ttlers were not with just the only English language; there undoubtedly were veral different dialects and they obviously had to cope with a general lack of uniformity of speech. It is also obvious that the ch
anges producing the two variants of English happened on both sides of the ocean. In tho days it w淘汰的英文
as very difficult for an immigrant in America to be in contact with people left behind in the old country and therefore the changes in language on either side did not transfer to the other.
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Life in America, in a totally new environment, was different from the life of the ttlers; therefore language had to evolve becau of the necessity of talking about new things, qualities, operations, concepts and ideas. There were features of colonial and frontier life that did not have an expression in the British English language; they encountered new plants, domesticated fish and animals. Later they found themlves living among tribes of indigenous peoples who spoke strange languages, wore strange clothing, prepared strange foods and maintained tribal customs quite different from anything they had previously encountered. Even landscapes were different from the English countryside. All of the unfamiliar things needed to be named in order to lead their new life in the continent without obstacles. Therefore, they have created new words for new things they had en.
B. Borrowing Words from Other Countries
Borrowing words from the Indians, French, Spanish, Dutch, Germans and Africans is another way to make American English vocabulary different from tho of British English. Actually, British English had also borrowed words from some of the countries, but compared with Britain, the words borrow
ed in American English were greatly and diverly different at such a certain time. One simple way of creating new names was borrowing them ― often from the native Indian languages. Many of the original Indian words contained sounds and had linguistic features that did not occur in English; therefore the words often changed considerably both in form and meaning in the borrowing process. “For instance, such words as hickory, pecan, chipmunk, squaw and raccoon are American Indian borrowings” (Guo Boyu 65).
The spheres of life reprented by the borrowings show that the largest number of Indian loan words is connected with the Indian institutions and civilization. In the cas, as for the strange things they had previously met, it was also obviously easier to borrow the Indian term than to create a new one out of English elements. It was equally obvious that the terms were not transferred to British English, since the vocabularies were not prent in Britain.
From the early days of colonization, America became the melting pot of different nationalities and cultures. As the cultures came in contact with one another, they also influenced the language. Besides the Indian language, sources for loaned words of American English were all the other languages that were prent in the immigration. In the westward expansion of their territory, the English-speaking emigrants soon came into contact with the French words.
American English also bo
rrowed words from Spanish. In the period of moving south toward the Gulf of Mexico and moving west toward the Rockies, the Anglo-Saxon ttlers encountered permanent and substantial Spanish colonies. It is obvious that the largest groups of borrowings from the Spanish reflects the hacienda culture, which typified the Spanish colonial occupation and the ranching and mining economy which developed out of it.
Contacts with the Dutch colonialists were established in the 17th century. However, Dutch sailors had been in contact with the colonialists long before that. Some of the words borrowed from Dutch are wholly or in part translations rather than direct appropriations. The Germane migrations to America started also in the late 17th century. The contacts between the German and English-speaking immigrants have been to a large extent cultural, since a large portion of the borrowings from German concentrates on food terms and pleasant but commonplace social contact.
One must not forget another big group of different kind of "immigrants" that influenced the American English ―the black people who were transported from Africa as slaves. Such words as gumbo, jazz, voodoo, okra and chigger are Africans. Therefore African words are also widely ud in American En
glish. The are just a few examples of loan words; there are also many more languages, reprenting smaller groups of immigrants, which have also made contributions to the American English vocabulary. All have done their part to make American English what it is today.
Ⅲ. The Different Meanings in American English Vocabulary
A．Creation of American Lexicon
North America has given the English lexicon many thousands of words. Several thousands words are now ud in English as spoken internationally; however, veral words died within a few years of their creation. All of the vocabularies are not found in British English.
The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as the colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from the Native American languages. Examples of such names are opossum, raccoon, squash, and moo. Other American Indian loanwords, such as wigwam or moccasin, describe artificial objects in common u among Native Americans. The languages of the other colonizing nations were also added to the American vocabulary; for instance, “cookie, cruller, and pit (of a fruit) from Dutch; levee, portage, and gopher from French; barbecue, stevedore from Spanish” (Li Xia 4).
Among the earliest and most notable regular words additions to the American vocabulary, dating from the early days of colonization through the early 19th century, are terms describing the features of the North American landscape; “for instance, run, branch, fork, snag, bluff, gulch, neck (of the woods), barrens, bottomland, notch, knob, riffle, rapids, cutoff, trail, timberline, and divide etc, which have new meanings that were unknown in England” (Chen
