However, the British settlers were by far more educated than the natives and so it happened that the first “centers of language authority from which unique orthographic principles might arise – printing houses, authors, lexicographers, legal administrators, and the like” were predominantly created and influenced by the settlers. Once arrived, the settlers “found themselves in a very diverse linguistic culture”, and soon they came into contact with various Amerindian languages of the native tribes. įrom the beginning of the 17th century onwards, British settlers and mariners began to establish permanent settlements on the North American continent and expansed all over the American East Coast until the middle of the 18th century.
Thus, one can say that the core of American spelling is basically derived from British spelling. Originally, “American English spelling began as a set of patterns, rules, and preferences that traveled across the Atlantic from England” to North America. 2 Historical stages and reasons for the development of spelling differences between AmE and BrE 2.1 A brief survey of the first settlements, the establishment of printing, and the beginning of American writing Afterwards, it will give a detailed overview about the most prominent and common spelling differences between AmE and BrE by categorising them into three major groups and providing a couple of examples for each group, and finally, this paper will briefly reflect on the situation of AmE and BrE in the world today. Therefore, this paper will first work out some historical reasons for the development of spelling differences between the two ‘reference varieties’ and highlight America’s most influential attempts to standardise American spelling. In the following, this paper concentrates on pointing out the major differences in spelling between contemporary AmE and BrE since this linguistic field of interest is very strongly related to the different historical and political developments America and Great Britain went through. However - to a certain extent - there are some characteristic spelling differences between AmE and BrE which many learners of English are not well familiar with. Today, the vast majority of English lexis is spelled the same in AmE and BrE. Whereas the fields of pronunciation and lexis definitely share the most prominent and numerous differences between AmE and BrE, the field of spelling shows only a couple of minor differences.
Closer investigations reveal that AmE is different from BrE at levels of phonetics, phonology, grammar, lexis and spelling. Consequently, BrE and AmE “provided the chief native-speaker models which non-native speaking teachers of English” aim to instil.Īlthough both ‘reference varieties’ of English seem to be very much the same at first sight, “British and American English undoubtedly are different, and Englishmen and Americans undoubtedly know it.”. The reason why these two varieties have aquired such a prestigious position among many other varieties of English is that in Great Britain and in the United States - two of the most influential nations of the 20th century in terms of political power and economical strength – “English has been institutionalised longer than anywhere else”. Even today - in the 21st century – BrE and AmE represent “a large proportion of all native speakers of English (83 per cent)” in the world. Throughout the 20th century, Standard British English (hereafter BrE) and Standard American English (hereafter AmE) made up the two ‘reference varieties’ of the English language. 2 Historical stages and reasons for the development of spelling differences between AmE and BrE.Ģ.1 A brief survey of the first settlements, the establishment of printing, and the beginning of American writingĢ.2 Early efforts of spelling reform and their influence on American spellingĢ.3 The linguistic patriotism and the standardisation of American spellingĢ.4 Further reform efforts in the late 19th and early 20th centuriesģ Overview about differences between contemporary AmE and BrE in spelling and punctuationģ.2 Individual words differing in spellingĤ Situation of AmE and BrE in the world today
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