Lexicology. Different dialects and accents of English, Детальна інформація

The American spelling is in some respects simpler than its British counterpart, in other respects just different. The suffix -our is spelled

-or, so that armor and humor are the American variants of armour and humour. Altho stands for although and thru for through. The table below illustrates some of the other differences but it is by no means exhaustive.

For a more complete treatment the reader is referred to the monograph by A.

D. Schweitzer:

British spelling American spelling

offence offense cosy cozy practice practise thralldom thralldom jewellery jewelery traveling traveling

In the course of time with the development of the modern means of communication the lexical differences between the two variants show a tendency to decrease. Americanisms penetrate into Standard English and

Britishisms come to be widely used in American speech. Americanisms mentioned as specific in manuals issued a few decades ago are now used on both sides of the Atlantic or substituted by terms formerly considered as specifically British. It was, for instance, customary to contrast the

English word autumn with the American fall. In reality both words are used in both countries, only autumn is somewhat more elevated, while in England the word fall is now rare in literary use, though found in some dialects and surviving in set expressions: spring and fall, the fall of the year are still in fairly common use.

Cinema and TV are probably the most important channels for the passage of Americanisms into the language of Britain and other languages as well: the Germans adopted the word teenager and the French speak of

Vautomatisation. The influence of American publicity is also a vehicle of

Americanisms. This is how the British term wireless is replaced by the

Americanism radio. The jargon of American film-advertising makes its way into British usage; i.e. of all time (in "the greatest film of all time").

The phrase is now firmly established as standard vocabulary and applied to subjects other than films.

The personal visits of writers and scholars to the USA and all forms of other personal contacts bring back Americanisms.

The existing cases of difference between the two variants, are conveniently classified into:

1) Cases where there are no equivalents in British English: drive-in a cinema where you can see the film without getting out of your car' or 'a shop where motorists buy things staying in the car'; dude ranch 'a sham ranch used as a summer residence for holiday-makers from the cities'. The noun dude was originally a contemptuous nickname given by the inhabitants of the Western states to those of the Eastern states. Now there is no contempt intended in the word dude. It simply means 'a person who pays his way on a far ranch or camp'.

2) Cases where different words are used for the same denotatum, such as can, candy, mailbox, movies, suspenders, truck in the USA and tin, sweets, pillar-box (or letter-box), pictures or flicks, braces and lorry in

England.

3) Cases where the semantic structure of a partially equivalent word is different. The word pavement, for example, means in the first place

'covering of the street or the floor and the like made of asphalt, stones or some other material'. The derived meaning is in England 'the footway at the side of the road'. The Americans use the noun sidewalk for this, while pavement with them means 'the roadway'.

4) Cases where otherwise equivalent words are different in distribution.

The verb ride in Standard English is mostly combined with such nouns as a horse, a bicycle, more seldom they say to ride on a bus. In American

English combinations like a ride on the train to ride in a boat are .quite usual.

5) It sometimes happens that the same word is used in American English with some difference in emotional and stylistic colouring. Nasty, for example, is a much milder expression of disapproval in England than in the

States, where it was even considered obscene in the 19th century.

Politician in England means 'someone in polities', and is derogatory in the

USA. Professor Shweitzer, pays special attention to phenomena differing in social norms of usage. E.g. balance in its lexico-semantic variant 'the remainder of anything' is substandard in British English and quite literary in America.

6) Last but not least, there may be a marked difference in frequency characteristics. Thus, time-table which occurs in American English very rarely, yielded its place to schedule.

This question of different frequency distribution is also of paramount importance if we wish to investigate the morphological peculiarities of the