British English American English
colour color
biscuit cookie
petrol gasoline or gas
flat apartment
taxi cab
wallet billfold
zebra crossing crosswalk
lift elevator
rubber eraser
tap faucet
ground floor first floor
postman mailman
mum mom
railway railroad
toilet restroom
pavement sidewalk
post code zip code
While the above Spellings and words in BE and AE will help you score good marks in your English subject, the main differences between BE and AE are as follows.
Main Differences between BE and AE:
1. Phrases
2. Past participle forms
3. Spellings
4. Euphemism
1. Phrases:
While many people have fun playing with the spellings of BE and AE, not many realize that much more fun is possible using the phrases that people use in American English. Pipe down, sun down, throw up, hangout, chill out, etc. are some of the phrases that people use in AE. If you just follow BE, I am confident that you are going to get the meanings of these phrases completely wrong. Now, let's see the real meanings of these phrases that are frequently used in American English.
Pipe down - to be quiet or less noisy.
Sun down - the time when the sun sets (sunset).
Throw up - about to vomit.
Hangout - spending time with friends at a particular time or place.
Chill out - feel relaxed.
having a blast/ball - having a great time.
2. Past participle forms:
'Got' is the past participle of get in BE and 'gotten' is its past participle in AE. While Americans say 'gonna', Brits say 'going to'.
3. Spellings:
Spellings are the basic difference between BE and AE. Some common words like colour, centre and litre in BE have the spellings color, center and liter respectively in AE. Remember that, spellings are of less importance as nowadays, many word documents follow the spellings of AE. For an example, if you type the word 'colour' in a word document, it will be highlighted as an error, whereas the spelling 'color' will not be considered as a spelling mistake in most word documents.
4. Euphemism:
Euphemism is art of being professional with your choice of words. AE has a lot of phrases that will help you follow euphemism. For an example, the word, toilet in BE is restroom in AE. 'Would you like to go to the restroom?' sounds better than 'Would you like to go to the toilet?'
'Pipe down' is also another example of this.
Click here for some common phrases in AE that will help you understand better the difference between BE and AE.
