British and American accents, what’s the different?

 

United Kingdom and United States, these two are different countries which speak the same language in general, English. They both are also included in the western domain. But does everyone know? Even though these countries are quite similar in particular things, there are also numerous differences which can be seen. The obvious difference between these two could be in the accent that they use when they speak. Those who have learned English will actually be familiar hearing the term “British and American”. Well, British is an accent used by the UK society while American is usually an accent of the US society. It may seem quite easy to differentiate those accents by hearing it. But for people who study English as a foreign language especially, knowing the distinction within these two accents in detail is a need. It may be hard to master both languages, but at least it is a need to know some major distinctions between them. There are three major differences of British and American accents such as: the word, the stress and the pronunciation.

Begin with the differences of word. There are several different terms of saying something although actually that term refers to the same things in these two accents. For instance, to address a football game by eleven players, British calls it as ‘football’ yet, American calls it ‘soccer’. Another examples are; the term of fried potato. British uses the term “chips” while American calls it as ‘French fries’, British says ‘sport shoes’ which refers to ‘sneaker’ in American accent, British usually labels a long-styled pants as ‘Trouser’ yet, American just calls it ‘Pants’.

Move on to the stress which occurs between those accents. There are several examples of how British and American settle of the stress position in words. Let say the word ‘garage’ as an example, American accent will probably be stressing the utterance in ‘r-a-g-e’. In contrast, British will put the stress on syllables ‘g-a-r’. Another example is on the word ‘advertisement’, The stress will comes out from the alphabet a-d in American accent while the syllables ‘t-i-s-e’ are the stress points in British.

The last major difference is the pronunciation. This matter is usually the most important concern to understand British and American accents. The examples are plentiful indeed. One of them is the sound of alphabet ‘R’ which is usually uttered stronger in American accent rather than British. Try to hear the sounds ‘chair’, ‘hear’, ‘water’, ‘clear’, and ‘pure’ and the differences of those accents will be heard. One more example, pronouncing alphabet ‘a’ in a certain word, such as: bath, laugh, ask, class, chance.

In conclusion, British and American accents have more than a few of distinctions. Three common things which are so contrastive are the word selection, where they put a stress, and how they pronounce it. After observing and studying those differences, it is clear that both of the accents contain their own uniqueness that differentiates them with each other.