It was said by Sir George Bernard Shaw that "England and America are two countries separated by the same language." My first personal experience of this was when I worked as a camp counselor for two months in 2000 in Summer Camp run by the Boy Scouts of America, as part of an international leader exchange scheme. Before I went, all the participants ha the scheme were given a short list of words that are in common use in the UK which Americans would either be confused by or would even offend them. I memorized the words and thought "I’ll cope".
When I finally arrived in the States three months later, I realized that perhaps a lifetime of watching American television was not adequate preparation for appreciating and coping with the differences between American and British speech. In the first hour of arriving at the camp I was exposed to High School American English, Black American English and American English spoken by Joe Public, all every different to each other. Needless to say, I did cope in the end. The Americans I met were very welcoming and helpful, and I found they were patient with me when I made a social faux pas when I used an inappropriate word or phrase.
Upon my return I began to wonder whether anyone had documented the differences between American and British English. I found several books on the subject but often these were written in a dry and academic way. I felt that I could do better and use my sense of humor and personal experiences to help people from both sides of Atlantic to communicate more effectively when they meet.
My research into the subject led me to several conclusions.
Firstly, American English and British English are covering, thanks to increased transatlantic travel and the media. The movement of slang words is mostly eastwards, though a few words from the UK have been adopted by the Ivy League fraternities. This convergent trend is a recent one dating from the emergence of Hollywood as the predominant film making center in the world and also from the Second World War when large numbers of American GIs were stationed in the UK. This trend was consolidated by the advent of television. Before then, it was thought that American English and British English would diverge as the two languages evolved. In 1789, Noah Webster stated that: "Numerous local causes, such as a new country, new associations of people, new combinations of ideas ha the arts and some intercourse with tribes wholly unknown in Europe will introduce new words into the American tongue." He was fight, but his next statement has since been proved to be incorrect. "These causes will produce in the course of time a language in North America as different from the modern Dutch, Danish and Swedish are from the German or from one another."
Webster had underrated the amount of social intercourse between England and her former colony. Even before Webster had started to compile his dictionary, words and expressions from the America had already infiltrated the British language, for example "canoe" and "hatchet".
Secondly, there are some generalizations that can be made about American and British English which can reveal the nature of the two nations and their peoples. British speech tends to be less general, and directed more, in nuances of meaning, attendant murmurings and pauses, carries a wealth of shared assumptions and attitudes. In other words, the British are preoccupied with their social status within society and speak and act accordingly to fit into the social class they aspire to. This is particularly evident when talking .to someone from "the middle class" when he points out that he is "upper middle class" rather than "middle class" or "lower middle class". John Major (the former UK Prime Minister) may have said that we are now living in a "classless society" but the class system still prevails. At that moment both he and the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Blair, were talking about capturing the "middle England", "middle class vote" as the key to winning the next general election. American speech tends to be influenced by the over-heated language of much of the media, which is designed to attach an impression of exciting activity to passive, if sometimes insignificant events. Yet, curiously, really violent activity and life-changing events are hidden in blind antiseptic tones that serve to disguise the reality. Two examples come readily to mind--the US Military with their "friendly fire" and "collateral damages" and the business world with their "downsizing". British people tend to understatement whereas Americans towards hyperbole. A Briton might respond to a suggestion with a word such as "Terrific! " only if he is expressing rapturous enthusiasm, whereas an American might use the word merely to signify polite assent.
Thirdly, The American language has less regard than the British for grammatical form, and will happily bulldoze its way across distinctions rather than steer a path between them. American English will casually use one form of a word for another, for example turning nouns into verbs or verbs and nouns into adjectives.