American, British and Australian "Englishes"

American, British and Australian "Englishes"

Language is born of culture and, in turn, reflects the history of a culture. This is evident when comparing English in Britain, the United States and Australia. These three dialects have many similarities but a surprising number of differences as well. The purpose of this report is to differentiate the specific spelling, grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation of American (AmE), British (BrE) and Australian English (AuE).

Of the three dialects, BrE, the form of English used in the United Kingdom, has the most confusing grammar and spelling rules. This is because of the French influence in the 18th century and the British preoccupation with class distinction.

 The US dialect is almost universally recognised as the easiest to understand. In comparison to BrE, its spelling is more phonetic, grammar more pattern orientated, and its pronunciation is more legible. The American fondness for a legible and persuasive dialect can probably be traced to the US' religious history, economical liberalist economy and presidential system that rewards those leaders that have been best able to rally the masses behind them.

AuE is different from BrE and AmE in that it has a bias towards invention, deception, profanity, humour and a classless society. At times, this can make it almost impossible to understand and quite offensive to speakers accustomed to formality. It reflects Australia's identity conflicts born out of its penal history. However, AuE has more in common with BrE than AmE.

Some people have described the Australian accent as sounding excessively lazy. On the positive side, this has made it extremely easy for Australians to adopt other English accents but difficult for speakers of other English dialects to adopt the Australian accent. 

Some have speculated that the lazy sound is the result of Australians needing to keep their mouths mostly shut to keep out the flies. Perhaps another explanation could be that it reflects an Aboriginal influence. Although Aboriginal languages are extremely diverse throughout Australia, they share a propensity to end each syllable with a vowel sound, thus making sentences sound extremely smooth. The use of Aboriginal words requires the English words be softened to harmonise them with the smooth sounding Aboriginal words. This requires a less defined but more subtle use of lips and tongue and a nasal rather than throaty sound.

Pronunciation

In England, accents vary according to class and region. In America, they vary according to race and region. Unlike America or England, Australia has no variance in speaking according to class, race or region. Instead, the accent varies according to ideology or gender. Two Australians can grow up side by side, go to the same schools, do the same job, but end up speaking English using different words, different syntax and with different accents. In fact, due to the gender variance, a brother and sister can grow up in the same house and end up speaking differently.

Change of Diphthong [əʊ] to [oʊ]

Most of the times, the [əʊ] diphthong in British Received Pronunciation (RP) differs from the General American English (GA). Americans use the [oʊ] diphthong instead. In the following chart you’ll see some examples.

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 Change of Vowel [ɒ]

Letter "o" is pronounced in many different ways in English. Here we have a few illustrative examples of such diversity: Hot [hɒt] in BrE but [hɑ:t] in GA; love [lʌv]; corn [kɔ:n] in RP, but [kɔ:rn] in GA; continue [kənˈtɪnju:]; moon [mu:n]; coast [kəʊst] in BrE, but [koʊst] in GA; house [haʊs]. The so-called "short o", which often appears in a stressed syllable with one letter o such as in dog or model, underwent a change in AmE. In BrE that sound is pronounced as an open back rounded short sound [ɒ], as in hot [hɒt], or possible [ˈpɒsəbl]. In AmE it is pronounced either as an open back unrounded long sound [ɑ:], as in hot [hɑ:t], or as an open-mid back rounded long vowel [ɔ:], as in dog [dɔ:g]. Note that BrE prefers a short sound as opposed to AmE, which prefers a long sound in all cases.

Changes to [oʊ] and [ʌ]

The most frequent changes are from [ɒ] to [ɑ:] and [ɔ:]. However, in a very few cases vowel [ɒ] is changed to [oʊ] and [ʌ].

• Change to [oʊ]: homosexual [ˈhoʊməˈsekʃuəl]; in BrE compost is [ˈkɒmpɒst], but in GA it is [ˈkɑ:mpoʊst]. Other words are: impost, pogrom (in the second syllable), produce (as noun), provost, riposte, scone, shalom.
• Change to [ʌ]: hovel, hover, therefrom, wasn’t.

Other things to keep in mind

• Typically  AmE puts the stress on the final syllable, whereas BrE and AuE make an earlier syllable stressed.                           

 British     &

                            Australian              American   

• The letter /r/ after a vowel is typically pronounced in AmE, but often dropped in BrE. So someone from Chicago would clearly pronounce the /r/ at the end of "far," but someone from London would likely say something more like "fah." But be careful: some U.S. dialects also drop the /r/, and some dialects in Britain pronounce it.
• Also, if in AmE a /t/ or /d/ sound are between two vowels and the second vowel is not stressed, these sounds are pronounced very quickly, so they become an alveolar flat similar to the /r/ o sometimes /d/ sound. So "water" would sound more like /wɔːrə/ and "daddy" would sound /dærɪ/.
• AmE tends to pronounce the /æ/ sound before /f, s, θ/, in words like bath/bæθ/, path /pæθ/, pass /pæs/, dance /dæns/ (pronounced with the mouth wide open), whereas the British pronounce a long sound /a:/, so bath /ba:θ/, path /pa:θ/, pass /pa:s/, dance /da:ns/.
• In general terms, Australian pronunciation follows the British.

Vocabulary

Australian vs. New Zealand English

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