For better or for worse, English is now effectively the world’s medium of communication. Despite the existence of other languages that are either widely used (most obviously Spanish, French, and Arabic) or have very large numbers of speakers (such as Chinese), the pre-eminent position in international transactions of all kinds is held by English. The language has been embraced as the medium of communication in fields as diverse as aviation, diplomacy, and tourism. English is the undisputed language of science and technology, and the predominant language at international academic and business conferences. It is also the language of a large percentage of the information stored on the world’s computers, and, in an era dominated by the Internet, it is calculated that 90% of all Internet content is in English.
What sort of a language is English? Owing to its use both historically and contemporaneously, there are, in fact, many kinds of English ? American, British, Canadian, Australian, Irish, Indian, Singaporean, and South African, to name but a few. However, it is only the first two which are regarded as having what may be called “international prestige”. That is to say, these are the only two forms recognized internationally for the purposes of general English language instruction and given comprehensive coverage in dictionaries, grammars, and textbooks produced around the world. Of course, both American and British English have their own subsets of dialects, but the “standard” forms of these two varieties constitute the basis of what could be termed “World English”. In what follows, the terms “American English” and “British English” will be taken to refer to the standard forms of the two varieties.
The importance of English globally is not the result of any inherent “superiority” of the language. In purely linguistic terms, any language could serve equally well as the medium of global communication. Rather, it is the result of external factors ? mainly historical ? having to do with the influence of Britain in the 19 th century and America in the 20 th. British English maintains its prestige first of all from the fact that England was the birthplace of the language. Additionally, it has long enjoyed an unsurpassed literary heritage, and, through an empire that reached its peak in the Victorian era, Britain established a worldwide network of colonies where the legacy of language remains strong long after the disappearance of the empire itself. Britain also has a vigorous publication and education industry that exerts considerable influence around the world.
The status of American English, on the other hand, derives from factors that have more to do with modern economic, technological, and cultural issues. The U.S.A. is the world’s leading economic power, driving business markets on a worldwide scale and lending weight to the American form of English. America is also the world leader in information technology, an area in which every country in the world has an interest. The language of the States is given further prominence by the massive cultural output of the country ? especially in terms of music and screen entertainment both large and small. Finally, the American form of the language is boosted by force of numbers: approximately 70% of all native speakers of English are speakers of American English.
Although the two varieties are mutually comprehensible to a very large degree, there are many ways in which the two differ. Indeed, among the sayings attributed to G.B. Shaw is one declaring that “ England and America are two countries divided by a common language.” The differences range across the whole language, affecting pronunciation (American English is typically rhotic, for example, while British English is not), spelling (American English favors the trend towards transparency, so that American spellings are typically simpler than their British counterparts), vocabulary (including many hundreds of individual words, but also some whole categories, such as words for clothing or the parts of a car), and even grammar (in particular, the use of prepositions and the use of the perfective aspect).
English belongs to the Germanic subdivision of the Indo-European family of languages. During the fifth and sixth centuries, waves of Angle, Saxon, and Jute invaders began populating the British Isles, speaking a mixture of mutually intelligible West Germanic dialects. Isolated from their origins, and heavily influenced by further influences from both Romance (in the form of the Latin used to spread Christianity, and, in 1066, an overwhelming invasion by the French-speaking Normans) and North Germanic (in the form of repeated Viking incursions), the settlers began to speak a language quite separate from its continental Germanic counterparts. The result was English.
For over a thousand years, English was simply one of many languages in Europe. Britain was effectively the only place where it was spoken. However, after the realization of the existence of a vast continent across the Atlantic Ocean, the English, from around the year 1600, began to colonize North America. It is from this time that the division between the two global forms of English used today can be dated.
The following are links to some interesting and informative sites relating to the differences between American and British English: