British English or American English?

Are you sitting looking at a text, wondering whether it’s written in British or American English? Or are you perhaps interested to know in general how the two variants of the language differ?

The following overview provides you with a few of the answers. Some of the differences just involve spelling, while in other cases, it’s the pronunciation that changes — and occasionally, even the words and expressions used are quite distinct from each other.

This table is constantly updated, so it’s worth keeping an eye on it.

British American
analyse analyze
apologise apologize
biscuit cookie
catalogue catalog
centre center
colour color
enrol enroll
favourite favorite
flat apartment
full stop period
grey gray
holiday vacation
humour humor
kilometre kilometer
licence (noun) license
lift elevator
litre liter
mobile phone cellphone
post(al) code zip code
(round) brackets parentheses
shopping centre mall
specialise spezialize
surname last name

 

Evgenij Unker

Dated: 18.06.2013

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