Varieties in English

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In different parts of the world, English language has come in contact with genetically and culturally unrelated languages. Hence, different regional varieties of the language have developed with variations existing at virtually all levels of language analysis, i.e. phonological, grammatical, syntactic, semantic, lexical, etc. While regional differences in pronunciation and lexicon are often tied to sociolinguistic factors such as different mother tongues, speakers' philosophy and cultural differences, variation at the syntactic level appears minimally in varieties.

British English covers the varieties spoken in England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Australia, and South Africa, while the American var iety denotes chiefly the English of Canada and the United States. The variety of English spoken in the USA has a literary normalised form called Standard American English. It is not a separate language because it neither possesses grammar phonetic system, nor vocabulary of its own. Norms of American English are just slightly modified norms of those accepted in Great Britain.

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American English differs from British English in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and more importantly in terms of word spellings. The term Americanism is often used in describing words or phrases peculiar to the English language as spoken in the United States