American English

"American English" is as much a myth as "British English." The dialectical topology of North America is quite diverse.

The major distinction between American dialects and other dialects of English spoke around the world is that the prevailing dialects of North America are rhotic, meaning that an "r" which occurs at the end of a syllable is pronounced, whereas in non-rhotic dialects it isn't. This rhoticism is a feature which these American English dialects share only with the North British dialects (Irish and Scots); all other dialects of English are non-rhotic. It should also be noted that this rhoticism doesn't apply everywhere in North America – some of the eastern dialects are actually non-rhotic.

I'd break American English into roughly the following dialects, from east to west and north to south. They can be differentiated mainly in terms of vocabulary choice (bag vs. sack, soda vs. pop vs. Coke) and especially the way vowels are pronounced. Keep in mind that each of these dialects includes a number of subdivisions which can vary from state to state, province to province, county to county, and sometimes even town to town.

• Atlantic Canadian, a rhotic dialect consisting of two major accents. Newfoundlander (or "Newfie," or "Newf") is the thicker of the two ("eh, b'y, she's some t'ick") and is spoken in Newfoundland (qv. The Shipping News for Gordon Pinsent's classic "Oi'm sum dis-gustet wit' de hyuman race"); Maritimer (me own accens, it gets roit funny at toims) is milder and is spoken in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick. (There are some other, more minor accents, like Haligonian, the accent of people from the city of Halifax; they say "coach" instead of "couch" and "molthe" instead of "mouth.") Atlantic Canadian is the dialect that gave Canada their most characteristically used particle, eh, and is characterised by even stranger diphthongs than Canadian Standard – /ευ/ for /aυ/, and /Λι/ for /aι/.

• New England, a non-rhotic dialect – "Well you can't get theah frem heeah." Spread throughout the New England and Eastern States, this dialect includes the New York City accents and the infamous Boston English.

• Southern Drawl, a non-rhotic dialect. Spoken on the mainland pretty much from Maryland and the Virginias on south. Drawl is largely a function of class, and seems to be on the decline. It is being replaced by a rhotic accent, which is sometimes called honkey tonk and is the dialect most often associated with the South.

• West Indies, a non-rhotic dialect spoken throughout the English-speaking Carribean, mon.

• Canadian Standard English, a rhotic dialect which holds a place in Canadian media roughly equivalent to that enjoyed by RP in England. Canadian Standard is the main dialect throughout English-speaking Quebec, Ontario, and the Prairies. It can be distinguished from American Standard by its tenser diphthongs (/ευ/ instead of /aυ/) and the frequent use of the particle "eh" in colloquial speech -- no, it's not a joke -- as well as different spelling and some differences in vocabulary. Prevails over most of Canada.

• Midwestern, which might be called the rhotic dialect. This is the one most folk not from North America are most familiar with. Prevails over most of the United States, from Ohio to the West Coast, and from the Canadian border to the Mexican border, with minor variations. In Michigan, Illinois, and Minnesota, it's got a bit of a twang to it.

Canadian Standard and Midwestern might be grouped into a single, huge dialect (let's call it "American Interior") that pretty much dominates everything west of the east coast – although Southern Drawl also has some interior representation in the south-west, as deep as Kentucky or Arkansas. Historically, the dialects of the American Interior have not been isolated for long enough to become all that distinct, other than mild differences in pronunciation, spelling, and vocabulary. Canadian Standard, for example, isn't as different from American Standard, as both of them are from Atlantic Canadian, or West Indies, or as the latter two are from one another.

If anyone can come up with dialects that I may have missed, especially with regards to the interior of the continent (whose dialects I am largely unfamiliar with), feel free to /msg ctf and give me some details on where it's spoken and how it differs from the ones I've given here.

English English (aka British English, King's/Queen's English) for most of its history did not employ widely standardised spelling. This changed in 1755 with the release of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, the first widely accepted standard dictioary.

During the American Revolution, British schoolbooks were obviously rare. A Connecticut teacher called Noah Webster (of Webster 1913 fame) decided to publish his own books. He published The American Spelling Book in 1788 (later to be called The Elementary Spelling Book) and over the following 40 years the book went through some 300 editions.

In 1828, he published the American Dictionary of the English Language, which is thought to have had a major influence on American spelling. Many characteristics of American English spelling were, however, already well established. "Center" and "theater", for example, were not new when Webster put them in his dictionary.

Webster believed in simplifying the spelling of words. He believed that children should learn to speak by pronouncing each syllable separately and clearly. Therefore silent letters such as the "u" in colour were discarded. Spellings such as "tough women" became "tuf wimmen". Webster recommended some pretty radical phonetic spelling, such as "soop", "fantom", "tuf", "hed", "medecin" and "tung". The dictionary sold very poorly, and Webster spent the rest of his life in poverty.

After Webster's death in 1843, Charles and George Merriam bought the rights to his dictionaries and published the first Merriam-Webster dictionary in 1847. It was this dictionary, not Webster's original, that became a runaway success all over America, and it left out many of Webster's "improved" spellings.

The main groups of words spelled differently on different sides of the Atlantic are those such as (american spellings) "theater", "civilize", "color" and "traveler". The -er and -ize spellings were fairly standard in the 1700s, but British writers (influenced by the French) were beginning to use -re and -ise endings. These were popularised by Johnson's 1755 dictionary, but they gained no foothold in the US. On the other hand, "colour" and "traveller" were the norm by 1700, but Webster rejected these in favour of "color" and "traveler", and Americans have followed his lead.

Probably the most famous difference in spelling comes from English chemist Humphry Davy's Alumin(i)um. He initially named it "aluminum", which is still used in America. The British, however, thought metals' names should end in -ium (i.e. magnesium, tecnetium), and changed the pronounciation as well.

Why the British havn't 'corrected' Platinum*, few can say.

sloebertje says re American English: They probably didn't correct 'steel' because it's not an element :)

Well, yeah, that's true. I can't remember why I put that there, but I don't think I'd have dome it by accident.