Note: this article may be of particular interest to non-native users of English. Native speakers, as well as advanced speakers whose mother-tongue is not English, will find links to articles on regional variations of spoken English at the end of this page. First language (native language, mother tongue) is the language a person learns first. ... First language (native language, mother tongue, or vernacular) is the language a person learns first. ...

Formal written English is a version of the language which is almost universally agreed upon by educated English speakers around the world. It takes virtually the same form whether it is written in Seattle, New York, Vancouver, Toronto, London, Edinburgh, Johannesburg, Harare, New Delhi, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Sydney or Auckland. In spoken English, by contrast, there is a vast number of differences between dialects, accents, and varieties of slang, colloquial and regional expressions. In spite of this, local variations in the formal written version of the language are quite limited. City nickname Emerald City City bird Great Blue Heron City flower Dahlia City mottos The City of Flowers The City of Goodwill City song Seattle, the Peerless City Mayor Greg Nickels County King County Area   - Total   - Land   - Water   - % water 369. ... Nickname: The Big Apple Motto: Official website: City of New York Location Location in the state of New York Government Counties (Boroughs) Bronx (The Bronx) New York (Manhattan) Queens (Queens) Kings (Brooklyn) Richmond (Staten Island) Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Geographical characteristics Area Total 468. ... Members of Parliament Libby Davies, Ujjal Dosanjh, David Emerson, Hedy Fry, Stephen Owen Members of the Legislative Assembly Gordon Campbell, David Chudnovsky, Adrian Dix, Colin Hansen, Jenny Kwan, Lorne Mayencourt, Wally Oppal, Gregor Robertson, Shane Simpson, Carole Taylor Mayor Sam Sullivan City Manager Judy Rogers Governing Body Vancouver City Council... Template:Hide = Motto: Template:Unhide = Diversity Our Strength City of Toronto, Ontario, Canadas Location. ... London is the capital city of the United Kingdom and of England. ... Edinburgh (pronounced ), Dùn Èideann () in Scottish Gaelic, is the second-largest city in Scotland and its capital city. ... City motto: Unity in Development Province Gauteng Mayor Amos Masondo Area  - % water 1,644 km² 0. ... Harare (formerly Salisbury), estimated population 5,480,645 (2004), is the capital of Zimbabwe. ... The Humayuns Tomb, situated in New Delhi, has an architectural design similar to the Taj Mahal. ... Melbourne is the state capital and largest city in the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-largest city in Australia (after Sydney), with a population of approximately 3. ... Sydney is the state capital of New South Wales and with a population of over four million people is the most populous city in Australia. ... Auckland, in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest urban area in New Zealand. ... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος) is a variant, or variety, of a language spoken in a certain geographical area. ... Look up Accent in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Accent may refer to— in linguistics, a method of pronouncing words common to a certain region. ... Slang is the non-standard or non-dialectal use of words in a language of a particular social group, and sometimes the creation of new words or importation of words from another language. ...

Learners of English are in danger of being misled by native speakers who refer to American English, Australian English, British English or other varieties of English. While it is true that many regional differences between the forms of spoken English can be documented, the learner can easily fall into the trap of believing that these are different languages. They are instead mostly regional variations of the spoken language and such variations occur within these countries as well as between them. American English (AmE) is the dialect of the English language used mostly in the United States of America. ... Australian English (AuE) is the form of the English language used in Australia. ... British English (BrE) is a term used to differentiate the form of the English language used in the United Kingdom from other forms of the English language used elsewhere. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

Some English speakers may go so far as to imply that these variations do represent separate languages. This exaggeration is easily forgiven when one takes into account the intense interest that many native English speakers feel for something that is part of the deepest essence of their being. But for the other 5.7 billion inhabitants of this planet the variations in the forms of English spoken in different parts of the world, while often quite distinctive, can be regarded as no more than differences in style.

The differences in formal writing that occur in the various parts of the English-speaking world are so slight that many dozens of pages of formal English can be read without the reader coming across any clues as to the origin of the writer, far less any difficulties of comprehension.

A popular American website about errors in English, written by a professor at a west coast U.S. university guiding his students towards preferred constructions of written English, contains almost nothing among its hundreds of entries with which a counterpart thousands of miles away in Sydney or London would disagree. Certainly, disputes about pronunciation and colloquial expressions used in speech abound. But in the written language these are relatively few. The front page of the English Wikipedia Website. ...

A supporter of the view that there is an Australian written English, for example, and an American written English may counter that many examples appear in the lists of differences below. But to put this in perspective, the Oxford English Dictionary contains around 500,000 entries. And among the differences in regional usage that do occur, the majority are specialized or regional words which appear quite rarely in formal writing. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press (OUP). ...

Differences in spelling such as "color" and "colour" arise more frequently, depending on the subject matter, but these cause no difficulty in comprehension. (Indeed, such spellings are sometimes used on purpose outside their home country in the marketing of products in order to convey some sense of exotic provenance!)

The scientific world has already taken advantage of the fact that there is just one version of English in formal written communication by making it the common language of scientific reports. Very occasional conflicts of spelling in this area have prompted formal decisions on which word or spelling to use. Committees have ruled, for example, that in scientific writing it is "sulfur" not the British "sulphur" and "aluminium" not the U.S. spelling "aluminum". But the number of such rulings is insignificant in the context of a vocabulary of half a million words.

English speakers, after all, share a common linguistic heritage. Shakespeare's writing predates the establishment of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom. Successful novels of the mid-19th century such as The Moonstone by the British Wilkie Collins, or Uncle Tom's Cabin by the American Harriet Beecher Stowe were published simultaneously in Britain and America without any thought that one or other audience would have any difficulty in understanding the writing of someone from another country. Equally, 150 years later, The Economist newspaper is published in London but sells more than half its printed copies in North America. William Shakespeare—born April 1564; baptised April 26, 1564; died April 23, 1616 (O.S.), May 3, 1616 (N.S.)—has a reputation as the greatest of all writers in English. ... The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century novel, generally considered the first detective novel in the English language. ... Wilkie Collins William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and writer of short stories. ... Uncle Toms Cabin Uncle Toms Cabin is a novel by American abolitionist author Harriet Beecher Stowe which treats slavery as a central theme. ... Harriet Beecher Stowe Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe, born Harriet Elizabeth Beecher (June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an abolitionist, and writer of more than 10 books, the most famous being Uncle Toms Cabin which describes life in slavery, and which was first published in serial form from 1851... The Economist is a weekly news and international affairs publication of The Economist Newspaper Limited in London. ...

Although the regional variations in written English may be slight, the spoken language is another matter. But even here the broad geographical distinctions often used may sometimes have more to do with nationalistic sentiments than rigorous study of the objective facts. Speakers of General American and the British Received Pronunciation may find no difficulty in understanding each other's accents as a result of long exposure in the media, aided by the clarity of pronunciation that is a feature of both these accents. Yet, both may struggle to understand a broad accent from Glasgow, Scotland, or from rural Tennessee, or from Cornwall, a county in the southwest of England, or from the south side of Chicago, Illinois. By contrast, the Cornish accent may be easily understood by the inhabitants of the islands off North Carolina, where the accents are still little changed from their Cornish forebears. Equally, the accent of some parts of Ottawa, the capital of Canada, is virtually indistinguishable to an outsider from the accent of parts of Northern Ireland. Under the weight of such evidence, the generalization that there is a single British accent or a single American accent begins to become unsustainable. General American is a notional accent of American English based on speech patterns common in the Midwest of the United States and those used by many American network television broadcasters. ... Received Pronunciation (RP) is a form of pronunciation of the English language, sometimes defined as the educated spoken English of southeastern England. ... Glasgow (or Glaschu in Gaelic) is Scotlands largest city and unitary council, situated on the River Clyde in the countrys west central lowlands. ... Royal motto: Nemo me impune lacessit (English: No one provokes me with impunity) Scotlands location within the UK Languages English, Gaelic, Scots Capital Edinburgh Largest city Glasgow First Minister Jack McConnell Area - Total - % water Ranked 2nd UK 78,782 km² 1. ... Official language(s) English Capital Nashville Largest city Memphis Area  - Total  - Width  - Length  - % water  - Latitude  - Longitude Ranked 36th 109,247 km² 195 km 710 km 2. ... Motto: Onen hag oll (Cornish: One and all) Geography Status Ceremonial and (smaller) Non-metropolitan county Region South West England Population - Total (2004 est. ... Royal motto (French): Dieu et mon droit (Translated: God and my right) Englands location within the British Isles Official language English de facto Capital London de facto Largest city London Area – Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population – Total (mid-2004) – Total (2001 Census) – Density Ranked 1st UK... Nickname: The Windy City Motto: Urbs In Horto (Latin: City in a Garden) Official website: http://egov. ... Official language(s) English Capital Raleigh Largest city Charlotte Area  - Total  - Width  - Length  - % water  - Latitude  - Longitude Ranked 28th 139,509 km² 805 km 240 km 9. ... Template:Hide = Motto: Template:Unhide = Advance Ottawa/Ottawa en avant City of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Ville dOttawa, Ontario, Canadas Location. ... Dieu et mon droit (Royal motto) (French for God and my right)3 Northern Irelands location within the UK Official languages English, Irish, Ulster Scots Capital and largest city Belfast First Minister Office suspended Area  - Total Ranked 4th 13,843 km² Population  - Total (2001)  - Density Ranked 4th 1,685...

Lists of variations in formal written English

What follows is a list of expressions and constructions that appear in formal written English and are given different meanings in different countries. Differences in pronunciation, in slang and colloquial expressions, and in regional and specialist terms are dealt with in other articles. Where it is disputed that a word or expression qualifies to be used in formal writing, it will be omitted from this list and appear instead in one of the articles on spoken regional variations.

Lists of differences in spoken English, as well as most English dictionaries, mark words as colloquial, slang, vulgar and so on to guide the speaker on when it may be inappropriate to use certain words. This list does not include such distinctions because, describing only formal written English, it excludes these categories of words.

Equally, the lists below do not include words with which people in one or another country would simply be unfamiliar. The average speaker has a vocabulary of around 8,000 words. There are many words he or she has not yet come across and dictionaries are available to provide these meanings. To qualify for inclusion a word or structure must be widely familiar in more than one country and yet have different meanings in different countries when used in formal written English.

Lastly, regional differences in punctuation are not included as they are dealt with in other articles. Punctuation marks are written symbols that do not correspond to either phonemes (sounds) of a spoken language nor to lexemes (words and phrases) of a written language, but which serve to organize or clarify written language. ...

Country abbreviations used in the lists are:

Differences in the meaning of individual words

Differences in the meaning of individual words are among the most significant.

This list includes such words as "pavement" because this word means the paved area at the side of a road set aside for pedestrians in British usage but the paved surface of a road in U.S. usage.

The list does not, however, include "sidewalk" because this has the same meaning in both U.S. and British usage. The distinction is that although "sidewalk" is generally understood in Britain it is almost never used since the word "pavement" is the usual term. A non-native learner of English might therefore decide always to use the word "sidewalk" to avoid being misunderstood in different parts of the world.

Differences in grammar

This section is for differences in grammar that may cause confusion or misunderstanding. These will be listed in the table below, though none has been identified so far. As with the meanings of individual words, they are not listed if they are widely understood in a country even though used rarely.

Differences in spelling

These differences are the least significant in practical terms since they rarely represent any obstacle to understanding. Those that may cause misunderstanding are listed first.

Written English – regional differences

• American and British English spelling differences
• American and British English differences

The differences in the spellings of British English and American English are as follows: Many of the differences were introduced into the United States by Noah Websters dictionary; he was a strong proponent of spelling reform for a variety of reasons, both nationalistic and philosophical. ... This article outlines the differences between American English, the form of the English language spoken in the United States, and Commonwealth English (often called British English). ...

Spoken English – dialects

• List of dialects of the English language
• American and British English differences
• General American
• English speaking Europe
• California English