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Is British English actually better than American English?
I often hear that British English is better than American English, I've also heard people say that British English is "real english", but I'm not really sure why that is ?
what makes it better in your opinion and what makes American English worse ?
personally, I'm indian and I find it much easier to understand American English.
As a linguist, my official perspective can only be that no language or dialect is inherently better or worse than any other. Even Indian English and African American Vernacular English are not worse than either standard British English or standard American English, merely different. One is allowed, of course, to have personal preferences, but those preferences do not reflect some objective reality but rather our own influences and biases. Certain dialects are the prestige dialects in particular communities and thus become the "standard" ones, but this is entirely due to the sociopolitical power of their speakers over time, and there's nothing purely linguistic that sets these standards apart from other dialects -- they just happened to be the ones people in power spoke. English having multiple competing standard dialects is more or less the inevitable result of the historical development of English-speaking countries.
As for why people insist otherwise, it's invariably for reasons that have nothing to do with the actual linguistic features of the language and instead are founded in the sociocultural opinions and biases of the speaker -- sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. Any argument about whether British or American English is "better" will inevitably come down to arguments about history, culture, and society, not linguistics, because there is no objective linguistic basis for the claim that one is better than the other or even any decent linguistic evidence for that claim.
The one caveat I'll give is that writing is a technology that is independent from language itself, so one could make arguments that a certain writing system is objectively better for writing a certain language than another. But British English and American English writing are both too similar for such arguments to make much sense to me, as they share all the same major failings, and the minor details that still differ between them these days are trifles imo.
I like this answer a lot, but I was curious about the last paragraph.
Would you not say that in many ways spoken language is itself a technology, that much like writing systems there are going to be advantages and disadvantages to different languages / language groups for a given set of purposes?
The various dialects of English are much too close to differentiate in this way, and it obviously could get a bit dicey and uncomfortable to try to evaluate other languages thus without it succumbing to sociocultural biases.
It seems to me though that there would be some relatively objective features you could measure, even if I'm not sure what those features would be. Languages that were more information dense perhaps, or those whose structure and lexicon led to greater conciseness or precision or abstract prose.
Of course this would still be very different than saying "language X is better than language Y" as a general statement.
Writing is a technology because it's something that is consciously developed by humans for a purpose -- it's a tool. Spoken (and signed) language by contrast, evolve and are passed on in a much deeper and less conscious level.
When we look at spoken languages, there are various elements of the language that can be more or less complex, which can be described with some degree of objectivity. English case marking and gender marking, which exists only in personal pronouns, is objectively less complex than German case and gender marking (or even just Middle English case and gender marking). However, different languages tend to even out by being more complex in certain areas while being less complex in others. For example, languages without complex case marking will often have more complex rules when it comes to word order. Languages that are described as being "easier" or "having no grammar" tend to be those where the more complex parts are less overt in the morphology. Language evolution can give rise to complexity and irregularity but can also reduce complexity and regularize certain paradigms, so there's an ebb and flow to this. This is also why the standard answer from linguists is that spoken (or signed) languages aren't objectively harder or easier to learn than each other as first languages1. While there are some minor exceptions when it comes to certain systems in particular languages, children tend to acquire different languages at roughly the same rate.
Similarly, my understanding is that natural languages tend to be roughly equivalent when it comes to information density on the whole. This doesn't mean there won't be plenty of individual propositions that can be expressed more efficiently in one language than in another -- but there will almost certainly be plenty of other individual propositions that are less efficient. Information density wasn't something I engaged with as deeply though, so I regrettably can't get much more detailed than this off the top of my head.
Most importantly, it's not really possible to fully separate language and the sociocultural context in which it's spoken. Languages will be deeply shaped by the contexts and cultures in which they're used. This can sometimes lead to the misconception that there's something inherently better about some languages for certain domains -- that English is better for science, for example, because of its robust lexicon of technical terminology -- but ultimately this is confusing cause and effect. English has a robust lexicon of technical terminology because of its use in the sciences, and any other language would quickly develop such technology if it were used in those contexts. Humans are very quick to coin, borrow, and derive new words for concepts that they need to regularly refer to.
There are conlangs that are deliberately constructed with certain principles in mind. Toki Pona is probably the most prominent example -- it's a philosophical language with a deliberately very limited vocabulary that's intended to influence how those who use it think about the world, language, and what they're describing while using it. It's an interesting endeavor, but it only works to the extent that it does because the language is constructed and thus only spoken as a second language, typically only by people who are on board with or at least interested in its philosophical goals. If Toki Pona acquired native speakers, its vocabulary would inevitably expand and the development of "standardized" lexical combinations for certain things (which is discouraged in the Toki Pona community) would inevitably happen. Frankly, even a large enough population of non-native speakers who used the language regularly enough and weren't dedicated to its philosophy would probably inevitably result in things like that.
1 note that this only applies to learning languages as first languages (that is, from a young age) -- languages can be easier or harder to learn later on and this is based almost entirely on how similar they are to one's first language(s).
Not a linguist, but languages do have some objective differences but not in measures we'd reliably agree on as having a better direction. For example, spoken languages convey information at roughly the same rate regardless of how quickly it sounds like it's being spoken. Some languages require different pieces of information to be considered, eg. there's languages which encode how reliable a piece of information is (first or second hand) or have more or less tenses or gendered pronouns, but saying any of those features are objectively better is extremely hard. It seems like everyone is capable of conveying or inferring from context all the necessary bits even if their language doesn't require or explicitly encode for it. Some languages maybe make slightly different tradeoffs about what gets priortized.
Also interesting to look at constructed languages which explore a bunch of different features and ideas of languages, but no constructed language has ever really taken off.
Not the OP, but languages are interesting in that:
So I would claim that no, spoken language isn't a technology, any more than our thumbs, eyeballs, or spleens are. IMO, though, one can view it as one of the first tools that humanity, collectively, engineered hand-in-hand with evolution to facilitate communication. Which is pretty cool to me, at least đ
[1]: We have evidence that cultural norms embedded into language can affect cognition, though IMO that feels more like a roundabout way to state that practice in any task will affect performance on that task. Haven't kept up to date with the research since, as you note, it can veer off into scientific racism pretty rapidly, and I don't need to expose myself to that for my hobbies!
Cultures developing language independently is technically a mildly controversial take, as languages do descend from other languages rather than developing truly independently, and we don't really have evidence of whether human language originates from a single origin or multiple origins (we simply cannot reconstruct languages back far enough to know one way or another with the evidence we have, and those that claim otherwise are widely regarded as crackpots). But I think the main thrust of your point there is still correct, and we do have examples of language developing independently (and naturally, not like a conlang or something else consciously designed) among humans who lack access to a common language, in the form of pidgins and creoles, and even when they have no access to language whatsoever, as with Nicaraguan Sign Language.
This is one of the most subjective questions ever.
You might as well ask what color is best.
They're also extremely similar, they're the same language, just regional dialects. Americans have no trouble understanding standard RP English, and people from the UK have no issues understanding general American English.
There is much more variation in dialects within the US and UK than on average between them. As an American, I have a much easier time understanding someone speaking RP English than I do understand deep southern US accents.
I translate my grandfatherâs specific deep southern US English for my kids and wife. And I translate my kidsâ specific midwestern US English for my grandfather.
What words do you find are hard for your grandfather or kids to understand in each direction? I'm curious as a biased Midwesterner which of our words are hard to understand!
Comprehension for my grandfather would probably be better if he wasnât fairly old and didnât use hearing aids. Imagine a look of confusion and a pause, then I say it in a way that âfeelsâ right to his ears and he immediately gets it. In most cases that just means restating what was said with slightly different vowel sounds, intonation, etc. Occasionally more severe changes are needed, for example translating âThe hot dish wasnât too badâ to âThe casserole was really good!â
Comprehension for the kids would probably be better if they talked to him more often, but it feels like their great-grandfather may as well be speaking a foreign language half the time. An example would be âDid you like the truck we sent you?â And after the look for confusion and pause I say âHe said: âDid you like the truck we sent you?ââ Then the kid says âItâs not a bad truck.â which I translate to âI love it!â
I too have learned the ways of the midwest.
I like the playful teasing and banter between Americans and Commonwealth folk about which is better. But the reality is that at the end of the day the differences are so minor and inconsequential that I myself have to look up whether the American spelling is "gray" or "grey". Although I realize I'm opening myself up to a joke about the American education system by admitting that ;)
The mnemonic I learned is A for American or E for England. Some of my friends seem to think the different spellings refer to different ranges of shades, so there's that angle too.
American English uses both grey and gray fwiw, with the specific choice being personal preference or based on whichever style guide you're following. Afaik the UK exclusively uses grey but I'm not 100% on that side of things.
Like others have said, there's no objectively better or worse variety of English and it's mostly a matter of preference, exposure or context. In many parts of Europe, we are taught British English, while in much of Latin America, American English is more common because of geography, media influence, etc.
I'm no expert but I believe that even if you tried to choose a better one by asking which is closer to original English, it still wouldn't give a clear winner. British English is geographically closer to where English developed, but American English preserves some older features that later changed in many British accents, especially things like pronouncing the r in words such as car or hard. Some American vocabulary, like fall instead of autumn, also reflects older English usage.
Which one is easier to understand usually depends on what you've been exposed to more, and for many people that's American English because of videogames, movies, music, internet and a looong etc.
âBetterâ is a hard thing to argue, both because itâs completely subjective, and because language and culture are intertwined in ways that make ranking languages or dialects hard to separate from ranking people groups and I really donât think we want to go there.
For example the American Appalachian accent is a beautiful regionalism but it's unfairly maligned for âsounding stupidâ to the degree that many local Appalachians are deliberately un-training themselves from using it, and assimilating into the broader standard American dialect. (Internal migration plays a role in this too, as outsiders move into the region, bringing their dialects with them.) I think itâs sad when cultural distinctiveness erodes like this. @sparksbet mentioned AAVE, which famously gets a lot of criticism for âsounding stupidâ as well â but thatâs a flatly racist critique. You canât criticize a way of speaking without criticizing the people who speak that way.
Maybe youâre just asking about written English rather than spoken accents?
Some of the biggest differences between written British English and American English can be directly traced back to Noah Websterâs spelling reform project of the early 19th century. Personally Iâm not a fan of that sort of prescriptivist campaign; I think theyâre generally ill-advised and paternalistic. Moreover, they probably wouldnât even be possible in the internet age. But he did it then, and the hard fork persists today so letâs talk about it. (Not to imply he caused the split, but he certainly helped codify and standardize it at a time when the distinctions were still pretty loose and murky.) All things considered, I think the reformed spellings in American English generally are an improvement for the way they simplify and phoneticize the language, making it more suitable for global adoption.
In my (American) opinion British spellings often contain superfluous letters â think âuâ in âcolour,â âlâ in âtravellerâ, âmeâ in âprogramme,â and âqueâ in âchequeâ (which is shortened to âcheckâ when Americanized). To me those decorative/formal bits read as aloof, Old World aristocracy. Maybe Iâm overthinking it but to me theyâre vestigial relics of British colonialism. I feel that even more pointedly when discussing actual former colonies like India, Australia, South Africa, etc. Itâs an oversimplification, and probably a naive one, but I feel that those countries still using British spelling are the ones who originally had it put upon them by the Empire, whereas the ones that lean toward American English adopted it more organically in response to American influence in commerce and entertainment. I mean itâs all hegemony either way but the latter feels less icky to me. Less coercive. Honestly thatâs all history at this point though, water under the bridge. People speaking their own native tongues donât usually feel oppressed for doing so.
Beyond that, itâs just personal preference and cultural momentum. We typically favor the way we personally, and those we interact with most, write and speak. Because it feels normal. Thatâs a natural bias to have.
Iâm curious if youâre asking about this because your social interactions include more of a mix of Englishes, making it harder to establish a baseline. Iâm not sure what your situation is like but Iâve worked with a number of Indian and Pakistani colleagues, some who emigrated to America and others who were remote members of my virtual team, and I can see how that placed them right at the intersection of the two Englishes. They may have felt some odd pressure to âchooseâ a favorite as well, in a way that Iâve never had to. Thatâs interesting.
You could probably develop some degree of 'most rational' language/dialect based on factors such as:
My understanding as a layperson is that English is a fairly garbage language by those sorts of metrics.
All that said, it does not in any way suggest the 'betterness' (and social implications of that), but it's an interesting possibility to explore.
But written language, particularly in English, encode etymology in addition to (or perhaps moreso than) phonetics.
None of those factors are necessarily desirable in a language though.
In many cases, ambiguity is a feature, not a bug. For instance, when starting a romantic relationship, a lot of people will say stuff like "oh we're just talking right now".
Talking could mean passing each other in the hallway and having a conversation every so often, going out for coffee a few times, going on regular dates, or just meeting up for sex. The ambiguity is the point, it's not undesirable.
There are countless examples of words and phrases that mean one thing if you're in the "in group", and mean something else entirely if you're not.
Those are very intentional characteristics that serve a specific function, they're not deficiencies with the language.
Yea. I think it frankly serves more of a 'ease of people to speak as a second language' metric now that I think about it.
Less likely to cause a "my hovercraft is full of eels." situation.
You conflate written and spoken language here, but considering only the factors that do apply to spoken language, your choices are fairly arbitrary and don't really conform to a rigorous idea of what makes a language more "rational". Who decides what the "accepted rule of thumb" is and why are exceptions considered a deficiency in the language rather than a failure to construct a sufficiently descriptive rule of thumb? How does the existence of homophones (which I assume is what your uniqueness factor is describing?) inherently less rational -- surely one could argue it's more efficient to make use of the same shorter string of phonemes when there's no risk of confusion between the two meanings? What counts as an idiom and why are they considered inherently irrational rather than an efficient use of existing linguistic material?
These are rhetorical questions meant as food for thought about why this is at best a more complex endeavor than it first appears.
For the record, spelling reform is not necessarily prescriptivist, at least not in the linguistic sense that's used when describing things like the fake grammar "rules" you learn in many English classes (even if these tend to be propagated by the same school settings where spelling is learned). Writing systems are inherently prescriptive to some extent because it is not an inherent part of language, but a human invention. If there is any standardization of a writing system whatsoever, it must be prescriptive, because there isn't a more natural, scientifically-justified descriptive alternative the way there is when it comes to the grammar of spoken language. Spelling reform is often deliberately an attempt to better reflect the descriptive realities of spoken language compared to spellings that have become outdated due to language evolution, and as such can sometimes be pretty keenly less prescriptivist than the status quo they're attempting to reform. But of course that depends a lot on the details of a particular spelling reform and its implementation.
Thanks for the clarification. I appreciate you lending your expertise here and throughout the thread!
I guess you could argue that neocolonialism is better than the kind of colonialism where guys in pith helmets chopped peoples hands off, but neither are really great.
There's also the point that most of the cultures that the US subjugated in our own form of regular, old school style colonialism are dead, or are relegated to reservations where they unsurprisingly mostly also speak American English.
Many of them speak American English at home thanks to the residential schools program. (also true in Canada - for Canadian English)
As another Indian, this could be because American media is much more common. Most of my exposure to British English was at school, whereas only a small amount of the media I consumed used British English.
From a philosophical point of view, there is no objective truth, only a perceived truth through evidence. 'Which language is better' highly depends on what you value in language.
That said, my personal view is I don't really mind. I like the quaintness of British. I also find it fascinating how American has became so diverse linguistically in such a relatively short time in history. From the So-Cal Valley girl, to the Deep Southern accent. Minnesotan, Boston and the 'I'm walking' 'ere-New York accents.
Well, it's a much bigger country. I think long distance travel was probably more difficult for more of Britain's history than the US, but it would take about 15-20 days to walk from one end of Britain to the other. It would take 6 months to do the same in the Continental US.
I think that likely contributed to the differences in geographic patterns of accents as well. An American from New York sounds extremely different than one from Alabama, but the NY and NJ accent are pretty much the same thing, and most people would be hard pressed to tell the difference between an Alabama and Mississippi accent.
In the UK, people from a county over can almost sound like they're speaking different languages.
English in England was the original english, but current English accents have also shifted significantly with time. Your contacts might be conflating original with real, but they are ignoring how languages change.
Define "better".
OK!
It's my time to shine!
I've said both these things!
As @hamstergeddon put it so colourfully, it is purely playful teasing and banter.
American accents, Australian Accents, Indian Accents, I playfully mock them all. At least that is the intent.
With Indians, if an American is listening, I usually ask if the Indian if they prefer American English, or proper english. The question is directed towards the American. (If you have a strong American accent, you are the American.) If it's just me and an especially friendly Indian, then I simply inquire if they are a veggie.