Since the contents of some units that will be tested on our first PC deal with different "Englishes", I
have recently been busy memorizing different English terms for one and the same
thing. Of course, “different Englishes” refers to the varieties of English
spoken in different parts of the world such as the US, Great Britain, the
Caribbean Islands or India.
Just out of curiosity I did some research and found out that English is the
official language (or at least one of them) in over 50 countries. If anybody is
interested in the detailed list, you can find it here:
Anyhow,
considering the fact that English is spoken in so many countries, it’s not
surprising that there are a lot of different English dialects and slangs.
However, when I was younger, I always considered English as the “world
language” which is uniform everywhere. Well, when I grew older, I realized that
this is far from reality.
The first
difference between “Englishes” I personally encountered was the one between
British English and American English. In high school we were told that in these
countries different words are sometimes used for the same thing. I have to
admit that this didn’t really bother me then. If we were given two terms I
usually tried to remember the simpler one, no matter if it was BE or AE. Now,
since our university teacher told us to stick to one style of English,
I’m paying a lot more attention to this matter.
By chance, I found this illustration on the Internet and noticed that there actually are a lot of words on it that we need to know for the PC. So I thought I’d share it with you. It might also be helpful for more visual learners.
