English Language: American or British?

amiliar with the other variety. Good illustrations come from your PC in this computer age: where your spelling checker, based on American English, identifies clour, centre, dialogue, civilise, towards, defence, enclose, travelled from your text as incorrectly spelt, you need to be familiar with the two varieties to know that your spelling checker expects American spellings which are color, center, dialog, civilize, toward, defense, inclose, traveled. (If your text is in British English you will simply click “ignore” and move on.)

Knowledge of the two varieties is equally important in the classroom for the students and teachers where a decision often has to be made about what form is correct. If the teacher and students know that fiber and fibre, transportation and transport, proctor and invigilator, barette and hairslide, faucet and tap, fall and autumn, five years back and five years ago, Monday through Friday and Monday to Friday, a half meter and half a metre are features of American and British English, Respectively, the teaching and the learning process can proceed unhampered, if it is agreed that the two varieties are accepted. But it is dramatic, especially in a testing situation, when features used from one variety by the student are not known by the teacher/tester, familiar only with the other variety. The student will then be unjustly penalized.

He/she will be all the more penalized as some features in one variety may clearly violate the grammar of the other variety. Many American changes of categories observed in some cases are in outright vio

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