Can you tell the difference between British and American English? Check out these words, then tell us which variety of English you tend to use by leaving a comment below.

Words

British - American

1. Pavement – sidewalk

2. Rubbish – trash

3. Football – soccer

4. Biscuit – cookie

5. Sweets – candy

6. Tube – subway

7. Full stop – period

8. Autumn - fall

9. Flat – apartment

10. Lift – elevator

11. Chips – fries

12. Petrol – Gas

13. Motorway – highway

14. Jam – jelly

15. Cinema – movie theatre

16. Trousers – pants

17. Car park – parking lot

18. Jumper – sweater

19. Holiday – vacation

20. Post code – zip code

Discuss

Over the past 400 years, the form of the language used in the United States – and that used in the United Kingdom and the rest of the British Isles have diverged in many ways, leading to the dialects now commonly referred to as American English and British English. Differences between the two include pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, idioms, formatting of dates and numbers, and so on. A small number of words have completely different meanings between the two dialects or are even unknown or not used in one of the dialects.

This divergence between American English and British English once caused George Bernard Shaw to say that the United States and United Kingdom are "two countries divided by a common language"; a similar comment is ascribed to Winston Churchill. Likewise, Oscar Wilde wrote, "We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, the language."