Differences between American & British English

Thanks, mee. Yeah, I guess that needed to come out. I just hate it when people hate each other because of the politics of the country a person is in. It is so silly I think.

However, no one's criticising Americans, they're just talking about the diferrence between American and English t's. am I wrong?

I am not talking about this instance right now. Just read some of the posts that have been posted, and you will quickly see the Americans are subject to more criticism than most. The French have been getting the most criticisms lately, and that pisses me off just the same.

That's just the way this forum moves about, before the Iraq conflict it was every person posting anti-british comments for some reason and most of them came from Americans.

Well, that seems familiar, and I seem to remember defending the British too.

Yep, there was a season when a lot of topics were made against the French. I can't see why some keep insulting others because of the country they are or were born in.

Yesterday I heard a completely new expression. When I was walking through the streets of London and when I aproached to the end of the pavement where the black&white crossing is I heard a woman saying to her son: 'This is a dangerous zebra crossing Rupert', hence I knew in Britain it was not a crosswalk, but a zebra crossing because of the 'zebra' like painted.

US : sidewalk, crosswalk
BR : pedestrian crossing

Are there more vocabulary in both languages for "sidewalk" ?

Just Zebra Crossing in British.

Yes, I remember your defending the British, Clark. But then you declared yourself American, you turn-coat, you traitor ... just kidding.

A couple of words for "sidewalk" are "footpath" and "pavement".

thank you Jim and David Bosch

Jim, well, I have never been anything but American. I was trying to fool myself into thinking otherwise, and in doing so, I wrongly lead people to believe I was more British than American. But don't get me wrong, England is still where a large amount of family live, and you would be fooling yourself if you thought I was not proud of my English heritage and family.

>>> For example in Liverpool it's pronounced "what" much much more closer than the American "waad"...Why in America does the "t" always pronounced closer to a "d" in words like batteries, letter, meter, liter, seat, heat, or any other words ending in "t" or with a "t" in the middle of words? <<<

I have lived in California all my life and have visited many parts of the US, and I have never heard Americans pronounce "what" as "waad" or "seat" and "heat" as "seed" and "heed." We tend to pronounce that "t" at the end of a word with a "t" sound.

Re: "rider" and "writer" (in another previous post). There's a subtle difference in how we pronounce these 2 words. We pronounce "rider" with a hard "d" and the last vowel is clearly enunciated so that it sounds like "rye-Duhr." With "writer" we use a soft "d" (or a barely audible "t") and the last vowel isn't so cleary pronounced so that it comes out sounding like "rye-dr."

Julian,
You are right, there is a difference that is discerned by native speakers that can be too subtle to hear for people not familiar with the language.

As for the words ending in t, Americans do pronounce the t sound. But there are cases where the next word in the sentences starts with a vowel, changing it to that "middle t" sound:
"You bet!" <-- hard t sound
"I bet that horse will win" <--followed by consonant, hard t sound
"Somebody bet on the bay" <--followed by vowel, soft t/d sound

I bet you are right. For our untrained minds in the English field it is like that perhaps.