It's worth noting that American English and British English are not as cleanly separated as some people (namely those who intensely hate one of them) would like. In many cases, an "American" thing is a less common variant in British English and vice versa.

One is the version commonly used in the USA. The other is the version commonly used in the UK.

That is a deep one, my friend. There's A LOT to say about the issue, not even counting the many regional dialects in both countries.

Not in a Reddit post. Go read the Wikipedia page lol.

I was talking to a Brazilian student learning English and she was going on about how American English is so much easier than British English. I couldn't really understand what she meant.

The main differences to note are:

• Spelling is sometimes different for some words. realise vs realize, colour vs color etc.
• There are many different Accents in the UK. Some can be difficult to understand for English speakers from other countries. Those accents are a mix of invaders and migrants from hundreds of years. There are American accents and some are difficult to understand.
• Some of the mentioned accents may have dialectically different words for some things. Going into the north of England and Scotland you'll hear different words for words bun vs bap, stream vs burn. Generally British English is more based off southern English
• Americans are considered extremely loud and often over pronounce some sounds so it can be easier to understand them .
• Some words used are different. Petrol vs gas, chips vs fries.

I lived in England as an American for a year and often ran into moments that were confusing at work. People asking for a 'rubber' or getting 'knocked up' and times when the (Midland) accent was too thick. The differences can sometimes be significant.

As long as you don't talk about a cigarette in America you'll be fine.

99.9% of the time context will make it clear what you mean.

Yeah. Most native English speakers use American English, but niche dialects like British English are common in certain places.

The differences are not as big as you might think. Most is exactly the same. It is English after all. There are differences in different parts of Britain, so it is not one standard. The same can be said of the USA. There is another thread on the subject on the sub at the moment which you should look at too, if you have not already done so.

You should know though that when those big differences in accent do happen, they can lead to some humorous requests to repeat oneself for either party.

I once used to party with a guy from Manchester, UK. After a few beers he really could have used some subtitles, at least to my American ears!

Native speakers from each country might construct their sentences a little bit differently, but there should be no problem understanding each other. If there is it would probably come from accent and slang rather than sentence construction.

In terms of formal grammar, no. There are some spelling and pronunciation differences but learning one is essentially learning the other! When you get to casual conversation however, then it starts to differ, because slang is very unique to location.

The biggest everyday grammatical difference is probably how we talk about the recent past. Americans will typically say "Did you eat yet?" where Brits will typically say "Have you eaten yet?"

Both sentences are standard and will be understood in both British and American English, though.

Another difference is that British people rarely use the subjunctive, whereas it's still common in American English. I wouldn't necessarily expect all British speakers to recognize that the subjunctive is grammatical. That's still a fairly small difference that doesn't really hinder communication.

Occasionally need to look up a slang word, but most of the time I understand just fine. I have a harder time with people from India, thickly accented people like Irish or some New Zealanders.

I grew up in the crowded megalopolis of the northeast and have known plenty of British people throughout my life who were living in the US briefly for various reasons. They’ve never struggled, and I’ve never struggled to understand them either. They integrated into their communities pretty fluidly, really.

It depends, Britain has a really wide range of accents. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Wales in Britain? That accent is impenetrable to me.

Howay man, thes nee difference 😄

I guess it depends,when I was in New York I went into a deli and got a sub made “Can I get some tomato in that?” Assistant looks perplexed,goes off and fetches the manager and a few minutes later after pointing at it we agreed on an excessively pronounced “tom 8 toe” No idea who Tom is but if he likes eating body parts then good for him

American and Canadian English have more different dialects within each country than differences between the TV standard General American/General Canadian accents. 

In written versions, the main distinction is the retention of British spelling in Canadian English. Colour vs color etc.

It's not uncommon for me to meet a Canadian who I can't identify based on dialect as being Canadian, and it's not uncommon for people in many parts of the US to misidentify American accents from border states as being Canadian accents. 

Vancouver and Seattle sound much more like each other than either do to the Deep South or to Newfoundland.

SA English is derived from British English so I would say that the main difference today would be in terms of accent, and colloquial terms. Think "chips" Vs, "crisps".

Canadian here, and I’m actually not gonna pick on the Americans for once (it’s too easy), I just have a… polite qualm with the Australians. So in North America you have chips (thin crispy potato slices) and fries (deep fried potato sticks). In the UK you have crisps (thin crispy potato slices) and chips (deep fried potato sticks). Could any Australian explain to me why on earth you decided to call both items chips? Do you have some vendetta against ease of communication? I’m really just baffled as to how something like that comes to be.

I really dislike the spelling differences, in American English all the dropped “u”s and swapping “s” for “z”, “c”s for “s”s, etc

But the one thing I hate more than anything else, is when Americans say they “could care less”. No. The phrase is “couldn’t care less”. As in: you care so little, it is literally impossible to care less. “Could care less” means you do care, at least a bit, which is the exact opposite of what you’re trying to say.

Same thing here in NZ; my daughter says Zee rather than Zed.

Sesame street thing?

It's hard to call South Africa an "English speaking country" when the vast majority of South Africans don't speak English as their primary language. If we were to open it up to simply any country where English simply is common then a country like Denmark would be more of an "English speaking country" than South Africa.

There are many English speaking countries OP didn't mention. Ireland has about the same number of L1 English speakers as New Zealand, for example.

Pretty much, but not the greatest example given in British English both are used. “licence” is a noun and “license” is a verb.

Mostly just differences in spelling (e.g. the British -ise endings vs the American -ize, or colour vs color) and different words for things (e.g. eggplant vs aubergine).

Neither one is "better", and neither one is particularly easier than the other.

The most obvious difference is the “o” vs “ou” or “a” vs “ae” in certain words. “Color” (US English) vs “colour” (UK English). Some words in US English also end with an “ed” for past tense when they’d end with a “t” in UK English (spoiled vs spoilt). There’s also just so much slang and so many regionalisms that can’t even be listed. Crisps vs chips, lift vs elevator, boot vs trunk.

Easier? Probably US English. US English is sometimes referred to as “simplified,” not because it is less complex in vocabulary, but because spellings have literally been simplified by removing the piles of extra, unpronounced vowels English ended up with as a result of French/Norman influence.

Better? Neither. Despite the spellings and regionalisms, all written English is mutually intelligible unless you get into real specific dialects. An American will understand you if you say “they were queuing for chips” rather than “they stood in line for fries,” and vice versa. I’d just choose one and be consistent. But even if you don’t, that’s honestly not so bad. If you mix them together, people will just assume you learned from a Canadian or an Australian.

If you focus on one, you will be able to communicate with the other perfectly. A few words will cause some confusion, but the differences are very limited.

There are many differences but they are small and mostly superficial. It doesn't really matter as once you become fluent you can just pick up the differences and you will know both.

As others have said, I think the main difference is with vocabulary. Some that everyone knows like soccer (AmE) and football (BrE). Other words or phrases has very different meaning and could lead to miscommunication. A British slang word for cigarette comes to mind that an American may be shocked to hear.

I have a short video on some of the basic differences that you are free to check out.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/british-and-american-english

This goes through all grammatical differences between both dialects. Just by skim reading I could see it’s got what you’re looking for (if I’m understand what you mean by collocations correctly)

I screwed around with it after seeing this post and it looks like a lot of vocab/grammar differences aren’t even really reflected in DeepL aside from minor spelling variations (color-colour, aluminum-aluminium, spelled-spelt, spit-spat, etc.) and a few other things like football-soccer and university-the university, although it is admittedly difficult to coerce translator apps into using a lot of the differences.

And there’s lots of other weird word choice differences like the one shown in the post that aren’t really normally reflected by speakers of the respective dialects. I also found grande->big in British English and grande->large in American English, muy quemadas->badly burnt in British/very burnt in American, extraños->bizarre in American English/extraños->strange in British English, and a few others.

It changed the emojis?!

You could also be pleased or chuffed to hear the news…It’s really difficult to accurately translate a sentence without more context to be honest so I’d say it did a decent job here.

Who tf says "glad" ?!

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