American and British English are largely the same, although differences certainly exist, evolved over two and a half centuries of separation of Britain and its former colony. In some cases, words have been borrowed from different sources: British English, for example, uses the word coriander, derived from French; American English uses cilantro, derived from Spanish (both originate from the Latin coriandrum); differences in spelling are in part due to choices made by Noah Webster, creator of the American Dictionary of the English Language, which established certain spelling conventions used in the US, and which forms the basis of the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
Over the next six months we will be looking at differences in spelling, grammar, word choice and linguistic convention between American and British English. In the above table are some examples of differences in word choice for professions.
(Paul Cooper, Taipei Times)
美式英文和英式英文基本上是相同的，但是美國已脫離英國殖民兩個半世紀，因此美式和英式英文之間的確存在著差異。有些字是借自其他語言，例如「香菜」一詞，英式英文是用「coriander」這個字，源自法文；美式英文則是說「cilantro」，源自西班牙文（二者皆源自拉丁文「coriandrum」）。 英式與美式英文拼寫上的差異，部分是由於《美國英語詞典》的編纂者諾亞‧韋伯斯特的決定。《美國英語詞典》是韋式字典的基礎，建立了美國拼寫某些字的慣例。
接下來的六個月，我們將介紹美式和英式英文之間在拼寫、語法、用字和語言慣例方面的差異。上方的表格所列舉的，是一些職業名稱在兩者間的差異。
（台北時報林俐凱譯）
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
照片：維基共享資源
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