As you all know, we’ve Elevators from everywhere the planet with an outsized percentage from Australia and therefore the US. And while our head office is predicated in Melbourne, we even have a team based within the Philippines and one among our writers based within the US. Australian vs English.
This is where it gets a touch complicated- if you hadn’t noticed, we LOVE producing content. However, our team within the Philippines learnt American English at college , our copyrighter from the US uses American English and therefore the remainder of us use Australian English.
Recommended:
- Study in Canada
- Study in Sweden
- Study in U.S.A
- Study in Guyana
- Study in Paraguay
- Study in Zimbabwe
- Study in Russia
- Study in United Arab Emirates
- Study in Netherlands
- Study in Australia
- Study in Philippines
- Study in Chile
- Study in Estonia
- Study in Croatia
- Study in Argentina
- Study in Brazil
- Study in Bolivia
- Study in Colombia
- Study in China
- Study in Peru
- Study in Ecuador
- Study in Ireland
I often get a number of our audience contacting me to means spelling and grammatical errors which technically aren’t really errors, so I assumed I might put together a touch guide to spot a number of the differences.
Spelling
Australia shares the same spelling system with the British whereas the United States has a slightly different spelling system. Here are some examples:
-or VS -our
USA | UK/ AUS |
color | colour |
behavior | behaviour |
humor | humour |
-ize VS -ise and -lyze VS -lise
USA | UK/ AUS |
realize | realise |
prioritize | prioritise |
analyze | analyse |
organize | organise |
-ter VS -tre
USA | UK/ AUS |
theater | theatre |
meter | metre |
center | centre |
-ll VS -l
This one is a little tricky as there some exceptions such as install and compel, which are spelt the same in British and American English. But some examples of differences are:
USA | UK/ AUS |
fulfill | fulfil |
enroll | enrol |
installment | instalment |
-led + -ling VS -lled + -lling
Ok just to make this more confusing… for the following words, American English uses one “l” and British English uses two “l”’s.
USA | UK/ AUS |
traveled | travelled |
traveling | travelling |
labeled | labelled |
labeling | labelling |
modeled | modelled |
modeling | modelling |
Vocabulary
Here are some other examples of differences in vocabulary:
USA | UK/ AUS |
apartment | flat |
college | university |
vacation | holiday |
sweater | jumper |
drugstore | chemist/ pharmacy |
cookie | biscuit |
Aussie Slang
Another thing you may have noticed is that Australians LOVE slang! We pretty much abbreviate everything. Sometimes you may even think that Australians are speaking another language! Here are just a few examples:
Sanga = Sandwich
Breaky = Breakfast
Sunnies = Sunglasses
Arvo = Afternoon
If you want the full Aussie slang guide, check out this hilarious YouTube clip:
Grammar
There are only a few small differences between American, Australian and British English in terms of grammar. Some examples are:
USA | UK/ AU |
I learned | I learnt |
I spelled | I spelt |
I had forgotten | I forgot |
Monday through Friday | Monday to Friday |
Thanks for the English Lesson but Why Are You Telling Me This?
The main point I want to make is that we have decided that moving forward all of our content will be written in Australian English because we are an Australian company. (Also, I don’t want you to think that we are terrible spellers!)
I hope this clears this up for you all and that you learnt a lot from this post. (See what I did there?)