【单选题】

It was said by Sir GeorgeBernard Shaw that "England andAmerica are two countries separated by the same language." My first personal experience of this was when I worked as a camp counselor for two months in 2000 in SummerCamp run by theBoy Scouts ofAmerica, as part of an international leader exchange scheme.Before I went, all the participants ha the scheme were given a short list of words that are in common use in the UK whichAmericans would either be confused by or would even offend them. I memorized the words and thought "I’ll cope".

When I finally arrived in the States three months later, I realized that perhaps a lifetime of watchingAmerican television was not adequate preparation for appreciating and coping with the differences betweenAmerican andBritish speech. In the first hour of arriving at the camp I was exposed to High SchoolAmericanEnglish,BlackAmericanEnglish andAmericanEnglish spoken by Joe Public, all every different to each other. Needless to say, I did cope in the enD、TheAmericans I met were very welcoming and helpful, and I found they were patient with me when I made a social faux pas when I used an inappropriate word or phrase.
Upon my return I began to wonder whether anyone had documented the differences betweenAmerican andBritishEnglish. I found several books on the subject but often these were written in a dry and academic way. I felt that I could do better and use my sense of humor and personal experiences to help people from both sides ofAtlantic to communicate more effectively when they meet.
My research into the subject led me to several conclusions.
Firstly,AmericanEnglish andBritishEnglish are covering, thanks to increased transatlantic travel and the medi
A、The movement of slang words is mostly eastwards, though a few words from the UK have been adopted by the Ivy League fraternities. This convergent trend is a recent one dating from the emergence of Hollywood as the predominant film making center in the world and also from the Second World War when large numbers ofAmerican GIs were stationed in the UK. This trend was consolidated by the advent of television.Before then, it was thought thatAmericanEnglish andBritishEnglish would diverge as the two languages evolveD、In 1789, Noah Webster stated that: "Numerous local causes, such as a new country, new associations of people, new combinations of ideas ha the arts and some intercourse with tribes wholly unknown inEurope will introduce new words into theAmerican tongue." He was fight, but his next statement has since been proved to be incorrect. "These causes will produce in the course of time a language in NorthAmerica as different from the modernDutch,Danish and Swedish are from the German or from one another."
Webster had underrated the amount of social intercourse betweenEngland and her former colony.Even before Webster had started to compile his dictionary, words and expressions from theAmerica had already infiltrated theBritish language, for example "canoe" and "hatchet".
Secondly, there are some generalizations that can be made aboutAmerican andBritishEnglish which can reveal the nature of the two nations and their peoples.British speech tends to be less general, and directed more, in nuances of meaning, attendant murmurings and pauses, carries a wealth of shared assumptions and attitudes. In other words, theBritish are preoccupied with their social status within society and speak and act accordingly to fit into the social class they aspire to. This is particularly evident when talking .to someone from "the middle class" when he points out that he is "upper middle class" rather than "middle class" or "lower middle class". John Major (the former UK Prime Minister) may have said that we are now living in a "classless society" but the class system still prevails.At that moment both he and the Leader of the Opposition, TonyBlair, were talking about captur