Language

English is the official language of theUnited Kingdom and spoken by most of the population. The major languages are English, Gaelic and Welsh. Now less than a quarter of all Welsh people, which is 600,000 out of 2,800,000 population, speak Welsh and only 1% speaks onlyWelsh, and this number tends to decrease. Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic arestill spoken, although they have suffered more than Welsh from the spread ofEnglish. However, all three languages are now officially encouraged and taughtin schools.

Though English is spoken by people both inthe United Kingdom and the United States, after hundreds of years’ development,the language in these two countries has become a little bit different in someway. That is why when we check up a word in the electronic dictionary, we cansee two pronunciations for one word. One is the pronunciation in BritishEnglish, and the other is American English. The spelling can be different too.Think about the word “color”. How do you spell it? If you spell like“c-o-l-o-r”, that is the American style. If you think it should be“c-o-l-o-u-r”, that is the British way. One more example, “center”. TheAmerican spelling is “c-e-n-t-e-r” and British people would spell it as“c-e-n-t-r-e”. They are very much alike, but slightly different. Not to mentionthe meaning of some vocabularies. Are you using the British English or AmericanEnglish? Try to stick with just one kind.