You say ‘tomahto’ and I say ‘tomayto’

I stumble across an interesting article on the star online which i decided to share with you all today :)

It is about the different pronunciation of English words which many people is unclear of. It is a nice article. Enjoys~

You say ‘tomahto’ and I say ‘tomayto’

By Dr LIM CHIN LAM

ENGLISH is used in many countries — originally Britain, then the countries that started off as colonies, dominions, and protectorates of Britain. It is now used, to varying extents and to various degrees of proficiency, in the rest of the world.

The native English-speaking countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States) and those in which English is used to a large extent (India, Malaysia, Fiji, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda, etc.) each have their brand of English. Even then, these different Englishes are generally intelligible to the users of English at large.

But are they?

Let us look at British English (BrE) and American English (AmE, specifically North American English), the two most widely used kinds of English. The English spoken in other countries generally follows BrE or AmE — but with its own peculiarities. In Malaysia, the English we use is of the British variety.

BrE and AmE differ in many areas which I can but try to classify and summarise, with limited examples, within the constraints of this column.

Same words, different pronunciations

The word herb is pronounced HERB in BrE but ERB in AmE.

Other examples: chance (CHAHNS/CHENS – the same difference in vowel sound also in class, command, dance, grass, past); fertile (FERTYL/FERTL); consortium(KONSORTIEM/KONSORSHIUM); route (ROOT/ROWT), schedule (SHEDIUL/SKEDIUL); and so on.

Same words, difference in spelling

Nowadays, the ligatures “æ” and “?” are rarely encountered. BrE tends to separate out the conjoined vowels in print while AmE reduces them to the single letter ‘e’.
Examples: anaemia/anemia, diarrhoea/diarrhea, encyclopaedia/encyclopedia, foetus/fetus, oedema/edema.

To read more on the article, please click here -> The Star(Source)