question: Why do British people and American people speak different English?
comment: Different geographic areas. Same way Mexico and Spain speak Spanish but have differences in the spoken language. Same with accents within the US itself. Southern accents vs western vs far north.
passages: Section::::Demographics.
   American and British English spelling differences
  
  Many of the differences between American and British English date back to a time when spelling standards had not yet developed. For instance, some spellings seen as "American" today were once commonly used in Britain and some spellings seen as "British" were once commonly used in the United States. A "British standard" began to emerge following the 1755 publication of Samuel Johnson's "A Dictionary of the English Language", and an "American standard" started following the work of Noah Webster and in particular his "An American Dictionary of the English Language", first published in 1828.
   Some differences in usage and/or meaning can cause confusion or embarrassment. For example, the word "fanny" is a slang word for vulva in BrE but means buttocks in AmE—the AmE phrase "fanny pack" is "bum bag" in BrE. In AmE the word "pissed" means being annoyed whereas in BrE it is a coarse word for being drunk (in both varieties, "pissed off" means irritated).
   Over the past 400 years, the forms of the language used in the Americas—especially in the United States—and that used in the United Kingdom have diverged in a few minor ways, leading to the versions now often referred to as American English and British English. Differences between the two include pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary (lexis), spelling, punctuation, idioms, and formatting of dates and numbers. However, the differences in written and most spoken grammar structure tend to be much less than in other aspects of the language in terms of mutual intelligibility. A few words have completely different meanings in the two versions or are even unknown or not used in one of the versions. One particular contribution towards formalizing these differences came from Noah Webster, who wrote the first American dictionary (published 1828) with the intention of showing that people in the United States spoke a different dialect from those spoken in the UK, much like a regional accent.
   Section::::Numerical expressions.:Time.
   Section::::Numerical expressions.:Dates.
   BrE: 
  
  AmE: 
   BULLET::::- Similarly, American English has occasionally replaced more traditional English words with their Spanish counterparts. This is especially common in regions historically affected by Spanish settlement (such as the American Southwest and Florida) as well as other areas that have since experienced strong Hispanic migration (such as urban centers). Examples of these include grocery markets' preference in the U.S. for Spanish names such as cilantro and manzanilla over coriander and camomile respectively.
  
  Section::::Vocabulary.
   This divergence between American English and British English has provided opportunities for humorous comment: e.g. in fiction George Bernard Shaw says that the United States and United Kingdom are "two countries divided by a common language"; and Oscar Wilde says that "We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, the language" ("The Canterville Ghost", 1888). Henry Sweet incorrectly predicted in 1877 that within a century American English, Australian English and British English would be mutually unintelligible ("A Handbook of Phonetics"). Perhaps increased worldwide communication through radio, television, the Internet and globalization has tended to reduce regional variation. This can lead to some variations becoming extinct (for instance "the wireless" being progressively superseded by "the radio") or the acceptance of wide variations as "perfectly good English" everywhere.
   The difference occurs for all nouns of multitude, both general terms such as "team" and "company" and proper nouns (for example where a place name is used to refer to a sports team). For instance,
   Although spoken American and British English are generally mutually intelligible, there are occasional differences which might cause embarrassment—for example, in American English a "rubber" is usually interpreted as a "condom" rather than an "eraser"; and a British "fanny" refers to the female pubic area, while the American "fanny" refers to an "ass" (US) or an "arse" (UK).
  
  Section::::Word derivation and compounds.
   American English is different from British English in terms of spelling (one example being the dropped "u" in words such as color/colour), grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and slang usage. The differences are not usually a barrier to effective communication between an American English and a British English speaker.
   Section::::Vocabulary.:Social and cultural differences.:Television.
   The settlement history of the English-speaking inner circle countries outside Britain helped level dialect distinctions and produce koineised forms of English in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. The majority of immigrants to the United States without British ancestry rapidly adopted English after arrival. Now the majority of the United States population are monolingual English speakers, although English has been given official status by only 30 of the 50 state governments of the US.
  
  Section::::Geographical distribution.:English as a global language.
   In the early 18th century, English spelling was inconsistent. These differences became noticeable after the publishing of influential dictionaries. Today's British English spellings mostly follow Johnson's "A Dictionary of the English Language" (1755), while many American English spellings follow Webster's "An American Dictionary of the English Language" ("ADEL", "Webster's Dictionary", 1828).
   Similarly, the word "hockey" in BrE refers to field hockey and in AmE, "hockey" means ice hockey.
  
  Words with completely different meanings are relatively few; most of the time there are either (1) words with one or more shared meanings and one or more meanings unique to one variety (for example, bathroom and toilet) or (2) words the meanings of which are actually common to both BrE and AmE but that show differences in frequency, connotation or denotation (for example, "smart", "clever", "mad").
   BULLET::::- Some British English words come from French roots, while American English finds its words from other places, e.g. AmE "eggplant" and "zucchini" are "aubergine" and "courgette" in BrE.
   The familiarity of speakers with words and phrases from different regions varies, and the difficulty of discerning an unfamiliar definition also depends on the context and the term. As expressions spread with the globalization of telecommunication, they are often but not always recognized as foreign to the speaker's dialect, and words from other dialects may carry connotations (deserved or not) with regard to register, social status, origin, and intelligence.
  
  Section::::Vocabulary.:Words and phrases with different meanings.
   The use of English in the United States is a result of British colonization of the Americas. The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America during the 17th century, followed by further migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 17th century, dialects from many different regions of England existed in every American colony, allowing a process of extensive dialect mixture and levelling in which English varieties across the colonies became more homogeneous compared with varieties in England. English thus predominated in the colonies even by the end of the 17th century's first massive immigrations of non-English speakers from Europe and Africa, and firsthand descriptions of a fairly uniform American English became common after the mid-18th century. Since then, American English has developed into some new varieties, including regional dialects that, in some cases, show minor influences from successive waves of immigrants of diverse language backgrounds in the last two centuries, though primarily from Europeans.
   Comparison of American and British English
  
  The English language was first introduced to the Americas by British colonization, beginning in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The language also spread to numerous other parts of the world as a result of British trade and colonisation and the spread of the former British Empire, which, by 1921, included about 470–570 million people, about a quarter of the world's population. Written forms of British and American English as found in newspapers and textbooks vary little in their essential features, with only occasional noticeable differences.
   BULLET::::- Generally AmE has a tendency to drop inflectional suffixes, thus preferring clipped forms: compare "cookbook" v. "cookery book"; "Smith, age 40" v. "Smith, aged 40"; "skim milk" v. "skimmed milk"; "dollhouse" v. "dolls' house"; "barber shop" v. "barber's shop".
   Webster's efforts at spelling reform were somewhat effective in his native country, resulting in certain well-known patterns of spelling differences between the American and British varieties of English. However, English-language spelling reform has rarely been adopted otherwise, and so modern English orthography varies somewhat between countries and is far from phonemic in any country.
  
  Section::::Historical origins.
   As far as spelling is concerned, the differences between American and British usage became noticeable due to the first influential lexicographers (dictionary writers) on each side of the Atlantic. Samuel Johnson's dictionary of 1755 greatly favoured Norman-influenced spellings such as "centre" and "colour"; on the other hand, Noah Webster's first guide to American spelling, published in 1783, preferred spellings like "center" and the Latinate "color". The difference in strategy and philosophy of Johnson and Webster are largely responsible for the main division in English spelling that exists today. However, these differences are extremely minor. Spelling is but a small part of the differences between dialects of English, and may not even reflect dialect differences at all (except in phonetically spelled dialogue). International English refers to much more than an agreed spelling pattern.
   As Modern English developed, explicit norms for standard usage were published, and spread through official media such as public education and state-sponsored publications. In 1755 Samuel Johnson published his "A Dictionary of the English Language" which introduced standard spellings of words and usage norms. In 1828, Noah Webster published the "American Dictionary of the English language" to try to establish a norm for speaking and writing American English that was independent of the British standard. Within Britain, non-standard or lower class dialect features were increasingly stigmatised, leading to the quick spread of the prestige varieties among the middle classes.
   Before the early 18th century English spelling was not standardized. Different standards became noticeable after the publishing of influential dictionaries. For the most part current BrE spellings follow those of Samuel Johnson's "Dictionary of the English Language" (1755), while AmE spellings follow those of Noah Webster's "An American Dictionary of the English Language" (1828). In the United Kingdom, the influences of those who preferred the French spellings of certain words proved decisive. In many cases AmE spelling deviated from mainstream British spelling; on the other hand it has also often retained older forms. Many of the now characteristic AmE spellings were popularized, although often not created, by Noah Webster. Webster chose already-existing alternative spellings "on such grounds as simplicity, analogy or etymology". Webster did attempt to introduce some reformed spellings, as did the Simplified Spelling Board in the early 20th century, but most were not adopted. Later spelling changes in the UK had little effect on present-day US spelling, and vice versa.
  