There are many *hundreds* of differences between British and
American English. From time to time, we get threads in which
each post mentions *one* of these differences. Because such a
thread can go on for ever, it's helpful to delimit the topic
more narrowly.
The books to get are _The Hutchinson British/American Dictionary_
by Norman Moss (Arrow, 1990, ISBN 0-09-978230-8); _British English,
A to Zed_ by Norman W. Schur (Facts on File, 1987, ISBN
0-8160-1635-6); and _Modern American Usage_ by H. W. Horwill
(OUP, 2nd ed., 1935).
Nowadays it's easy to order books from other countries over the
Web. You can compare prices at: http://www.addall.com/
Jeremy Smith (jeremy@peak.org) has compiled his own
British-American dictionary, available on the WWW at
http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/dict.html. He plans to
publish it as a paperback.
For Australian English, see _The Macquarie Dictionary of
Australian Colloquial Language_ (Macquarie, 1988,
ISBN 0-949757-41-1); _The Macquarie Dictionary_ (Macquarie, 1991,
ISBN 0-949757-63-2); _The Australian National Dictionary_ (Oxford
University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-19-55736-5); or _The Dinkum
Dictionary_ (Viking O'Nell, 1988, ISBN 0-670-90419-8). You can
order Australian books from the Australian Online Bookshop at
http://www.bookworm.com.au. Robert P. O'Shea
(r_oshea@otago.ac.nz.) has an online dictionary at
http://psy.otago.ac.nz:800/r_oshea/slang.html.
For New Zealand English, there's the _Heinemann New Zealand
Dictionary_, ed. H. W. Orseman (Heinemann, 1979, ISBN
0-86863-373-9); and _A Personal Kiwi-Yankee Slanguage Dictionary_,
by Louis S. Leland Jr. (McIndoe, 1987, ISBN 0-86868-001-X).
For South African English, see _A Dictionary of South African
English_, ed. Jean Branford (OUP, 3rd ed., 1987, ISBN
0-19-570427-4).
For Canadian English, see _A Dictionary of Canadianisms on
Historical Principles_ (Gage, 1967, ISBN 0-7715-1976-1); the
_Penguin Canadian Dictionary_ (Copp, 1990, ISBN 0-670-81970-0); or
the _Gage Canadian Dictionary_ (Gage, 1997, ISBN 0-7715-7399-5).
For Irish English, see Padiac O'Farrell's _How the Irish speak
English (Mercier, 1993, ISBN 1-85635-055-X); Patrick W. Joyce's
_English as We Speak it in Ireland_ (Wolfhound, 2nd ed., 1987, ISBN
0-86327-122-7); or Niklas Miller's _Irish-English, English-Irish
Dictionary_ (Abson, 1982, ISBN 0-902920-11-1); or search for titles
containing the word "dictionary" at the Read Ireland Bookstore at
http://www.readireland.ie.
For English in India, see Ivor Lewis's _Sahibs, Nabobs and
Boxwallahs: A Dictionary of the Words of Anglo-Indian_ (OUP, 1991,
ISBN 0-19-562582-X).
Source: [Mark Israel, 'Recommended Books: Books on Britishisms, Canadianisms, etc.', The alt.usage.english FAQ file,(line 778), (29 Sept 1997)]
