Ex.2. In the following sentences find the examples of words which are characteristic of American English. Take note of their spelling peculiarities

As the elevator carried Brett downward, Hank Kreisel closed and locked the apartment door from in­side. 2. A raw fall wind swirled leaves and dust in small tornadoes and sent pedestrians scurrying for in­door warmth. 3. Over amid the bungalows a repair crew was coping with a leaky water main. 4. We have also built, ourselves, experimental trucks and cars which are electric powered. 5. In a plant bad news trav­elled like burning gasoline. 6. May Lou wasn't in; she had probably gone to a movie. 7. The bank was about equal in size to a neighbourhood drugstore, brightly lighted and pleasantly designed. 8. Nolan Wainwright walked towards the apartment building, a three-storey structure probably forty years old and showing signs of disrepair. He guessed it contained two dozen or so apartments. Inside a vestibule Nolan Wainwright could see an array of mail boxes and call buttons. 9. He's a barber and one of our bird dogs. We had twenty or so regular bird dogs, Smokey revealed, in­cluding service station operators, a druggist, a beauty-parlor operator, and an undertaker. 10. Barbara put a hand to her hair — chestnut brown and luxuriant, like her Polish Mother's; it also grew annoyingly fast so she had to spend more time than she liked in beauty sa­lons. 11. He hadn't had an engineering degree to start, having been a high school dropout before World War II. 12. Auto companies regularly invited design school students in, treating them like VIP's, while the students saw for themselves the kind of aura they might work in later.

Ex.3. Read the following extract. Explain the difference in the meanings of the italicized words in American and Brit­ish English.

In America just as in English, you see the same shops with the same boards and windows in every town and village. Shopping, however, is an art of its own and you have to learn slowly where to buy various things. If you are hungry, you go to the chemist's. A chemist's shop is called a drugstore in the United States. In the larger drugstores you may be able to get drugs, too, but their main business consists in selling stationery, candy, toys, braces, belts, fountain pens, furniture and imitation jewellery. You must be extremely care­ful concerning the names of certain articles. If you ask for suspenders in a man's shop, you receive a pair of braces, if you ask for a pair of pants, you receive a pair of trousers and should you ask for a pair of braces, you receive a queer look.

I should like to mention that although a lift is called an elevator in the United States, when hitch-hiking you do not ask for an elevator, you ask for a lift. There's some confusion about the word flat. A flat in America is called an apartment; what they call a flat is a puncture in your tyre (or as they spell it, tire). Con­sequently the notice: 'Flats Fixed' does not indicate an estate agent where they are going to fix you up with a flat, but a garage where they are equipped to mend a puncture.

(From How to Scrape Skies by G. Mikes)