American and British people both speak English. But sometimes it does not seem like the same language. In fact, there are some important differences between British English and American English.

【小题1】 Often, Americans don’t say each word separately (分开). They say several words together. Americans may say “I dunno” instead of “I don’t know”. Or they may say “Whaddya say?” instead of “What did you say?” However, the British are more careful in their speech. They usually say all the words and keep them separate. Sound is not only the difference between British English and American English. Words sometimes have different meanings too. For example, the words for cars and driving is very different. Americans drive trucks, but in England people drive lorries.

【小题2】 In England, if you are going to telephone your friends, you “phone them up”. In America, you “give them a call”.

There are also some differences in grammar (语法). For example, Americans usually use the helping verb “do” when they ask a question. They say “Do you have a storybook?” But the British often leave out the helping verb. 【小题3】

Most languages are like this. Languages change over time. When people live in separate places, the languages change in different ways. This is what has happened to English. 【小题4】 Many people in Canada speak French but their French is very different from the French of France.

Are you still doing the V for victory sign? It’s out. The latest popular hand gesture（手势）is to curl（卷曲）both of your hands and put them together to make a heart shape.

Known as “Hand heart”, many young stars in the US including Justin Bieber, Blake Lively and Taylor Swift have done the gesture in recent photos.

“The heart hand gesture means something between ‘I love you’ and ‘thank you’,” said the country singer Taylor Swift. It’s a sweet, easy message which you can send without saying a word.

Taylor Swift often puts her hands above her head in the heart shape at her concerts. And she is believed to be the first to make the gesture popular. Last month during a charity show, Justin Bieber and his superstar friends did the hand heart and put the photo online. They did it to help three kids whose parents were killed in a car accident. The gesture became more popular after that.

“It used to take longer for nonverbal（不用语言的）culture to move. But now, with smart phones and the Internet, it’s much faster,” said Patti Wood, an American language expert（专家）.

In our neighbor country—South Korea, the hand heart has been popular for a long time. In a different way, people there like making a “bigger heart” by putting their hands above their heads and making a heart shape with their arms. It means “I love you”.