Hi Cecilia,

Check out this website <a href="http://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/british-american.htm">http://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/british-american.htm</a>; this pretty much explains the differences between UK and American English. I hope this helps....

They teach British English in the Netherlands too. The differences are minor, trust me. I think it's better to study British English, since for us it's a neighbouring country and a partner in the EU.

(In the sentence above, for example, the word neighbouring is British spelling. In American English it would be neighboring. Such details.)

Let's call the English spoken by U.S. national television news anchors X.

Let's call "received" pronunciation in the U.K. Y.

Let's call some extreme regional variations of U.S. English X1, X2, X3

Let's call some extreme regional variations of U.K. English Y1, Y2, Y3.

In my opinion, the difference between X and Y is not any bigger than the difference between X and X1, or the difference between Y and Y1.

Any language with option of colloquial like English, French, Portuguese etc have differences in pronunciation, some vocabulary, sentence structure etc but still SAME LANGUAGE and sometimes the colloquial because of big number of speakers is more common.

I studied in Portugal and we also learn the British English because we are in Europe, probably someone from Latin America will learn the American English :) Just because you learn British English don't mean you will talk like them at because is really hard, is more easy talk with the pronunciation American English because we have more series/movies, musics, videos on youtube etc :) American English have a pronunciation more easy than the British one that don't mean you will write like the Americans because you don't have contact with written language but probably talk like them.

In my case I love the pronunciation of English British is much pretty, charming, etc but for talk like them I need study much more and practice with natives and I'm very slothful, but I always try to write as they and appreciate when someone correct me because I really like and was the English I learned in school :)

Thank you Saeed ^^