Surprising things about British and American English
Friday, July 4th, 2008I’ve been reading through the new Cambridge Grammar of English. Not something I usually do for pleasure (honestly!), but got a free copy for TEFL.net reviews and so felt like I ought to examine at least some parts in detail- and now I am reading it for pleasure!
Maybe the most interesting thing is that the use of corpora rather than just common sense (otherwise known as native speaker intuition) means there are bits on almost every page where you go “Really?” Below is a list of the “Oh yes, I suppose so.” and “No, I really don’t think so” moments so far based on British and American English. Most good science throws out counterintuitive things like this. Unfortunately, so does most bad science, so I’d appreciate it if you would comment on how the things below match with your own experience and instinct- there are a few I have doubts on myself.
- In AmE, the score in “The Seattle Sea Hawks beat the Cincinnati Reds 7-O is pronounced” “seven nothing” or “seven to nothing” or “seven zip”
- “Four from nine is/leaves five” is okay in BrE
- The form in “Eleven hundred pounds” (rather than “one hundred one hundred”) is more popular in AmE than BrE
- “isn’t” (rather than ’s not) is many times more frequent in BrE than AmE
- Interrogative tags are about four times more frequent in BrE than in AmE
- The “do” in reduced clauses with modal verbs
“Are you going?”
“I might do”
is only used in British English
- She lives on/ in Leonora Street is a Br/ Am thing
- “Must” is much more frequent in BrE than AmE
- “Had better” is six times more frequent in BrE
- “Going to” often used for direction giving (finding your way) in AmE: “You’re gonna go two blocks…”
- “I suppose” is much more frequent in BrE
If you ended up here wanting to find more more traditional stuff about British and American English, try:
Wikipedia (of course) American and British English differences
The American’s Guide to Speaking British English
BBC America British American Dictionary
If you are interested in worksheets for classroom use on British and American English, look here:
How British is your Financial English?
ESL Printable British and American English page
British and American English elesson from the (recommended) textbook Inside Out
British and American: The main differences from the (equally recommended) vocab book Word for Word
And if you’d like your own shiny new TEFL book hot off the press for free, see here.