Surprising things about British and American English
I’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.
July 4th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
- She lives on/ in Leonora Street is a Br/ Am thing
shouldn’t that be the other way round? i.e. on Leonora st is US English?
July 4th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Yup- my mistake rather than CUPs, that one. Not sure what I feel the British has to go first in “British and American English”, is that very nationalistic of me??
July 5th, 2008 at 5:52 am
- 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”
***
First off, I’m not sure why the Seahawks (American football) are playing the Reds (baseball). Oh, that’s right, the Seattle Mariners suck this season — may as well field the football team. (Or did they intend the Cincinnati Bengals (football)? And would they have written it “Ben Gals” — which sounds like a group of women who have undergone sex reassignment therapy?)
Anyway, my American English instinct says, “seven to nothing” is the most common. “Seven zip” I can buy — sort of, but I would never say it. “Seven nothing” is just not hearing the muttered “to,” IMO.
July 5th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Most of the American ones sound right to me! I agree with the above comment on sports, and would note there is also something that I can never quite remember with team names in plural or singular.
Another one: I would say “The Chicago Bulls are winning” and “Chicago is winning”, but I’ve heard for example “Arsenal / Real Madrid are winning” (?) in British English which just sounds wrong, I guess because the name is not plural. There is something similar with “family” that also sounds strange to me.
For math, I would only say nine minus five is four…never with “are.”
Take care Alex!
July 6th, 2008 at 2:18 am
Hi Katie
Long time no comment!
I had a class of Cert TEFL trainees in which the Americans absolutely refused to believe that “the government are…” was correct in British English. But then that same class also refused to believe that “Yours faithfully” was something we still really use nowadays, so maybe they were just a stubborn bunch…
July 7th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
One more British and American English worksheets/ lesson plan- this one being not just my favourite lesson for that point, but possibly one of my favourite lessons ever!
http://www.usingenglish.com/files/pdf/how-british-is-your-english-questionnaire-and-speaking.pdf
July 22nd, 2008 at 1:48 pm
We are the pie team (podcastsinenglish.com) and we have just done a level 1 podcast on some differences between US and UK English - have a look! There are worksheets and extra vocabulary tasks that go with the podcast too.
July 22nd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
This is our url: http://www.podcastsinenglish.com