British vs American English

Hello!

Have you ever wondered how many differences are between British and American English?

Today I want to show you some tricky words which may not make a difference for foreigner who learn English. The most noticeable difference is obviously vocabulary. For example Americans go on vacation, while british people go on holidays, or hols. New Yorkers live in apartments, Londoners live in flats. British would say that you have a sense of humour and Americans that you have a sense of humor. And the famous school game which is called in British English “noughts and crosses” is known in America as tic-tac-toe :-)

When you want to send a letter to London or to New York you need to pay attention on the postal code but that’s only when you are thinking about England because in America there is ‘zip code”.

If you drive a car in Britain you have to remember that you have to go on a petrol station to refuel your car and not to a gas station.  British pack things into the boot and Americans into a trunk. And before going shopping in London we would say that we have to park the car in the car park and in Chicago that we have to do it in the parking lot.

Furthermore, we can see a difference in the collective nouns. In American English collective nouns are singular. For example stuff refers to a group of employees, band refers to a group of musicians so they would say that “The band is good”. But in British English collective nouns can be singular or plural. For example we can say that “The team are playing tonight” as well as we can say that “The team is playing tonight”.

There is also a small difference in the past tense verbs. For example in the past tense Americans tend to use –ed ending unlike to British who tend to use the –t ending.

For example: learn -> learned or learnt, dream-> dreamed or dreamt, burn-> burned or burnt.

When it comes to the past participle form Americans could say: “I have never gotten caught” while British would say: “I have never got caught”. Brits only use got!

Spelling is also important when we want to learn English. There are some words, such as: advertisement, mobile, clique, either, neither, missile, envelope and many others, which have a different pronunciation in British English and in American English.  

So it is important to remember about this small changes in English when we are planning our vacations in America.

Below, I put the video which in a funny way presents what people think about British and American English and how to distinguish them.