British v American English Grammar

[Stu]

We know there are many differences in the British and US lexicon of English, like we say "trousers" (and "pants" refer to underwear) and to do with driving like Boot" = "trunk", "bonnet" = "hood" and "petrol" = "gas".

I think we know there are some differences in the British and US English orthography (spellings), like we write "tyres" rather than "tires"; and we write "neighbour" rather than "neighbor".

There are also differences in stress in pronunciation - so a British English speaker would stress the first syllable of words like ballet, adult and brochure while a US speaker would stress the second syllable.

I was just wondering what grammatical differences have been noticed between the two varieties of English. Anyone spotted any? I can think of a small number.

[Myopic Bookworm]

I was just wondering what grammatical differences have been noticed between the two varieties of English. Anyone spotted any? I can think of a small number.

Oh my goodness, I am sure there are plenty, and some of them crop up in my Duolingo language learning app, which assumes American usage for its English translations.

I have a couple of examples I could mention: for example, many Americans would say "a couple examples", omitting the "of". They might also use the compound preposition "back of", which I haven't heard in the UK. We don't usually use days of the week as adverbs ("...the President said Tuesday"). There is a set of tense shifts involving conditionals which I don't know in detail, but American English seems to use "if I would have..." where UK English uses "if I had...". And we do not approve of "different than": it's "different to" or "different from".

My favourite linguistic double-take is when the pilot announces that the plane will be in the air "momentarily": in the US this means "in a moment", but in the UK it means "for a moment", which is not at all reassuring!

[geron]

One grammatical difference I've often noticed is that US English doesn't appear to have a perfect tense. So I might say "I have posted a comment" (perfect tense), conveying the sense that I did it in the recent past. Or I might write, "I posted a comment", meaning that I did so at some time in the indefinite past. American speakers seem to use the latter for all purposes.

[crfriend]

I was just wondering what grammatical differences have been noticed between the two varieties of English. Anyone spotted any? I can think of a small number.

Another one is where in UK English entities like corporations are referred to in the plural rather than the singular, e.g. "The Foo Company have 2,000 employees", where in US English it'd be "The Foo Company has 2,000 employees". The differences are remarkably subtle and go way beyond simple spelling.

Those who know me personally know that I "speak" "Network American" -- yet when I write, I use UK English. This is a device I use to remind myself that I am writing rather than speaking, and my use of "Network American" (from, first, network radio and then network television) is a ruse I use to make sure that nobody can nail down where I hail from in the country (which has saved my bacon on a few occasions!).

[Ray]

Hmm. I’d say that company x has 2,000 employees. It’s one company. That’s U.K. English.

[crfriend]

Hmm. I’d say that company x has 2,000 employees. It’s one company. That’s U.K. English.

I was using the BBC example from a few decades ago. Perhaps your version of English has been dumbed down like the American one. If so, I was unaware. If that's the case I'll have to revise my writing -- or just give up in disgust and write in the same manner as I speak.

[Ray]

Not sure it’s dumbing down, Carl. A company -that is, a singular corporate body, has characteristics, including employees. Surely we would - should - use the third person, singular?

[crfriend]

Not sure it’s dumbing down, Carl. A company -that is, a singular corporate body, has characteristics, including employees. Surely we would - should - use the third person, singular?

So the languages are merging, then? Interesting. Perhaps I need to "adjust my ways". (Not the first time, and it likely won't be the last.)

[Faldaguy]

Why just British vs American; having lived in NZ, AU & Canada as well as travels in several other Caribbean island nations where English is the primary language -- even with Aussie big ears and a glib tongue my poor noggin is oft lost. Maybe Ray can help us out, but I'd venture the variants from OZ would dwarf us plain speaking Americans. So, shall we get back to being clobbered?

[Mouse]

English is a living language which has been adapted to suit peoples need of expression around the world. Then with the expansion of media all these versions of English are shared and we get usage and phrases from around the world mixed into daily use.

[FranTastic444]

As someone who regularly has to state the position of the company I work for in emails, I come across the has / have conundrum on a regular basis. My employer *used* to be an org where most people who worked there were happy (proud in some cases) to be part of the team and there was a lot of use of "we" in communications. This is no more, so there is a lot more use of the company name instead. Whereas before I would have stated "we have been looking into....", I would now say "Bodgit & Scarper has been looking into...."

I cringe every time I hear a US sports presenter utter something along the lines of "The Pawtucket Snot Rollers were the winningest team in the league last season"

A former colleagues son got into a ridiculous amount of trouble for hanging onto the use of "and" when using numbers. He was told in no uncertain terms that he should drop the "and" from statements such as "There are four hundred and twenty nine national park sites in the US"

When talking about time, I will often make a statement such as "I'll meet you at half eight", meaning half past eight. My colleague may say "I'll meet you at half of eight", meaning 7.30pm (half way to eight).

On a related note, one of my tricks when entertaining Brit visitors to Boston is to ask the server for a glass of water, to which I almost always get a confused look of befuddlement from the waiting staff with whom I am interacting. I then rephrase slightly, asking instead for a glass of warder and we are back to understanding each other perfectly. I warn my guests ahead of time that I am going to do this.

On another related note, there are some words that are in the dictionaries of both the US and the UK, but have fallen out of favour in one of the countries. Just for gits and shiggles, I'll throw words into conversations that Americans don't typically use. "Let's meet again in a fortnight" is a favourite of mine. As a nod to an Indian colleague, I will also suggest on occasion that we should look to prepone a meeting. Americans like to use the words like bifurcate, edification, expedite - words I'd never come across in the UK (but that was prior to my knowledge of this forum with regards to bifurcate). I seem to remember reading that faucet is a word that was in common use in the UK in years gone by (Victorian, maybe?).

[FranTastic444]

I remember an article a while back which suggested that some British youth had started to use the word "apartment" at around the same time that their American cousins had started to use the word "flat" to describe the same building type.

Whilst on that subject, it is interesting how words can change within a generation or two. The obvious one for us oldies is the word "gay". There are though many other instances (here is just one set of examples).

Then we have kids slang to contend with (using words with a totally different meaning to their traditional use) - sick, slay, brat amongst many others.

Among / amongst - there's another one to consider. I've had an American colleague ask if the latter is a real word!

[FranTastic444]

Whilst (not while, you notice) we are on the subject of communication, I note that text on road surfaces in the US is written away from the observer but towards the observer in the UK. If you imagine the device you are reading this post on is a piece of tarmacadam, in the UK we would see

BUS
STOP

but in the US we would see

LANE
FIRE

[Stu]

There are some obvious ones like the past participleof the verb "to get": - gotten. That was occasionally used in British English until the early 1600s and then it disappeared. It was picked up again by American speakers many years later, but not used in British English. We occasionally hear Brits use it today, though, especially in London and media circles, but it's not an officially recognised form here - not yet, anyway.

Another is what I have heard called the "present relevant past" in which American speakers will use a simple past tense for something that happened recently rather than the present perfect tense. Examples:

US Speaker: "Did you eat?"
UK Speaker: "Have you eaten?"

US Speaker: "I just ate"
UK Speaker: "I have just eaten?"

US Speaker: "That new Harry Potter book is out. Did you buy it yet?"
UK Speaker: "That new Harry Potter book is out. Have you bought it yet?"

Again, we Brits are being exposed to the US structure and we occasionally hear it, as in:

US speakers also sometimes lose the "and" between certain verbs, especially motion verbs. I saw a sign in the US to remind people that there was a restaurant and it said" GO EAT!"

[Fred in Skirts]

One of the things I notice a lot is the missing "the" like in, "He is in hospital" (Eng) "He is in the hospital" (US).

Also the way some words are pronounced. Aluminum in the US it a pronounced A lum in um, in the UK it is pronounced as Al u min ium.

I watch a lot of British and Australian TV shows, documentaries and movies, most of which were made in the 30s through the 60s and are all so much better than today's fair. So I no longer have any problem understanding the differences of the different versions of English. UNLESS it is spoken by an Indian working a call desk in Bangladesh.