Do YOU speak BRITISH or AMERICAN English? π¬π§πΊπΈ
A2
daughter daughter
what try this one water water oh no no
no no no um bottle bottle oh God okay no
never mind um let's try something
different shall we let's try a full
sentence she bought her daughter a
bottle of water she bought her daughter
a bottle of
water hey do you speak British English
or American English not sure well don't
worry because in this video we're going
to dive into the differences between
them looking at grammar vocabulary and
pronunciation and in order to help me
with this video I've got a special
American guest please introduce yourself
hi my name is Camille I was born in
Michigan in the United States but I'm
currently in Portugal I am married I
have three beautiful children and I'm an
online English teacher cheers Camille So
firstly the main difference between
American and British English is the
vocabulary that we use as you may have
noticed we often use different words to
refer to the same thing here's a perfect
example what would you call
these oh really well in British English
we would call them chips maybe you've
heard of our national dish fish and
chips don't eat it I wouldn't recommend
that you eat it but it's our national
dish so you have to respect it okay so
fish and chips and in the USA they would
call these fries see very different
indeed now to make this interesting
we're going to turn this into a little
challenge to find out which words you
normally use American or British so each
time there will be an image on the
screen and you will have a few seconds
to shout out what you would normally
call it in English after Camille will
tell us what she would normally call it
in her form of English and of course I
will then tell you what it is in British
English anyway are you ready Camille I
am ready let's
go chips so in the UK we would call
these crisps it's a little bit hard to
pronounce crisps got a lot of wh
crisping crisps so I think that's why a
lot of people prefer to say chips they
take the US version because the British
version is a little bit hard to say now
the tricky thing is that if you're in
the UK and you ask someone if you use
the American version of this word you
say chips they will give you hot potato
chips like we saw in the other example
or fries in the US so for us chips are
hot potatoes and crisps are the ones
that you find in a packet
garbage or garbage can I kind of like
rubbish for this one it would be rubbish
or rubbish bin rubbish rubbish bin now
if you were to use the word garbage or
garbage can I think 99% of people would
understand you um because there's so
many TV series and films from the US
that we watch on Netflix there's so much
influence with media from the US that
most British people understand what
garbage is so there wouldn't be any
confusion so don't worry you can use
both vacation you know that since I'm in
Europe and around so many people I
started saying holiday as well under the
influence that's how bad sound like I'm
drinking holiday holiday I'm going on
holiday so for us a holiday is basically
somewhere you travel to like when you go
to the beach you go on holiday right I'm
going on a holiday to Spain or I'm going
on a holiday to the mountains the Alps
in France I think the only confusion
might be for people in the US is that
they use the word holiday to refer to
national holidays like Christmas Easter
Thanksgiving which we don't have in the
UK right don't forget that we don't have
Thanksgiving okay that's a Us holiday so
that would be the only confusion for
them some people might say vacation in
the UK but it's quite rare normally we
say I'm going on
holiday
truck there's a truck going by right now
yes
Lori Lori Lori is the name of a girl in
American English I don't know about
British English but we use it so this
one might be a little bit tricky for
some people from certain countries to
say I remember a lot of my students from
Japan had some difficulty with the L and
the a sound so if you're from some
countries in Asia it might be a little
bit easier to use the American version
of this this word use truck but in the
UK we say
Lori
cookie biscuit this is a biscuit yeah
when I hear biscuit I think of like dog
biscuits don't give me any of those we
do have cookies I think for us cookies
are the bis biscuits with chocolate
chips so they look a bit similar but
they have the chocolate chips in them
whereas biscuits for us normally are
like digestives or um they just don't
have that same look as a cookie so we
have cookies in the UK but we consider
them to be different things so biscuits
and cookies are different up if you
check out the photos here you can
hopefully see the difference between
them
flashlight torch I've never heard anyone
in the UK say flashlight so definitely
use torch if you're in Wales Scotland
England Northern Ireland maybe even in
Australia as well I think they just say
torch Canada and the US I think they use
flashlight so torch this is a
torch stroller push chair or pram yeah
pram feels like really sophisticated I
suppose pram is a little bit
oldfashioned nowadays most people say
push chair really but you could use
both
pacifier
dummy dummy is not a very nice thing to
call somebody it means they're stupid so
that one's a pretty funny one I know I
know I suppose in the US if you say
you're a dummy means you're an idiot or
you're stupid but we don't really use
that in the UK we don't say you're a
dummy it sounds a bit weird sounds very
American so we would just say you're an
idiot so you can use dummy for the
object that you put in a baby's mouth to
make them stop
crying pants trousers again you have to
be really careful with this one in the
UK because in British English pants are
underwear so if you're talking about
pants like oh your pants are so nice I
like your pants it sounds weird it
sounds like you're talking about that
underwear so in the UK we say trousers
or maybe jeans but normally trousers so
be careful don't say pants unless you
want to refer to
underwear elevator lift we do say like
can you give me a lift meaning can you
bring me somewhere but yeah we say
elevator for the thing that goes up and
down yeah that's true also in the UK you
can say to someone can you give me a
lift meaning can you take me somewhere
can you give me a ride but we also use
it for the thing that goes up and helps
you to get to a floor that's very high
up I don't know like the 13th floor or
the 100 Floor whatever it could be so we
say I'm going to get the
lift of course there are many many more
examples of words that are different in
British English and American English but
we need to move on and look at
pronunciation but just before we do that
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free now let's jump into the differences
between British and American
pronunciation the letter R is quite a
good place to start when the letter R is
at the beginning or in the middle of of
a word there's little to no difference
between the way that Brits and Americans
say it listen to myself and Camille say
these four words rain rain brain brain
berry berry spring spring but when do
you britz drop the r well if the r is in
the middle position in a one syllable
word and after a vowel we tend to omit
the r sound we also don't tend to
pronounce the r word if it's at the end
of a word yeah in American English we
don't do that we pronounce the r in
these cases Barn teacher let's have a
listen again Camille will say them first
and then I will say them after learn
learn father father work work germ germ
turn turn Harbor Harbor let's now have a
look at the letter T in standard Bri
English the letter T is always
pronounced as T this could be at the
beginning of a word like television in
the middle of a word like atain or at
the end of a word like cut however here
in the US we usually change the T to a
soft D when it's between two vowels
Saturday or between a vowel and an R
like party listen carefully to these
other examples with a soft d in American
English and a standard T in British
English better better water water matter
matter pretty pretty city city hotter
hotter and finally the letter T is
sometimes dropped by Americans when it
comes after the letter N for example in
British English we would say Center
interview internet
in American English Center interview
internet now let's talk about stress yes
even the stress in words can be
different between American English and
British English there is a tendency for
lone words often from French to be
stressed on the first syllable by Brits
whereas Americans put the stress on the
second syllable for example adult adult
ballet ballet brochure brochure garage
garage vaccine vaccine buffet buffet
detail detail and finally grammar time
in British English the present perfect
tense is often favored when talking
about actions or events in the past but
have a connection with the present in
contrast American English tends to use
the past simple tense more frequently
for such situations for example in the
US we would would normally say I ate way
too much food and in the UK we would say
I have eaten way too much food American
English I went to the store British
English I have been to the shop now
another slight difference with grammar
that confuses a lot of students is the
usage of prepositions if we talk about
the weekend in the UK we would say I'm
going to a party at the weekend that's
interesting because in American English
we would say I'm going to a party on the
weekend for example we would say I work
Monday to Friday how would you say in
the US camil I work Monday through
Friday oh yeah one final thing the verb
get in the UK we conjugate this verb as
get for the base form got for the past
simple and got again for the past
participle and in the US we would
conjugate it as get got gotten okay so
that's everything for this video I hope
you have a better understanding about
the differences between American English
and British English and remember whether
you use British English or American
English most people will still
understand you it's all about
communicating and expressing yourself if
you want to continue practicing your
English check out this video click this
video click it go don't forget to smash
the like button and I'll see you next
time
