You might hear someone from Britain say, “The team are playing tonight” or “The team is playing tonight.”Īnother grammar difference between American and British English relates to auxiliary verbs. Americans would say, “The band is good.”īut in British English, collective nouns can be singular or plural. For example, staff refers to a group of employees band refers to a group of musicians team refers to a group of athletes.
In American English, collective nouns are singular. We use collective nouns to refer to a group of individuals. There are a few grammatical differences between the two varieties of English.
Fortunately, most Americans and Brits can usually guess the meaning through the context of a sentence. There are far more examples than we can talk about here. New Yorkers live in apartments Londoners live in flats. For example, Brits call the front of a car the bonnet, while Americans call it the hood.Īmericans go on vacation, while Brits go on holidays, or hols. There are hundreds of everyday words that are different. The most noticeable difference between American and British English is vocabulary. You speak American.”īut are American and British English really so different? My British friend still tells me, “You don’t speak English. No one knows exactly who said this, but it reflects the way many Brits feel about American English. There is an old saying that America and Britain are “two nations divided by a common language.” For VOA Learning English, this is Everyday Grammar.