Difference between British and American English pronunciation

But you can relax a bit more if you want to use collective nouns in British English! Collective nouns can be both singular or plural, and they will more likely be plural due to the fact that they are, well, collective:

British English

“My English class is planning a trip to Stonehenge!”

    or

“My English class are planning a trip to Stonehenge!”

“Our well-trained staff has been working hard.”

    or

“Our well-trained staff have been working hard.”

“The Conservation Committee meets every Monday.”

    or

“The Conservation Committee meet every Monday.”

If you’re ever in doubt about whether to treat your collective nouns as plural or singular, don’t worry! Just be aware of your audience or readers. They might not know about these distinctions, but now you do!

Remember! The word “people” is NOT a collective noun. It’s a plural noun. So, we say: “People are…” and not “People is…”.

Present perfect or past simple?

If you’ve been studying English for a while, you may or may not have made friends with the present perfect and the past simple. (And, by the way, we can help you with that!)

Remember that we generally use the past simple to talk about finished actions at a specific point in time.

We use the present perfect when we want to talk about experiences, accomplishments, or actions in the past that may or may not be finished, when we don’t want to mention a specific point in time, and when we want to focus on the result of those experiences, accomplishments, or actions.

Why do I mention this here?

Because British English speakers more commonly use the present perfect to talk about recent actions in the past that have no specified time, while American English speakers use the past simple. 

American English: Did you eat?

British English: Have you eaten?

American English: My mother just called.

British English: My mother’s (mother has) just called.

A few past tense conjugations of verbs are spelled differently in American versus British English. The ending “-ed” of many past tense verbs becomes a simple “-t” in their British counterparts, such as in “learned” and “learnt.”

American English: We just learned that in school.

British English: We’ve just learnt that in school.

American English: Dad burned dinner again.

British English: Dad’s (Dad has) burnt dinner again. 

And, this may sound strange to your ears if you’re used to American English, but in British English, you’ll often see the verb “got” used as a past participle instead of “gotten.”

American English: I’ve gotten used to having you around.

British English: I’ve got used to having you around.

Tag questions

British English speakers are more likely to use something called a tag question, but American English speakers use them, too.

A tag question, also called a question tag, is a funny little rhetorical question that some English speakers stick at the end of a statement. In basic terms, you can use tag questions to turn your statement into a question and to emphasize what you want to say. We can use them with auxiliary verbs such as be, have, can, or should.

Let’s look at this sentence: “This coffee isn’t very good.”

And here it is with a tag question: “This coffee isn’t very good, is it?”

When we add a tag question at the end, we emphasize our dislike for the coffee, and we indirectly ask others to offer their opinion. It’s also a great way to make your speech sound more natural.

Just remember that if your statement is negative, your tag question should be positive, and if your statement is positive, your tag question should be negative:

“Well, that’s great news, isn’t it?”

“She won’t be there, will she?”

“You should call your mom, shouldn’t you?”

“We haven’t made a huge mistake, have we?”

Other dialects of English

With over 1.5 billion learners and speakers of English in the world, and around 160 estimated dialects, no one standard dialect of English exists.

If you’re interested in exploring these and other dialects, check out the International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA), where you can find over 1,500 recordings of English speakers from around the world from 120 different countries. It’s a great way to expose your ear to different accents and pronunciations as well as listen to English speakers from other cultures.

If you liked this article, please share it with your friends. Thanks for reading!

What words are different in British and American English pronunciation?

What's the biggest difference between American and British pronunciation?

What is the main difference between British English and American English?

Can American vs British pronunciation?