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I had no idea this is different in BrE and AmE! What are some other such grammatical differences?

Americans are very stingy with prepositions:

American: I wrote them British: I wrote to them

This is very true, and yet the British government message about coronavirus is "stay home" rather than "stay at home". It sounds rather odd to me. I wonder if they chose it to sound a bit more casual and relatable, or just to match what people were already likely to be hearing elsewhere online.

It is a bit weird. As a Brit I would say that the first "home" has changed from a noun to a sort of adjective. It has the same type of meaning as fr example "busy" or "asleep". We quite often say "Sally is home" and it has a similar logic to "Sally is busy" or "Sally is asleep".

I think it's to fit on the podium because actually everyone is saying "Stay at home".

Stay home is more commanding, is it makes sense as a general order.

Just thank god they don't decide to prefix it with a hash to make it more trendy twitter-like youngster hipsters whatever like what the French government is doing (#stayhome / #restezchezvous). Now get off my lawn...

"Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save lives." has the ring of a Dominic Cummings slogan. It's in the same vein as "Take back control" or "Get Brexit Done". It's campaigning distilled down to the minimum possible words.

Edit: Interestingly(?), the government official leaflet adds an "at": https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid...

The leaflet that came through my door says "STAY AT HOME". The Downing Street letter signed by Boris says "you must stay at home". I have seen "stay home" a few times, which I notice, because it seems like bad English to me.

"Every little helps".

Yeah this is a strange one, my brain reads "helps" as a noun here, it takes an extra beat for it to infill a ghost noun between "little" and "helps" ("every little bit helps")

Is that a correct sentence in either dialect? It doesn't sound well-formed to me!

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=749

Isn't that colloquial saying though? Trying to think of another good example... "It never rains, but it pours."

> "It never rains, but it pours."

I've never heard that construct. Are you by chance referring to Morton Salt's motto "When it rains, it pours"?

I think it was HN that lead me to the discovered not too long ago that the phrase originated from an early-20th-Century ad campaign of theirs following the introduction of magnesium carbonate, an anti-clumping agent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton_Salt

No it is a colloquial saying in Britain, especially in the North of England. Me: "I hurt myself at work, then I lost my wallet and my girlfriend left me", Someone else: "It never rains, but it pours".

Your example reminded me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K8s9cNqZO4

Interesting!

In the US - in the Arkansas Ozarks, specifically - I've heard the other version in the same context.

The one that always seems to grab my attention is the British "by accident" versus the frequently-used American "on accident".

Whilst I can understand the argument for the latter being similar to "on purpose", it will never stop sounding wrong to my British ears.

Huh, I speak AmE and "by accident" sounds more natural to me too.

In America it's a regional thing. "By accident" is east coast, "on accident" is more midwest and west coast (though given that the west coast is full of transplants, there's a mix in usage". I've lived in CA for 16 years, but grew up in NJ and MD, and "on accident" still sounds weird to me.

I'm from CA and I hate "on accident", it sounds dumb and wrong.

Honestly, as an American (California n almost all of my life), I find both “by accident” and “on accident” to generally sound stilted, though “by accident” seems natural in certain broader constructions, and “on accident” fits in the unique case of a direct contrast with “on purpose”. Generally, though, “accidentally” is the term that sounds right.

To my ear "on accident" sounds wrong and kind of unsophisticated for lack of a better word

You should eschew both and say 'accidentally'.

I do hear 'by accident' but always (as a native speaker of British English, born and living in England) consider it an error.

I have at least heard of 'on accident' too, but interestingly it barely registers on Google's ngram viewer, even with 'American English' selected:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=accidentally%2...

I'm being prescriptivist here, but to my (West coast American) ear "on accident" is wrong, caused by confusing "on purpose" and "by accident."

To add to the other examples:

British, American

"in future" , "in the future"

"in hospital" , "in the hospital"

Also in British English it's more common to construct a sentence such as:

"A great car, this one." In American English we would almost always say "This is a great car."

I'm not sure about your first example... I thought to myself "As an Englishman, what would I think about in the future?" and can't figure out a way to omit 'the'.

Could you use it in a sentence?

"In [the] future, please refrain from bringing fermented herring to work for lunch."

"In future, please don't forget to cool off the tea."

There's an entire WP page on these differences that are pretty interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_g...

As always, your local dialect may differ!

Aha thank you, yes I hadn't thought about that form. Pretty sure I'd still include 'the', not sure. Interesting!

I'm Australian rather than English but a lot of these sound odd to me.

I'd probably say "in future, could you please refrain from eating loudly" but "in the future, we will have flying cars". "The future" would refer to the magical world full of fancy new technology, while "in future" is more along the lines of "from now on".

"I'm in hospital" makes perfect sense but "I'm in the hospital" works perfectly fine as well. I don't think either is incorrect in English.

Regarding the sentence construction, I wouldn't understand "a great car, this one" as a standalone sentence. Written, it'd have to be "it's a great car, this one". Spoken, I'd expect there to be either something spoken prior (e.g. "Isn't she lovely. A great car, this one.") or some kind of non-verbal cue (like a look of pride or fondness that essentially expresses the same thing).

But again, Australian, not English.

American English perspective:

We'd never say "in future, could you please refrain from eating loudly." There would always be a "the" after "in".

"I'm in hospital." same thing, "in the"

If someone said "Isn't she lovely. A great car, this one." I'd think they were trying to imitate a Brit.

One I've noticed is patterns of misuse of pronoun case in conjoined noun phrases. Americans are more likely to use "me" for the subject, as in "Tom and me did thus and so". The British are more likely to use "I" as the object of a preposition, as in "He gave it to Tom and I". I suspect this is because British teachers are more likely to correct and shame students who commit the first error, so they decide the subject forms are the safer bet.

I was taught a very simple rule around this, if you remove the other person you're referring to, is the sentence still grammatically correct?

So for your example:

> He gave it to Tom and I.

Change it to:

> He gave it to I.

That's clearly weird, so it should actually be:

> He gave it to me.

And then re-incorporating the other person:

> He gave it to Tom and me.

When I see your version in my mind it's a mistake and my theory is it's a common misunderstanding of the rule, consider the following slightly different scenario which is a super common mistake in my experience:

> Me and Tom went to the movies.

That is clearly wrong when applying the rule and should be:

> I and Tom went to the movies.

Although I feel that this sounds better:

> Tom and I went to the movies.

I think that what often happens (at least it did for me) is that children making the above mistake only ever see the correction without being reminded of or taught the actual rule, so they incorrectly assume the rule is something like:

> Always use "I" when talking about yourself and someone else.

I live in South Africa and we use British English, but I would expect the rule to be the same for American English too.

I think we're in agreement.

The rule is the same in british and american english. What parent was pointing out is that the type of error that brits vs americans make is different. Which is interesting.

I absolutely hate it when people wrongly say 'I', really makes me cringe. (I don't say anything of course, and hope I don't show it!)

It annoys me so much more than the converse, wrongly saying 'me', because - as you allude to - it sounds like conscious effort, like they thought they were actively getting it right. That may not be true of course, it's just how it comes across to me.

People who cringe over tiny things make me cringe.

English has largely lost the nominative/accusative distinction with the relative/interrogative pronouns "who" and "whom." The first person personal "I" and "me" are probably next. The nom./acc. distinction doesn't provide any useful information that isn't already conveyed by word order or prepositions. At this point, the distinction is a vestige of earlier forms of the language that were less analytic. And given that even decently educated native speakers fail to make this distinction, it's hard to make the case it's an actual error outside the register of formal writing.

There are many small differences. Not grammatical but some off the top of my head:

* Quite means something different. In British "quite good" is similar to "particularly good". In American it's more like "OK",

* Spelling of -ing form of words ending in l. Br: travelling, Am: traveling,

* Placement of stress on multi-syllable words. It almost seems like anything British people do is the opposite in America. Br: 'adult, a'ddress, ice 'cream. Am: a'dult, 'address, 'ice cream.

Where in America have you heard "quite good" used as "Ok?" I've only ever heard it used in an imitation British way, usually of the quality that includes "Tip tip cheerio" or "Guvn'r."

American speaker here, for me the accent falls in address according to which form the word takes; such that a'ddress is the noun while address' is the verb.

That's a good point. For some reason we don't adjust the pronunciation on that one, but we do on other words like "contract": 'contract (noun), con'tract (verb).

The word "research" is an odd one as it's pronounced as re'search as both verb and noun in BrE but 'research as both verb and noun in AmE.

But, of course, many British speakers now use the American way without realising (as evidenced by replies to my original comment).

> In British "quite good" is similar to "particularly good"

If you're very posh then yes, but everyone else now uses the American sense. If you asked me what I thought of a TV show, "quite good" means I enjoyed it but I'm not that fussed if I don't happen to watch any more of it.

Is Jeremy Clarkson "very posh"? Just one example off the top of my head of someone who would use "quite good" in the British way.

I think there is possibly a big difference between spoken and written language here. Would you really use "quite good" in that sense while speaking? I don't think so. I think British people would "meh, it's OK".

Jeremy Charles Robert Clarkson went to a fee paying primary school and a fee paying secondary school.

He's definitely a bit posh.

He's part of the Chipping Norton Set[0], so yeah I'd put him up there in poshness.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipping_Norton_set

He's quite posh.

Humour aside, I don't think he's posh enough to use it in the intensifier sense. If he says something is "quite good" on TV I'd expect it to mean "good" but not necessarily "better than good". Would be interested to see your counter example if you do remember it.

> Quite means something different. In British "quite good" is similar to "particularly good"

Not really, it means something more like 'fairly' or 'reasonably' good.

Meh, it's all in the intonation.

And if you preface it with 'really', it doesn't mean you're not lying, it makes it more like 'bloody' good. (With possible implication that this was unexpected, again depending on intonation.)

> Quite means something different. In British "quite good" is similar to "particularly good". In American it's more like "OK",

I hear this quite a lot. In my experience we (Brits) use it mostly in your second sense, to moderate statements. We use it as an intensifier more rarely and usually in specific phrases: "quite right", "quite the ...". I believe the key difference is that we use the word with greater frequency than Americans. GLOWBE [1] is an excellent resource for checking such hunches if you are interested.

[1]: https://www.english-corpora.org/glowbe/

It depends how you say it. For me the default in British is still an intensifier, but you can signal that you're using the American way using context, tone, facial expression etc.

The more important thing, I think, is that Americans don't understand the first sense at all. You have to say "pretty good" or something to have the same effect.

GLOWBE (which I linked above) has Americans in the wild using both senses of quite. If anything it looks like they use it as an intensifier more often than we do.

Wikipedia seems to be more in line with my experience, too:

> In AmE the word quite used as a qualifier is generally a reinforcement, though it is somewhat uncommon in actual colloquial American use today and carries an air of formality: for example, "I'm quite hungry" is a very polite way to say "I'm very hungry". In BrE quite (which is much more common in conversation) may have this meaning, as in "quite right" or "quite mad", but it more commonly means "somewhat", so that in BrE "I'm quite hungry" can mean "I'm somewhat hungry".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_American_and_B...

GLOWBE seems to be stuff scraped from forums. Unless I'm missing something. I think there's a huge difference with how "quite" is used in written and spoken contexts.

The more I think about it, I think the word can mean quite a lot of things and it's mostly driven by context and non-verbal cues.

Yeah, it is stuff from forums and similar places.

It's interesting that you have such a different experience of it to me.

The Economist style guide has an extensive section on British v American English. Here's the section in the 2015 edition at archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/EconomistBooksTheEconomistStyleG...

> In British "quite good" is similar to "particularly good". In American it's more like "OK"

Something similar happened between Spanish Spanish and Argentinian Spanish.

I once used the phrase "a veces" in South America and I was corrected to "de vez en cuando". Both phrases mean "occasionally", but the first seems to me to be unfamiliar to South Americans. Maybe someone else can clarify exactly.

>* Quite means something different. In British "quite good" is similar to "particularly good". In American it's more like "OK"

This doesn’t seem right (as an American)

> Quite...

That seems backwards to me? As an American, I would nearly always use "quite" as an intensifier.

> Quite means something different

Brits often understate, so it's arguable if "quite" means something different (as words are defined by usage) - or if the words mean the same, but are commonly used in understated terms in Britain.

We have some flexibility on our American usage of "quite" but it means "nearly" or "almost completely", unless it means "totally!"

So to say "that's not quite right" means you're close but something is off.

But to say "that was quite an adventure" means it was totally an adventure, as much as anything could be.

Now be quiet and quit while you're ahead ;)

> We have some flexibility on our American usage of "quite" but it means "nearly" or "almost completely", unless it means "totally!" So to say "that's not quite right" means you're close but something is off.

I don't think this is illustrating two different uses. Note that "not completely right" means the same thing as "not quite right", but this is meant to illustrate that "quite" doesn't always mean "completely".

That's quite fair! I can't quite put my finger on how we have quite a few ways of using "quite" to mean quite different things. In all my examples, the meaning is quite similar. Quite the challenge, really.

One of my favourite quirks of English (that obscure language from a small island) is:

"If it were up to me..."

That's the correct grammar for when you have a conditional argument. I know that a lot of Americans don't know this rule at all (especially musicians) but I suspect that it is a regional thing and not strictly US vs. Brit.

Note that if the conditional reflects something that really happened, then you use was as usual.

"If I was wrong by saying that..."

I think that's subjunctive, right? Subjunctive in English is indeed really obscure... I seem to recall the rules being weird in English, but I think it was something along the lines of: you have to use subjunctive when the hypothetical would be outright impossible? (e.g. "If I were you") In your example it's unclear whether that's the case or not as it might depend on the context, so my understanding was it might need to be indicative in that case. I think that's a bit different from being conditional, though, right?

I don't think it needs to be impossible, merely hypothetical. For example, I might say, "If I were to go into town today, is there anything you would like me to get for you?"

It's past subjunctive. The present subjunctive is still around but scarce: "Lest he think less of me" or, in a frozen expression, "Be it ever so humble ...".

yes - subjunctive. It comes from English's Germanic roots. Compare the German, "Wenn ich König von Deutschland wäre..." to the English translation, "If I were King of Germany..." and note the similarity of the verbs "wäre" and "were."

In English, what looks like a plural form ("were") in place of a singular ("was") actually comes from a Germanic singular form of the subjunctive. Both the German words "waren" (plural indicative form - "we/they were ...") and "wäre" (singular subjunctive form - "(if) I/he were") become "were" in English.

(And to confuse things, in English, the plural subjunctive is also "were" and is thus indistinguishable from the indicative. "We were kings..." v. "If we were kings...")

In both languages, the subjunctive is used in this case for a condition contrary to fact - I am not the King of Germany (nor am I a German pop singer from the 80s!).

The subjunctive and conditional are complimentary. In the construction "If X then Y," X will be in the subjunctive and Y will be in the conditional. The conditional also comes up on its own in lots of places, but the subjunctive rarely exists outside of contexts that could be re-written in that form.

The other interesting thing about the subjunctive is that it is not preserved in translation.

For example:

"Que tengas un buen día,"

would translate to:

"Have a nice day."

So, in Spanish the subjunctive is not strictly used for conditional situations. It is not really that you consider that the other person may have a bad day. The closest way to say that in English is: "May you have a nice day."

Like a lot of commentators are observing, it is not that clear whether you need a subjunctive. In fact, if you look at Afrikaans, there are only four tenses: past, present, future and historical present. And Afrikaans is considered a full scientific languages: You can translate any scientific article into Afrikaans.

On the topic of languages from South Africa, you also have noun classes in all of the 9 official languages that are not derived from European languages. These classes are a type of concord that have nothing to do with tense, but rather with types of nouns. They are also not strictly necessary, but they make it easier to follow a conversation. One way in which they achieve this is that if you say something like "I have an axe and a shovel," and later that "I often use it in the garden," then you will be able to know which one of the two you are referring to since they are in different classes and the word "it" need to be in concord with the noun. If they are in the same class, then you don't have concord distinction when referring to the object. I think the development of this feature are more to distinguish objects and subjects in sentences, as they are more likely to be different types of objects (e.g.: a human and a thing) and hence more likely to be in different noun classes. An axe being in a different class than a shovel is more of an coincidence.

As an American, I've noticed that Brits tend to use the subjunctive form less often than we Americans do.

"The doctor insisted that he spend the night."

vs.

"The doctor insisted that he spent the night."

The first sentence is how I would say it.

The second sentence sound very British to me.

Us British would say the first if the doctor has (in the past) insisted that you will (in the future) spend the night and the second if you (in the past) spent the night because the doctor insisted. Is that not the same in the US?

I doubt very many people in the US would give it enough thought to distinguish between those cases. It would be ambiguous, and if the speaker were needing to be more specific they would explicitly add context: "The doctor insisted that he spend the night tonight".

Interesting, I wasn't aware that there was a such distinction in British English between the two. Thanks for sharing.

I would use the second sentence for both cases. If I needed to distinguish them, I'd probably add something like "last week" or something to clarify things.

But that's present vs past tense, which is independent of the subjunctive mood. The indicative version of the first sentence would be "insisted that he spends." While placing the verb form into the past tense sounds odd to my American ears, the form "spent" could be either indicative or subjunctive. (The subjective is formed by using the plural form, which makes it indistinguishable in many cases, including the past tense of regular verbs.)

> But that's present vs past tense, which is independent of the subjunctive mood.

No, it's subjunctive vs. indicative.

The British form is indicative and past tense, which is not correct grammar under either British or American rules, but is used in common speech.

Replace the verb with "to be", e.g. "the doctor insisted he be here." vs. "The doctor insisted he were here." to illustrate that the past subjunctive doesn't fit.

The past subjunctive is almost exclusively used for hypotheticals, e.g. "If I were rich...."

This isn't hypothetical. This is a mandative statement, so we use the infinitive form of the verb even if the action took place in the past.

I'm waiting for a TV cop procedural where the hero is a grammar nazi.

- Hey, how did you know he was the perp? He wasn't even on our suspects list!

- Remember when we asked him about our victim? He said, "If it was up to me", not "If it were"... which clearly suggested it was up to him.

I don't know that this is regional so much as colloquial vs. formal. In the US people recognize that the subjunctive is technically correct and use it in formal writing. But it's very common to violate this rule in speech, so much so that to my ears it sounds less "wrong" than "informal."

As far as musicians go, you can find examples of people on both sides of the pond using or not using the subjunctive. Beyoncé sings "If I were a boy," while Thom Yorke sings "I wish I was special."

Not strictly "grammar", probably more "style", but I've noticed that contractions split differently sometimes. I would say "I haven't gone to the store", but I hear many people with a BrE background say "I've not gone to the store" instead.

In my opinion as someone who speaks BrE - 'gone' is only really used with I've because it makes the person the subject of the sentence. With I haven't the subject is the action of going to the store therefore in BrE you would say "I haven't been to the store"

Disclaimer : I came to this conclusion from being a native English speaker and picking up differences whilst learning foreign languages so don't take it as fact!

I think contractions tend to be less common in American English in general

Not a native English speaker, bit I think got (Br) vs. gotten (Am)?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gotten

AmE definitely uses both. "I got sick" or "I've gotten sick" are both understandable.

I think this is in reference to the past perfect tense specifically. So "I have gotten sick" vs "I have got sick". I don't know if the latter is actually used in British English, but it's my understanding that the former would never be used since it's grammatically incorrect in that dialect.

You have got to be kidding me!

Neither dialect says you have gotten to be kidding me, right?

Its not formal english though. The British informal equivalent would be 'you're having me on!' or 'you're having a laugh!' or (rude) 'you're taking the piss'

Australian here and we definitely use "gotten": - I've gotten to know him. - I hadn't gotten the concept yet, but then ... etc.

I think it's the British that have lost the use of "gotten" in favour of "got".

British 'do' in VP ellipsis contexts. For example, "I might do", "I could do" (where Americans would accept only "I might" or "I could").

> VP ellipsis

Interesting, didn't know the name for that, thanks!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verb_phrase_ellipsis

> where Americans [...] "I could"

Which almost makes me grind my teeth in anticipation of 'care less' following it. (A BrE speaker would say 'could not care less', which has the benefit of, you know, actually making sense! ;))

In British English, "The waiter will be with you momentarily" means the waiter will be with you and then leave very quickly afterwards.

Literally yes but contextually no. Momentarily describes the period until the waiter arrives in this context.

Only in America, which is the point GP is making.

AmE: in a moment; BrE: for a moment.

Obviously it's blurred, particularly in BrE with televisual influence from America. Although I notice Wiktionary gives the latter unqualified, and the former as US & proscribed.

I see, my bad. Thanks.

You might enjoy this blog: https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/

I've noticed that British attaches the suffix "time" to lengths of time..., eg

The package will arrive from Amazon in two weeks

The package will arrive from Amazon in two weeks time

And a possessive apostrophe should be used, I would write:

> The package will arrive from Amazon in two weeks' time

(cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War)

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