Let’s put the record straight – I have nothing against Americans or American English. I lived in Texas for a while and I loved it.

However, I do think it’s important that you realise that mixing up US and UK English can sound strange. Imagine 2 very different dialects in your native language and try mixing them up. Now you get what I mean!

In Europe, you mostly learn UK English with a British accent. After watching lots of films, Netflix, music videos etc, you often find a lot of US words lurking in an British accent. It’s tricky to know whether a word is UK/US/Canadian/Australian or one of the many different kinds of English.

The Top 7 American words, which I hear people using with a British accent are:

  1. Movie, try ‘film’ instead.
  2. Store, try ‘shop’.
  3. Anxiety, watch how you pronounce this, in the US version there’s no ‘t’, in British English there is.
  4. Municipality: this word doesn’t work in UK English, use  ‘council’.
  5. It’s real slow, try ‘it’s really slow’. Real slow sounds like you’ve missed out on some schooling if you say it with a British accent.
  6. Gotten is a great American word, which means to obtain or get hold of something. Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist in British English. We’ve only got got, which means have.
  7. He wrote me about the report. Replace this by ‘he wrote to me about the report’.

Which other examples do you know?