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:
- Movie, try ‘film’ instead.
- Store, try ‘shop’.
- Anxiety, watch how you pronounce this, in the US version there’s no ‘t’, in British English there is.
- Municipality: this word doesn’t work in UK English, use ‘council’.
- 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.
- 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.
- He wrote me about the report. Replace this by ‘he wrote to me about the report’.
Which other examples do you know?
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