Search results for 'tag:British English tag:Singular nouns' matching tags 'British English' and 'Singular nouns'

Re: Was or Were?

richard_s — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:32:15 GMT

Personally, I would use 'was', but I seem to remember once reading that British English favoured one and American the other, particularly in situations like 'my family is crazy' or 'my family are crazy'. Â Unfortunately, I can't remember which one is British and which is American. Â Here in Australia, we tend to follow British more than American English, suggesting that treating groups as singular nouns is British.

Re: Standard spoken English

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:00:04 GMT

Something to chew on:

THE NOTION OF STANDARD SPOKEN GRAMMAR

The term âstandard grammarâ is most typically associated with written language,
and is usually considered to be characteristic of the recurrent usage of adult,
educated native speakers of a language. Standard grammar ideally reveals no
particular regional bias. Thus âStandard British Englishâ grammar consists of items
and forms that are found in the written usage of adult educated native speakers
from Wales, Scotland and England and those Northern Irish users who consider
themselves part of the British English speech community.

The typical sources of evidence for standard usage are literary texts, quality
journalism, academic and professional writing, etc. Standard grammar is given the
status of the official record of educated usage by being written down in grammar
books and taught in schools and universities.

Spoken transcripts often have frequent occurrences of items and structures
considered incorrect according to the norms of standard written English. However,
many such forms are frequently and routinely used by adult, educated native speakers.

Examples of such structures are split infinitives (e.g. We decided to immediately sell it),
double negation (e.g. He wonât be late I donât think, as compared to I donât think he will
be late), singular nouns after plural measurement expressions (e.g. Heâs about six foot
tall), the use of contracted forms such as gonna (going to), wanna (want to), and so on.

Standard spoken English grammar will therefore be different from standard
written English grammar in many respects if we consider âstandardâ to be a
description of the recurrent spoken usage of adult native speakers. What may be
considered ânon-standardâ in writing may well be âstandardâ in speech.
Speech and writing are not independent. Although some forms of spoken
grammar do not appear in writing (unless in written dialogues), there is
considerable overlap and there is an increasing range of forms appearing in
informal written texts which previously were only considered acceptable in
speech. In 120 the presence of typically spoken grammatical forms contexts as emails and internet chat-room exchanges is discussed.

From: The Cambridge Grammar of English (GCE)

Re: Difference between American and British English

YoungCalifornian — Sun, 27 Mar 2005 08:57:41 GMT

Uh, no offense but their are a whole lot of misconceptions about American English in this thread. The "fag" thing has already been pointed out, so I'll let that one be.

"The main difference between British English and American English is that in the former there is perfect grammar even in the spoken form. But in the latter, there is no grammar at all and everybody can speak as they like. "

Well I know that Americans are generally less strict about the rules of grammar, but that doesn't mean that there are no rules. In reality, both English variants have pretty much the same grammar rules, Americans are just less formal in their speech. One of the few true differences (not tendencies) that exists between the two is the use of the verb "to be" in regards to collective nouns. For instance, an American would say, "The Austrian ski team is the best I've ever seen," where a Brit would say, "The Austrian ski team are the best I've ever seen." The American views the team as a singular noun, while the Brit views the team as a plural noun.

I've also seen in mentioned frequently (not just here) that in America we say "cab" where the British say "taxi" and "Fall" where the British say "Autumn." This isn't true, at least in regards to American English. In fact, American use both "taxi" and "cab" as well as "Fall" and "Autumn" interchangably. You would be just as likely to hear one as the other.