British and American English differences

A confusing phone call – British and American English

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Here’s a conversation that goes wrong because of three British and American English differences. Can you spot them? (See below for the answers.)

I made this video with my friend Jennifer ESL. Check out her awesome YouTube channel here.

A confusing phone call script

Hey Jennifer!
Hi Vicki! I’ve got something for you.
That’s terrific!
Can you send me your address?
You want my dress?
Yeah, I’ll post it to you.
Why don’t I send you my address and then you can mail it?
OK, I’ll do that.
All right. You’re awesome.
Well, I don’t know about that.
OK, bye.
Bye.

Click here to watch this with a clickable transcript.

British and American English differences

The pronunciation of address – the stress fall on the first syllable in AmE and the second syllable in BrE.
We say post in BrE and mail in AmE.
British praise tends to be more understated than AmE praise. ‘You’re awesome’ is commonly used to say a ritual ‘thank you’ in America, but it’s less frequent in the UK.

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British and American English

Jay’s American and Vicki’s English, so you’ll hear us speaking with both an American and British accent in our videos. We love comparing the different ways we say things and many of our videos explore differences between American and British English .

Some of the videos here are about pronunciation and grammar, and others are vocabulary videos about American and British words.

And in some videos, we dive into American and British culture. You’ll find videos about the different ways we lead our lives and also, how we structure our thoughts.

We have also made a short series of videos on words that English learners find hard to pronounce. You can hear us say them in British and American English here.