test your english

A recent debate on the Corpora list was discussing the differences between British and American English. It started when someone was asking if there is a tool to do automatic conversion of texts/words from British English to American English and vice versa. An important point is that the differences between the two varieties extends beyond the well known spelling differences (eg. bahaviour vs. behavior, centre vs. center). The more interesting, and perhaps less known, differences are in fact lexical, grammatical and idiomatic. I thought it would be nice to mention some of the examples and to.. well, test your English. So which of those words/constructions are British and which are American?

• lift vs. elevator
• "do you have" vs. "have you got"
• "the government is" vs. "the government are"
• "half four" vs. "4:30"
• "go to the hospital" vs. "go to hospital"
• "commoner" vs. "more common"
• "her skin has spots on it" vs. "her skin has spots on"

Of course if you think that the answers are straightforward, well.. think again.

Mai