In the UK people can say
I need to top up my mobile phone
(= pay more money so you can make more calls)
How do we say this sentence casually in the US or other countries?
phrase-requestword-choice
In the UK people can say
I need to top up my mobile phone
(= pay more money so you can make more calls)
How do we say this sentence casually in the US or other countries?
Best Answer
American English doesn't have a good idiom for this. "Top up" is used very rarely. It may sometimes be used to describe filling up a partially-full container of liquid ("I've drunk half of the coffee from my mug; please top it up."), though "top off" is more common. Neither is used to talk about putting money in accounts.
Apparently Virgin Mobile calls their cards "top-up cards," but TracPhone and Boost Mobile never use the phrase "top-up" anywhere on their sites. (Instead, they use "Add airtime" or "Refill.") Apparently Best Buy sometimes uses "top-up" to describe refill cards, but mostly the carriers themselves call them "Refill cards." (Consider this example from Verizon: the Best Buy website calls it a "top-up card" but the phrase "top-up card" does not appear anywhere on the product. Instead, it says "Refill card.")
Instead, Americans would probably use add minutes or add more minutes in conversation:
Note that the British prefer "mobile" to talk about mobile phones, while American speakers prefer to say "cell" to talk about their cell phones.