Learn English – How many of the “Top 10 favorite British words” are understood by Americans

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Merriam-Webster Dictionary online shows “Top 10 Favorite British Words”. I’m interested in knowing how many of the listed words are understood or accepted by Americans as English, whichever British English or English slang.

The words listed as the top 10 Favorite English are:

prat meaning “a stupid person”,
twee meaning “affectedly or excessively dainty, delicate, cute, or quaint”,
knackered meaning “exhausted”,
jiggery-pokery meaning “dishonest activity, or nonsense”,
plonk meaning “cheap wine”,
chunter meaning “mutter”,
whinge meaning “whine”,
gormless meaning “stupid”,
boffin meaning “scientific expert”,
pukka meaning “genuine, first class”.

Best Answer

As a reasonably intelligent American, I understand seven of these without the definitions (prat, twee, knackered, plonk, whinge, boffin, pukka). I would say that none of those sound remotely native to the American English speaker with the possible exception of twee, which is occasionally used (although generally with a negative connotation -- sickeningly cute or cloying).

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Learn English – Do Americans say “don’t” as often as the British

I did some searches in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and compared the results to similar searches in the British National corpus.

What I found was that overall, in American English there was a 7.9-to-1 ratio of don’t to do not. With breakdowns by type:

SPOKEN    19.6
FICTION   17.9
MAGAZINE   7.5
NEWSPAPER  7.7
ACADEMIC   0.5
TOTAL      7.9

In British English overall, the ratio was 4.4-to-1 in favor of don’t, with breakdowns by type:

SPOKEN     56.9
FICTION    16.8
MAGAZINE    4.1
NEWSPAPER   3.4
NON-ACAD    0.9
ACADEMIC    0.2
MISC        0.9

So, if it is reasonable to conclude anything from this data, it is that Americans overall use don’t about twice as frequently as the British, but the British use don’t in speech about 2.9 times more frequently than Americans. In any case, these are not big enough ratios to be noticeable by anyone not counting every incidence.

Learn English – How do Americans pronounce the word ‘progression’

You are correct that, in the US, progression is pronounced with pro- as the first syllable, not prog-.

But the most significant shift is the emphasis being placed on the second rather than the first syllable. Many in the US would still pronounce the o in the first syllable with a shorter sound, like a schwa, rather than a true long o.

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Related Solutions

Learn English – Do Americans say “don’t” as often as the British

Learn English – How do Americans pronounce the word ‘progression’

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