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- Jun 7, 2017
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Hi everyone!
As a non-native English speaker, our teachers in high school have the choice on whether to teach us UK or US English. As far as I can tell (though it's a while ago) I think we have been taught UK English in writing but US English in speech (weird) or mostly a combination of the two. I wonder if our teachers knew the difference.
Point is: now that I am in university, I want to distinguish between the two. Because the UK is closer to home (I live in Europe) I have settled on that. However, if I am working in anything that is not WORD or has a similar grammar check, I have a hard time finding out which spelling is UK and which is US. Even worse is trying to find out which words are common in which variant of English. (Lift vs Elevator, that kind of thing).
Are there more people who struggle with this? Who don't have English as native language and try to settle on one variant? If so, what are your tips?
I have one that kind of works:
- Listening to television with subtitles in the variant that you want to use.
For me, if I listen to the BBC I can pick up which words they use. This will not work for all television, I assume, as UK and US English are mixed there as well, but that might also be a level of purism that I don't want to get into If they are mixing those words up, than so can we.
As a non-native English speaker, our teachers in high school have the choice on whether to teach us UK or US English. As far as I can tell (though it's a while ago) I think we have been taught UK English in writing but US English in speech (weird) or mostly a combination of the two. I wonder if our teachers knew the difference.
Point is: now that I am in university, I want to distinguish between the two. Because the UK is closer to home (I live in Europe) I have settled on that. However, if I am working in anything that is not WORD or has a similar grammar check, I have a hard time finding out which spelling is UK and which is US. Even worse is trying to find out which words are common in which variant of English. (Lift vs Elevator, that kind of thing).
Are there more people who struggle with this? Who don't have English as native language and try to settle on one variant? If so, what are your tips?
I have one that kind of works:
- Listening to television with subtitles in the variant that you want to use.
For me, if I listen to the BBC I can pick up which words they use. This will not work for all television, I assume, as UK and US English are mixed there as well, but that might also be a level of purism that I don't want to get into If they are mixing those words up, than so can we.