6 English Mistakes Americans Make That Brits Don't

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]language mistakes. Now, let's face it, we all make them. I mean, heck, my British teacher corrected me on my 9-year-old spelling of the word favorite because I was so excited by my visit to Florida that I apparently misspelled the word the American way. And the experience of living extensively in both countries has taught me that both Brits and Americans sometimes misspelled definitely, confuse there, there, and there, and say Pacific instead of specific. But I found that certain mistakes show up more regularly in the United States. Before you all lose your blooming minds, this is not poking fun at Americans. It's just language errors that aren't probable in British English because we don't always have the same dialectal properties as America.

[00:00:40]However, you'll be thrilled to know that the last entry on this list is poking fun at America. So stay tuned for that.

[00:00:45]And if you're not yet subscribed to this channel, do that now.

[00:00:50]In the meantime, here are six English mistakes that Americans are more likely to make than British people. I don't know if you've noticed, but in comments sections of things like YouTube or Facebook or Instagram, spelling mistakes are highly popular. And one that I occasionally see among American users is instead of writing the phrase with all due respect, they might write with all due respect. And you might all be confused, Lawrence, they sounded exactly the same. And that is part of why this error occurs. See, in an American accent, I was saying all due respect versus all due respect. The second of those obviously being incorrect. Now, in Britain, we're less likely to make this error in the written form because we usually distinguish between the two sounds, do and do. Because the two words are usually homophones in American English, it's easy to see why this error occurs. And sometimes they can have pretty hilarious results. Take for example the sentence, "Lawrence denied that he was scantily clad during his most recent live stream." We're still fighting that, but I've seen people on the internet confusedly write scandaly clad. Now, before I get into the reasons as to why this one is more likely in American English, I want to point out that this is an example of an egg corn.

[00:01:59]What's an egg corn, Lawrence? An egg corn is a word that comes about due to the mishering or misunderstanding of an original word, in this case, acorn, that nonetheless sort of retains the original meaning. An acorn is sort of egg-shaped, and being scantily clad does come with its own scandal, believe me. So, what's going on? Well, Americans are more likely to make this mistake for a very simple reason. When speaking fast or informally, Americans will substitute the T in the middle of the word for a D sound, as in water instead of water. And so this results in the words scantily and scandaly sounding more or less the same. If all them creatures in the Yogi Bear show can be scandally cla, why can't I? It's all right. This is actually just me. That's not all right either, is it? And homophone confusion reminds me of a time that I took a job in Indianapolis in which I graded middle school test papers. And perhaps the most common error that I saw while doing that was students writing then instead of then, as in Lawrence is probably more American than he used to be. There has to have been at least one student that sounded like a presenter from NPR.

[00:03:03]Anyway, something that I've noticed is that some Americans say the words then and then the exact same way to where I didn't even want to correct the students. Sod accurate grammar. You're fine. That said, I could probably find an example in here of me making the same error in Britain, but as somebody who spends a lot of time on American social media, I can tell you that the mistake happens here far more commonly. Oh, then there we go. A set of countries with more than three neighbors. So, I was doing fine. And as a Texan philosopher once said, I misunderestimated myself. A few weeks ago, when I talked about grammar quirks that were specific to American English, one that I raised was the phrase, I already ate. Now, there's nothing grammatically incorrect about that. It is true. If somebody says, "Lawrence, are you hungry?" "No, I already ate." That makes sense. When the grammar becomes dubious is when Americans say, "I have already ate."

[00:03:52]Grammar Nazis will slap you on the wrist for using the word ate in the present perfect tense. So, why is this mistake more likely in America? Well, because in Britain, we are taught to say, "I have already eaten," which is the correct use of the present perfect tense. And so it's less natural for us to error into I have already ate because we're not using the word ate to begin with. That said, I've just remembered my uncle Toby who's really northern would used to say I've already at is northern for ate. So it occasionally happens, but again way more common in American English. Here's one that's not going to make a lot of listicles out there, but is one that I'm fascinated by. Americans, in my experience, are more likely to misspell the word glamour. And for British people going, "Oh yeah, that's because that dictionary dude changed all of the O spellings to O R. Why are you singling out glamour, Lawrence? Do you have something against the entertainment industry that you're a part of?" A little bit. But I've chosen to discuss the word glamour with you today because it's an exception that proves the rule.

[00:04:50]While US spelling reform did overhaul words like behavior to incorporate an o spelling, there were one or two exceptions to this rule. Perhaps the most notable is the word glamour, which is typically spelled with the o r suffix in both Britain and the United States.

[00:05:05]And here's where things get completely and utterly a little bit impressive.

[00:05:09]Because this wasn't some accident or weird quirk of history. It was done by design. You see, American lexographers changed most OR words to O words because this is how they were originally spelled in Latin. But glamour was different.

[00:05:23]Glamour had no presence in Latin, which is weird when you consider how seriously the Romans took their hair. In fact, it originated much later via Scottish English. And so to differentiate it from those Latin derived words, American English kept the spelling of glamour that is still used in Scotland and indeed Britain today. So then why, Lawrence, have you observed Americans misspelling this word? Because despite the fact that this word came through its entire journey across the Atlantic Ocean completely unedited, some Americans either don't know that or feel strongly that it should be in line with words like favor, flavor, and collar. To be fair, perhaps in part to this, the O R variant is now accepted by most American English dictionaries. In Britain, this is not a common issue because all of our O words are spelled O. Obviously, glamour is no exception. And finally, we come to that one. One that every British person, and in my experience, some Americans think is completely and utterly a little bit back to front. And that, of course, is when Americans say, "I could care less." Instead of, "I couldn't care less." As in, "I couldn't care less that I'm filming this part in a different location to the rest of the video. I needed a thumbnail that looked good." Now, you don't need me to do a David Mitchell style rant on the subject because he's already done it.

[00:06:38]>> I can't care nothing if I could care less. Obviously, saying, "I could care less," to denote your utter indifference to something, makes no logical sense.

[00:06:46]But that probably hasn't stopped 200 naysayers from writing that very phrase in the comment section below. And between you and I, uh, between you and me, me and you, me and you, nor could I.

[00:06:56]Neither can I. I'm with you on this. In fact, I have a slightly different take on this to a lot of British people. I think English on either side of the Atlantic is full of phrases that make no logical sense, and yet we use them anyway. For instance, subscribers are always telling me, "Lawrence, I'm head over heels in love with your channel."

[00:07:12]And I have to tell them, "Thank you."

[00:07:14]But contrary to the image that you might have of being head over heels, we are in fact commonly head over heels. Like me right now, my head is here and my heels are down there. So I think to Americans, I could care less is less about the semantics and more about the feeling.

[00:07:28]Language is language. Mistakes are mistakes, and we all make them. And if this video does well, we'll look at some of the ones that only British people make. In the meantime, here's that video on American grammar quirks that I spoke about earlier. You'll watch that next.