Vicki Hollett

How do we say numbers like twenty, thirty, forty, fifty etc. in English?
Well, it depends. There are some curious differences between how I say them in British English and how Jay says them in American English.

For example, twenny vs. twenty. Jay often drops the middle t in twenty and says twenny.

Then there’s thirty. There he says the t but it sounds like very fast d sound – commonly known as a flap t. You’ll hear lots of examples of the flap t in numbers in this video

Do you ever say free instead of three? We’ll tell you about three vs. free pronunciation in England.

We’ll also show you the difference in how we say numbers like thirteen and thirty, fourteen and forty, etc.
When we’re counting in English a number like fourteen sounds different to when we say it on its own. We’ll show you how native speakers change the word stress to distinguish between numbers like fourteen and forty.

And best of all you’ll meet Super Agent Awesome for a numbers quiz.

Play along with our British English slang quiz.

You’ll learn 10 slang words and colloquial expressions including:
– bloke, meaning dude
– quid, not quids
– bog and bog roll
– a tad meaning a little
– knackered and clapped out
– skint meaning broke
– hard cheese meaning hard luck – often ironic
– peckish meaning a little hungry
– cheeky meaning disrespectful or funny
We also look at two old-fashioned slang words that you can use as a joke:
– spiffing meaning splendid
– tickety-boo meaning fine and dandy

Here are two videos with a comedy sketch about British and American English differences.

The premise is Jay (who is American) is attending a meeting where he presents some art work he’s prepared to two British people. Things start going a little crazy when we discover he has misunderstood the instructions he was given.

Along the way your students will learn what a boot and a plonker is in British English, and also pick up some British slang and colloquial phrases like pants, cheers and knock up?

There are two videos in the series. In the first one they test themselves and see if they can spot ten British expressions that cause confusion. In the second one, they see the video again and then get explanations of all the words.

Video one

Video two