Answers in US and British English

[Jim606185]

Has anyone noticed that the English part of the Indonesian course tends to favour British English with a few exceptions. For example color and colours are in the same set of response words. It doesn’t bother me, but it must be a bit of a struggle for course developers who are not used to US English. There are also some strange phrases in English, such as “ How many are your cats”.

It’s even more marked in the Scottish Gaelic Course where the developers finally rebelled and changed all instances of “pants” with “trousers, probably as a result of the bulk of their learners being Scottish. Pants means underwear in the UK.

These things actually help me to remember, so it’s more of a chuckle than a complaint. I take my hat off to the developers.

[MoniqueMaRie]

That's right. Duolinglish has always been more American English than British English.
When there were still sentence discussions, you could always read the corresponding comments from British native speakers.

Before I used Duolingo, my English was more British English. This has probably changed in the last five years.

The worst thing for Europeans is having to call football soccer.

[PtolemysXX]

One of the skills in the Korean course contains half a dozen complex sentences about baseball (like A home run would be the best but a base hit or a walk are both good). Baseball is black magic for an average European . But OK since Koreans also love baseball I accepted that as necessary evil .

[Spaz]

I’m learning German and have to contend with US English- at times sentences are cut short and or completely replaced by idioms or jargon never used by the British. Sometimes there are no plurals or articles being used because they’ll just “have pizza” when ordering at a restaurant and not “a” or “the”

Does anyone know how I can change to British English? - super frustrated!! Makes learning German really complicated.

[MoniqueMaRie]

Hi @Spaz
Unfortunately, you have to accept Duolinglish.

In some courses, more BE answers are now allowed, but most of the time it is a special kind of AE.
Probably my English vocabulary and my way of speaking changed to some extend in the last six years since I'm using Duolingo.
But most of the time I'm still reading books by British authors. This could counterbalance the effect.