[Corpora-List] US v UK English words with frequencies

[Rayson, Paul]

Dear Eric,

You could approximate something like this by taking LOB and Brown (or
Frown v Flob) and comparing them using a key words approach in WordSmith
or Wmatrix. I say approximate because you wouldn't have UK-only or
US-only words in terms of zero frequencies in one language variety but
also words with different meanings in the US and UK, e.g. trunk.

An even better comparison would be the BNC frequency list against an
American one, say ANC or Mark Davies' new contemporary corpus of
American English, see the following URL when it becomes available:

http://corpus.byu.edu/american.asp

If Adam's listening he might also tell you how to do this at a click of
button in the Sketch Engine with web-based corpora!!

Regards,
Paul.

Dr. Paul Rayson
Director of UCREL
Computing Department, Infolab21, South Drive, Lancaster University,
Lancaster, LA1 4WA, UK.
Web: http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/users/paul/
Tel: +44 1524 510357 Fax: +44 1524 510492


-----Original Message-----
From: corpora-bounces at uib.no [mailto:corpora-bounces at uib.no] On Behalf
Of Eric Atwell
Sent: 22 October 2007 13:25
To: corpora at uib.no
Subject: [Corpora-List] US v UK English words with frequencies

Can anyone point me at a corpus-based study of vocabulary
differences between British and American English, 
with a list of UK-only words ordered by frequency,
and another list of US-only words ordered by frequency?

I have found lists of UK/US vocabulary differences eg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_words_not_widely_used_in_t
he_United_Kingdom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_words_not_widely_used_in_th
e_United_States
http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~jphb/american.html
http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/questions/americanbritis
h.html
http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwesl/egw/jones/words.htm

BUT these don't have word-frequencies: they dont tell me which are the
commonest words in British English causing problems for Americans,
or the most common US terms needing British translations...


Eric Atwell,
  Senior Lecturer, Language research group leader, School of Computing,
  Faculty of Engineering, UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS, Leeds LS2 9JT, England
  TEL: 0113-3435430  FAX: 0113-3435468  WWW/email: google Eric Atwell


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