Hi everyone?
Tom has an English lesson or Tom has an English class?
Are both correct?
Is "lesson" British English and "class" American English?
For driving, piano, I wouldn't use class.
Am i right?
thanks for your help
Posted by michèle 2 · January 12, 2007 · 5 replies
Hi everyone?
Tom has an English lesson or Tom has an English class?
Are both correct?
Is "lesson" British English and "class" American English?
For driving, piano, I wouldn't use class.
Am i right?
thanks for your help
Both are fine Michèle. Maybe class is used more in AmEng than in BrEng but I think it's a matter of frequency rather than one or the other - I'd say both.
Thanks a lot, Susan.
I use both... but I think I use class more. But then again I'm a teacher and I don't say "I have an English Class" I just say I have a class.
I say both but I probably use 'class' more.
If you google for frequency, you get
"English class" - 1,240,000 hits
"English lesson" - 665,000 hits
"piano class" - 123,000 hits
"piano lesson" - 509,000 hits
"math class" - 1,010,000 hits
"math lesson" - 338,000 hits
mesmark wrote:
If you google for frequency, you get
"English class" - 1,240,000 hits
"English lesson" - 665,000 hits
I think it might be a UK/US thing. I've just repeated your search and obviously got more or less the same numbers - ie a ratio of class 2: 1 lesson.
But I then did it again restricting the search to UK websites - and therefore presumably British English - only and got :
English class 104,000
English lesson 95,000
ie a (very approximately) ratio of 7:6
So class still wins, but as I suspected, there's a big difference in frequency of use between the UK and "the rest of the world".
Does Google have a US site where you can restrict to US websites only? Or someone might like to try Australia and other English speaking countries and see what happens.