If you do an Internet search for “watch sport on TV” you get references to cricket, soccer, and Premier League football matches. If you type in “watch sports on TV” you get links about NBA basketball, NFL football and MLB baseball games. That’s because, when it comes to this topic, the British and the Americans cannot even agree on what to call sports. In British English, it’s “sport;” in American English, it’s “sports.”
There are other differences, of course. Football in America is a very different game from the football of the World Cup. What the British call football, the Americans call soccer. When the Brits talk about the US game, they call it American football. For the British, cricket and football is played on a pitch, and the players wear a kit; when playing sports like baseball or football, the Americans play on a field (in baseball, “pitch” is something you do with the ball) and wear a uniform. If both teams score the same amount of points in the UK, it’s called a draw; in the US it’s called a tie. If the match is completely scoreless in the UK, the score is nil-nil; in the US, the game score is said to be zero-zero.
(Paul Cooper, Taipei Times)
如果您在網路上鍵入「watch sport on TV」（在電視上觀看體育比賽）搜尋，會出現板球、足球和英超足球比賽。若您鍵入的是「watch sports on TV」，便會出現NBA籃球、NFL美式足球和MLB美國大聯盟棒球比賽的相關連結。之所以如此，是因為講到運動競賽，英國人和美國人連要用什麼字來稱呼都爭執不下──英式英文是說「sport」，美式英文則是說「sports」。
英、美的體育競賽用語當然還有其他不同之處。在美國，「football」是和世界杯足球賽截然不同的運動。英國人所說的「football」，美國人稱為「soccer」。英國人談到美國的「football」比賽時，會用「American football」（美式足球）一詞稱之。對英國人來說，板球和足球是在「pitch」（球場）上進行的，球員穿著「kit」（球隊制服）；美國人在玩棒球或橄欖球這些運動時，會用「field」一字來指「球場」（「pitch」在美式英文中的意思是「投球」）、用「uniform」來指「制服」。如果兩隊得分相同，在英國稱為「a draw」（和局）；在美國則稱為「a tie」。如果這場比賽兩隊都沒有得分（零比零），在英國稱為「nil-nil」，在美國說「zero-zero」。
（台北時報林俐凱譯）
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
照片：維基共享資源
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