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What is it called when an English speaker drops the "the" before "hospital"?
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May 9th, 2012
Warning: Stupid question.
I was listening to a British news program on NPR this morning, and they used the phrases “He went to hospital.”, and “While he was in hospital”. It sounded all strange to my US-English ears, but I have no idea why.
I would say, “He went to the hospital” and “While he was in the hospital”. So, I tried to think of something similar that I say that is missing “the”. College. I say, “He went to college” and “While he was in college”.
Is there some grammatical explanation for this? And is it just grammatical differences between British English and US-English, or does this tell me something about how the British think about a hospital or health care?
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