My friend Kevin Kerrane forwarded me this letter to the editor, which appeared today in the Washington Post.
We learned this at university
Twice recently, The Post has published the Britishism “in hospital,” and not when quoting sources. The Jan. 10 AP article “Key motorway in Serbian capital blocked during student-led protest over train station crash” reported that “one more person later died while in hospital.” The Jan. 19 Business article “As they age, more women are taking the roommate route” stated, “A friend took care of her cat while she was in hospital.”
Is it not still the case that Americans say “in the hospital”? Perhaps Post editors could grab a style guide from the boot of their saloon car and have a butcher’s (pronounced: shufti) to confirm how to characterize the location of sick people for an American audience. Correct this usage, and I’ll be right chuffed.
Art Stern, Falls Church
notoneoffbritishisms.com 
Seems to me that if Americans say both that someone is “in school” and “in the school” to mean two different things, they should say the same about hospitals.
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Sadly, this type of thing has been happening more and more frequently. I’m hearing ‘bespoke’ all the time now in the US. And ‘whilst’ has almost completely replaced ‘while.’
I have long thought that the UK use of ‘In hospital’ – without the definite article that Americans would include – relates to UK perception of hospital as an institution. Is it because our National Health Service hospitals do not set out to make money? And don’t we, on both sides of the pond, also omit ‘the’ in the same way from ‘church’, ‘prison’ and ‘school’? When I learn that someone is in hospital I will know that they are being looked after by the NHS and my trust in that pan-national body is more important, in my mind, than which building the ambulance took them to.
It might be interesting to see one of your Ngrams on this, Ben. If GB usage of ‘in hospital’ began in 1948 – when the NHS was formed – and climbed from there, it would back my theory.
British usage of “in hospital” is definitely older than 1948, according to Lynne Murphy in The Prodigal Tongue. In a section on various US/UK “the” differences, she writes:
…sorry, that last paragraph is mine, it’s not supposed to be in the blockquote from Lynne Murphy. It looked correct in the preview.
Could have Varda at the style guide.
I still say, “in the hospital,” but I also say, “in university” or “at university,” but occasionally even, “on holiday” instead of “on vacation.”
I was born and grew up in Chicago but moved to Canada in 1972 for university and have lived here ever since. So, I have picked up the Britishisms in use here, including “in hospital” and “in/at university” without the definitive article. This took some getting used to – but then I recalled that in the U.S., “college” is used to designate all post-secondary education and is most often used without the definitive article (e.g., “I’m going to college after high school”). I wonder why the “college” exception in the U.S. to the Brit rule.
Terry Murray, Toronto
Another U.S. example might be “in jail/prison.” And of course, the British say they are going to “the pub.”
People in Yorkshire “go t’ pub”.
“in the hospital” makes it sound as if you’re in some quaint antique Anytown, USA, where there’s only one hospital around.
Indeed. Here in Guildford in the south of England, there are at least three hospitals, two of them about a kilometre of where I live, and the third about 2 km away. (And Guildford is not legally a city. It doesn’t have a city charter from the monarch.)
In hospital and in the hospital are different things; in hospital is a state, like being in education, and in the hospital refers to a specific hospital. If I were visiting a patient, I’d say ‘I’m going to the hospital’, as I mean a specific one.
I don’t know if you reference old American newspapers, but the Library of Congress has an online library and I’ve found several instances from the 1800s of the phrase ‘in hospital’:
https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn86090439/1891-10-13/ed-1/?sp=4&q=in+hospital&r=0.003,0.326,0.403,0.256,0
https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84026853/1910-09-21/ed-1/?sp=11&q=in+hospital&r=0.049,-0.005,0.992,0.629,0
Granted, they could be written by Britons who moved to the U.S., but there do seem to be several examples from across different states at different times.
It’s the same when referring to “bed”, or do Americans always say they are going to or lying in “the bed” rather than just “bed”?
We say “going to bed” or “she’s in bed” but there’s also the expression “he took to his bed.” On the other hand, a baby would be said to be “in the crib.”
Speaking of big American newspapers, did anyone see NYT Connections #603 today? Two of the purple words are UK expressions not found in AmEng. (Spoilers ahead but: “muck up” and “foul up”.)
I think of both of those as fine in American. I’ve heard “foul up” my entire life, often as a euphemism for the other f up. Muck up is more British to my ears, but Americans have been saying it for decades anyway.
The letter itself is a good example of how an American thinks a Briton speaks/writes, but getting it very wrong.
I’m not sure anyone in the last 30 years has said the words ‘saloon car’ outside of the very specific realm of a salesroom.
Secondly, one is chuffed, not ‘right chuffed’, which appears to be a random jamming together of vaguely British sounding words.
Shufti is at least correct, if you want to sound like you have walked out of a period drama. Which I suppose is the source material for most attempts Stateside at a British dialect.
Is there a parallel with driving directions? (But, confusingly, in the opposite direction.)
I’ll take I-5 to drive from Seattle to Portland, but I’ll drive on the M40 to get from London to Oxford.
I only noticed this when driving in England during my Christmas holiday, when directions from Google Maps told me to “take M20 for five miles” which has never sounded odd when considering American freeways, but highly distracting when back on British roads.
Students of the Welsh language often discuss this point in online forums. The definite article is always used in Welsh, which many newcomers proclaim as odd.
“I want to say ‘going to school’ not ‘going to the school’ !!!”