I was recently asked, by an American girl who was bashing English (specifically, the Queen's English, as it is the flavour that i speak) about discontinuity of qualified nouns. She said:

"Howcome is it, that in your english you do not qualify nouns like hospital? We say 'he is in the hospital', you say 'he is in hospital'. You dont, however say 'he is in house' or, 'that morning, he left house', yet you say 'that morning he was out of hospital' "

I said:

i think it is probably because the noun in this sense, assumes a collective property because of the socialist nation that we live in; one hospital is not distinct from another, because of the NHS. One school is not distinct from another, again partly because the social ideals in England mean that schools are addressed collectively. There is also the factor that when english people say hospital or school, they are thinking more of a process, much like summer-camp is a process for americans, and two parents have the same idea of what summer camp is when they are talking over the garden wall, saying the children are away at summer camp, not away at THE summer camp.
I checked with a few more well-informed friends of mine but they had no reasonable answer, so i surmised for her that for one reason or another, some nouns in Queen's English are collective by associtation,and hence do not require to be (and indeed sound odd when) qualified"

Does anyone have any comments on this from the USA or England? In the USA do you phone your mom and say "my brother is in the hospital; he fell off his bike"

When you refer to being "in hospital", this does not refer to a place but rather a condition of being under medical care.

You say "to be in hospital" the same way that you say "to go abroad". You don't say "He's gone to the abroad."

The reference to the actual building is different. If you were riding your bike down the street and crashed into a medical care facility, you wouldn't say "I banged my head on hospital," you'd say "I banged my head on THE hospital."

However, by contrast to UK English it is accepted US English to say "He's in the hospital."

This form is immortalized in the line from Commissioner Gordon in Batman Year One:

"They did just enough to keep me out of the hospital."

I found that interesting and relevant. I'm an Australian currently going to school in Germany and I just got 11 out of 15 for a year 11 english comprehension exam. I must say all of this british english american english shit really gives me the shits because as an australian you can't choose one register, you adapt to one of the two according to who you're speaking too. There is such a thing as Australian english by now, it's defined by a few new words, most of which remain as slang. Acctually it really pisses me off that I have to put up with being told that I speak british english (escpecially after we lost the rugby) and that I have an american accent when I speak german(by germans of course) because my nationality doesn't really exist. In my opinion the first signs of cultural identity lie in the language and I am without mine.
Nonetheless, there are some positives to this whole nationality, raceless thing that is sort of happening in Australia. Australians (well second and third generation australians) tend to tthink of themselves as belonging to a world culture, I guess it's like people in europe consider themselves as european (except for the french, hehehe). I leaves alot less space for racism and all of that business.
sorry that was irrelevant to your post.

Ah, well..... multiple English=confussion.....
I am aware that I often mix British and American English during communication (since I learned both formally), like writing centre and center together in a paragraph. But looks like I haven't faced a serious problem because of that. I heard that British are pretty much nationalist regarding to their language, is that true? I've never been in England...

North Americans are extremely imprecise in their English usage most of the time. We say "Has he gotten up yet?", which I sometimes have a hard time remembering is wrong...

We Americans use the definite article more than you Brits and Antipodeans. We do indeed say, "He is in the hospital," "She went to the university," "I'll send these documents over to the department."

One of the few where we agree with you is "school." When we say "the school" we are referring to a specific institution. "I drove by the school on Main Street and saw your sister going inside." Otherwise it's just "school," as in "I went to school in Arizona," "My little brother starts school next fall, " "We get out of school at 3:00."

"School" even works this way if we're using it generically to refer to a higher institution. "My son is away at school. He was accepted at Harvard University."

There's not a lot of rhyme or reason to this. Sometimes we say "the land," "the air," "the water," "the food" other times it's just "land, air, water, food."

This is what makes English grammar complicated and difficult for foreigners to learn. Our nouns and verbs are deceptively simple, we don't have a dozen endings for each one. But little things like when do we use "the" and when do we omit it, the rules for that are so complicated that even an amateur linguist like me has trouble putting it into words. I know how to say it right but I can't explain why.

Sometimes I wished we used the Queen's English in America. It frustrates me when I use improper English. I live in small town and occasionally catch myself speaking "hick". My wife and I are a bit concerned that our kids could start sounding hick. My brother speaks hick on purpose and it drives crazy to listen to him.

Couple of anecdotes:

A dinner once with my parents and some of their friends, more oldest, then about three had been talking away. He spoke quite well for his age, and so my mom being very proud, opined to everyone that they hoped he would learn to speak really good. I then replied, "I was hoping he would learn to speak well." She did not think I was very funny, others had a good chuckle, though.

One other. In law school I had a black professor, who liked to talk about injustices towards blacks. My favorite was when he blamed eubonics on whites because did not teach blacks to speak properly. It was even funnier when he turned to the guy sitting next to me, an Irish attorney taking some American legal courses, and said to him that he should know about eubonics. The Irishman asked him he would know and my professor replied that that is what they speak in Ireland. His reaction was hilarious. He said, "I speak the Queen's English, I do not even know what eubonics is!" I about fell on the floor laughing.

While practicing law and reading depositions of people from the inner city, I would at times have to get help translating what was said. Much of it consisted of words just run together or words made up all together.

I was recently on vacation in England. There, I met a woman on holiday. Between us, we found, there were no articles.