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In German you may say something like

In Film und Fernsehen spielen Schauspieler.

which translates verbatim to English as

In movie and TV actors act.

  1. While the German version sounds familiar to me as a native speaker, is the English version correct?

  2. What grammatical role does "movie and TV" occupy?

cadaniluk
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1 Answers1

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I would say "in television and film", but if you stick with the word 'movie' I think the correct usage would be "in movies and TV".

samanthapants
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  • Yes. Film and television can both be used as mass nouns, but I can't think of a comparable use of movie. – Colin Fine Dec 05 '15 at 11:05
  • @Colin. Motion pictures. Movie is a colloquial version of motion pictures. – Steven Littman Dec 05 '15 at 12:41
  • @ColinFine I force myself to translate the German "Film" to "movie" and not "film" but "film" seems alright here then. I'll have to learn when to use "movie" and when "film", apparently. – cadaniluk Dec 05 '15 at 19:17
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    @StevenLittman: I'm well aware what movie means. I meant that I can't think of a use of it as a mass noun. – Colin Fine Dec 06 '15 at 00:49
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    @cad: in most uses, they are interchangeable, but as I say, film can be used as a mass noun, while movie cannot. (Film can also be used as a count noun, of course). Also, movie is considerably more common in the US than the UK - GLOwBe shows 67K instances of film in the US against 61K of movie; but 95K vs 33K for the UK. – Colin Fine Dec 06 '15 at 00:54