“Half TIME,” “Red CARD,” etc.

As of now, two friends have forwarded me the New Yorker‘s recent article about American adoption of British soccer/football terminology–especially treating teams as plural, such as “England have advanced to the semifinals”–with messages along the lines of “In case you missed it!” To which I snarkily replied, “More like in case they’ve missed the fact that I’ve been writing about this for thirteen years!” As it happens, with the World Cup in full swing, I’ve been thinking about another Britishism that seems to have been adopted by the American announcers on Fox, John Strong and Stu Holden. It involves not grammar or terminology (like calling the the field “the pitch” or a uniform “kit”) but pronunciation, and specifically the way stress is placed in compound terms such as “halftime,” “red card,” “goal kick,” and “set piece.” My sense is that in American English the stress is on the first word or syllable, while in Britain–and for Strong and Holden–it’s on the second. HalfTIME, red…