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Do Americans tend to drop the indefinite article in spoken English? I'm under the impression that they do.

I've just watched a movie in which two guys were chatting about horse racing. One of them mentioned a certain horse's performance and the other replied with "that's good time".

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    We can drop the indefinite article in "that's good time" because time can be an uncountable noun in that sentence. We don't drop the indefinite article in, for example, "I had a good time" because time is countable in that sentence.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented May 6, 2017 at 16:47
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    What @Peter Shor said. But note that the a wasn’t dropped. Rather it wasn’t ever there to begin with.
    – Jim
    Commented May 6, 2017 at 16:51
  • @Jim: I'm with Peter on this one. Same as That's [an] unhealthy food or Last year we had [a] below-average rainfall, which to my BrE ear sound syntactically credible with or without the article.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented May 6, 2017 at 16:54
  • @FumbleFingers - I think of the two differently. In the same way that “He makes good money” is fundamentally different than “he makes a good salary”. I can’t add an ’a’: “he makes a good money” So even though it works with or without- thus switching between the two meanings, if the first was meant, the ’a’ wasn’t dropped.
    – Jim
    Commented May 6, 2017 at 17:31
  • @Jim: I don't see any difference in meaning as such in OP's exact context, though you might be able to differentiate, for example, That's [a] good play! With the article that would have to refer to a single coherent set of actions within a game, of relatively short duration in total (where without the article it might feasibly even refer to an entire lengthy game, from start to finish). But to my mind there's room for a lot of flexibility as regards the exact syntax role of X in statements of the general form That's X (X=noun, adjective, whatever).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented May 6, 2017 at 17:56

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No. There are a number of different idiomatic uses of time (most of them with good time) that do not need an article. They usually have a meaning of either promptness or speed.

In the context of a horse that's good time means that the horse has run the course at a good speed - i.e. has taken a good (short) time to run the course.

Other related phrases are:

in good time = "early enough"

make good time = (arrive) earlier than might have been expected.

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