I'm sorry, what?

"Two nations divided by a common language”

There have been a few variations on this quote and no one seems sure who uttered it first: George Bernard Shaw? Mallory Browne? Raymond Gram Swing? Oscar Wilde? While that may never be answered, the longer I live here the more apt it becomes.

A good friend asked me to post about these differences, and man, are there a lot of them!

Anyone from an English-speaking country is in some ways at a disadvantage here in the UK since we’re expected (and expect) to know the language. I thought I knew English, but I quickly learned that I only know American English.

British and American English don't only differ in which words are used, but also spelling, pronunciation and sentence structure. There are also regional differences in word usage and pronunciation, and sometimes sentence structure. Add to that the incredibly dry sarcasm, it is easy to misunderstand and be misunderstood. Fortunately, most Brits are far too polite to ridicule (or maybe they have and I’ve misunderstood?) and usually helpful when I'm attempting to communicate.

Why all the differences?

Although much smaller than the US, the UK has 30-40 dialects and as many accents. This is due to centuries of immigration, conquests and isolation.

The land mass currently knows as Great Britain has seen centuries of incomers, both welcome and unwelcome: Romans, Saxons, Vikings, Normans, Flemish, each bringing their own language. This is really apparent when you’ve traveling around and trying to pronounce place names. 

At the same time, they were places where people had lived for generations without ever venturing more than a few miles away. Just think about how small your world would be if your only mode of transportation was your own feet. Yes, there were horses and carriages, but most people could not afford those until relatively recently. This isolation meant even though everyone may have been speaking the same language, the pronunciation and word usage evolved separately. This explains why folks from Liverpool, Yorkshire and New Castle speak so differently.

With an ocean between the UK and US, there's no wonder English evolved differently, even if it's only been a few hundred of years since the English first landed in the new world.

What do you call a bit of baked dough?

I grew up watching British shows like Benny Hill, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Masterpiece Theatre, but the first time I really appreciated the range of words for common things was when I went to order from a food trailer at a motorcycle race at Donington. At this sort of event (and at home) it’s common to have sausage or bacon on bread. I would call this a sandwich, but in the UK, what you call it depends on where you live (or grew up). The lady working the counter asked if I wanted a butty, but when I hesitated, she quickly listed alternatives: bap, bun, cob, roll, batch, barm.

How do you spell that?

If you change the locale of your computer from US to UK, you’ll quickly see many words marked as misspelled. The most common are the words ending in ize/yze, or, ck, og, ense and er in American English:

finalize > finalise

analyze > analyse

flavor > flavour

check > cheque

catalog > catalogue

license > licence

fiber > fibre

Brits use double vs. a single “l”, especially with -er, -ed or -ing:

traveler > traveller

jeweled > jewelled

canceling > cancelling

Where American English uses an e in some words, British English will use double vowels:

fetus > foetus

anemia > anaemia

 

You may also see a difference in expressing past tense, though both are used in British English:

spelled > spelt

learned  > learnt

 And then there are words that are spelled differently without following the above rules:

tire > tyre

curb > kerb

"They have a different word for EVERYTHING!"

Okay, not really true for the British, but this is one of my favorite Steve Martin jokes about French.)

But there are completely different words for lots of everyday things, some of which you have probably heard before:

shopping cart > shopping trolley

(large) truck > lorry

realtor > estate agent

lawyer > solicitor

sidewalk > pavement

elevator > lift

apartment > flat

parking lot > car park

rent > let

seller > vendor

A few other things I’ve noticed that Americans tend to do compared to Brits:

• put the emphasis on the second syllable of words, like bidet (bi-DAY vs. BEE-day)
• use “shop” and “store” interchangeably for a place to purchase things. Brits only use “shop”
• using contractions differently, especially with negative: “I haven’t” vs. “I’ve not” or “She hasn’t” vs “She’s not”

I could go on and on, and I will cover more about language differences in other posts (wait until you read about Cockney rhyming slang!), but for now, that’s it!

 

Resources: 

https://www.lexika-translations.com/blog/differences-between-the-british-and-american-english/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_immigration_to_Great_Britain

https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2017/09/08/american-british-english-spelling/