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What’s the Difference Between American English and British English?
- leovander 5y agoI am surprised they started with the t’s. It’s the r’s or lack of the r’s that stand out the most to me in conversations. Source: English spouse and Australian best friend
- mrmincent 5y agoAs an Aussie it’s definitely the T’s that always stand out for me when listening to American English. Specifically the word “important”, to me it always sounds like it’s pronounced by Americans like “impor-en’”
- SamReidHughes 5y agoWhen I was a kid there were some Australians in town for a youth lacrosse tournament just outside Philadelphia. The most confounding thing for them was figuring out what we meant by "wooder" (a popular beverage, sometimes fatal).
- jsmith99 5y agoMany British English accents don't like the letter T. Eg Cockney might replace it with a glottal stop, turning butter into bu'er.
- School-Cotton 5y agoGeneral American (or at least my version of it) replaces the t in butter with an alveolar tap.
- devilbunny 5y agoPossibly shaped by the fact that people who speak New York accents reduce T's even more than most Americans. I'll tap, but most NY/New Jersey accents barely even glottal stop.
- pekim 5y agoFor me it's always words that start with "Tu" that I particularly notice. Americans will usually say twos-day or two-nah, whereas as a Brit I am used to chews-day or chew-nah.
- HKH2 5y agoother words that may or may not have a 'y' sound: duty, new, computer
- jclulow 5y agoWho says "com-poo-ter"?!
- hardlianotion 5y agoSome old guy from the depths of rural Norfolk, I’d guess. But then the t might be replaced with a glottal stop.
- smcl 5y agoA friend's younger cousin from not far from there (Lowestoft iirc?) would say this - one memory I have is how he squished "can I play the computer?" to "ca' play compoota?" (which after discovering Monkey Island he said quite a lot). Might have been a kid thing rather than a regional thing though :)
- hardlianotion 5y agoAh, Monkey Island. Kid had taste.
- psyc 5y agoI’ve always wondered how Australians manage to turn two-letter, monosyllabic “no” into “nairyoo”.
- 5y ago
- raspyberr 5y agoHere's another thing I've noticed that isn't mentioned often. Americans often stress the first word in a pair of words that go together whilst British don't stress either one. For example, Americans would say Robin Hood with Robin stressed.
- Tagbert 5y agoThere is a process that occurs when compound words are adopted. Initially the emphasis is on the second word but as the compound becomes more widely recognized the emphasis shifts to the first word. There is a name for this process though I have forgotten it. I don’t know if this process is different between American English and British English.
- Lio 5y agoI like to ride my bike quickly. Others like to bike real quick.
- herodoturtle 5y agoFor those that are curious, this article is more about the differences in pronunciation, as opposed to the differences in spelling. The former is more nuanced than the latter. Interesting piece - particularly for those of us British English speakers travelling to the US for the first time.
- JdeBP 5y agoIt's worth pointing out on both sides that it is a lot more nuanced. British people will point out that even what is in this article is very superficial and wrong as a generalization to "British English". The "Leicester" accent does not use ə for the -er endings discussed, for just one example. And "sounding like the Queen" isn't "ectually" the same as Received Pronunciation. U.S. people will similarly point out that it is far from the case that everyone speaks General American.
- Doctor_Fegg 5y agoAnd British dialects are so wonderfully localised. Leicester, as you say, has the “Lestah” pronunciation. Peterborough has the ubiquitous glottal stop (sorry, Pe’erborough has the ubiqui’ous glo’al stop). Rutland has neither. It’s 20 miles from Leicester to Rutland and another 20 from Rutland to Peterborough. When I lived there I could often pinpoint a Rutland accent to within a group of villages, though I don’t think I could do so today.
- TulliusCicero 5y agoI don’t think US people will point it out as much, though. Regional accents in the US don’t seem terribly strong these days, at least in my experience. Even the southern accent seems to be slowly fading, especially in bigger cities.
- midasuni 5y agoAmerican English and English English.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
- dave333 5y agoAs a recently arrived Brit at Bell Labs in Naperville in the early 1980s I was presenting code in my first US code review. The code was typical K+R C with single character variable names x, y, and z amongst others. All seemed to be going well until near the end when somebody asked what I meant by the variable "zed."
- pbourke 5y agoIn the 90’s I worked at a Canadian company that developed a CNC machining training simulator. We produced some professionally narrated training videos for a new release of the software and sent them off to the publisher. A few days later our US publisher got in touch to have us re-record all mentions of the “zed axis” as “zee axis”.
- kitten_mittens_ 5y agoMy first introduction to Canadian English being slightly different than American was a physics professor my sophomore year who in the first lecture kept saying zed. I thought it was a tic. Later I moved to Germany, I finally figured out that zed was a Commonwealth English thing from my Canadian coworkers. None of my German coworkers could understand me when I said zee, because it sounds like "c", I guess. So I'd say tset (the German zed equivalent).
- 123pie123 5y agobeing from the UK, I have used either zee or zed all my life
- hungryforcodes 5y agoDon't even get me started on -- as a Canadian -- I went to work down in San Francisco and my colleagues were all like "what the hell is a prowject?". They were all saying "prawject". Fortunately we had good laughs over that and how I kept saying "yeah, I'm sorry" at the end of every fifth sentence. It seems to me that for the spelling part, American and British orthography are both accepted in Canada. So we could write "center" or "centre". Also "color" or colour". Which I find amusing, as both of the British spellings come from the French -- bolstering my theory that English is just a mispronunciation of French (I jest! :P).
- littlestymaar 5y ago> center" or "centre". Also "color" or colour". Which I find amusing, as both of British spellings come from the French “Centre” indeed comes directly from French, but “colour” is itself a mutation, the French word being «couleur»
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> “colour” is itself a mutation, the French word being «couleur» That's what the French word is now. But the French word used to be color, which is where the American spelling comes from, a late, backward-looking reform. Are you sure it wasn't colour in French when the English spelling standardized?
- hungryforcodes 5y agoAccordingly to this article: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/color-colour/ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/color-colour/ It seems the French spelling was "colour" at one point.
- littlestymaar 5y agoTIL, thanks
- 5y ago
- sam_goody 5y agoI was at an anniversary of a English / American couple twenty tears ago, and a speaker gave a brilliant but mind bending speech, in which he told simultaneously two different stories, depending on the dialect. It began with: "Well, I had a flat, see? So I took a lift..." (He hitched a ride after puncturing his car's tire, or he took the elevator from his apartment..) That's all I remember. It continued with something in his boot (a car's trunk / footwear), and then.. who knows? I've searched for something similar, since I have neither the vocabulary nor the talent to create something like that. Anyone here knows of something similar?
- cosmodisk 5y agoI was on my way to my flat when I got flat,so he gave me a lift all the way to the lift.
- sandworm101 5y agoProbably the least understood: Pants. There is a line from a Doctor Who episode, "My house full of soldiers and I'm in my pants." That joke doesn't make sense in America. I was watching QI a couple years ago. One of the guests was a Canadian actor who had been working in the UK for years and still she still had not realized the different uses of the word.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sul_tasto 5y agoI don’t get it.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoUK english: pants == underwear US english: pants == trousers
- sandworm101 5y ago
- WalterBright 5y agoI was once in London talking with my colleagues, and one of them mentioned that he was going out in the evening "pulling for birds". I asked him what the heck that meant. He said picking up girls, what do they say in America? I said "cruisin' for babes", and we all laughed.
- WalterBright 5y agoI also enjoy the British "heft a pint" as being so much better than "go out for a beer" that I adopted it.
- Doctor_Fegg 5y agoIt would be “pulling birds” in BrE with no preposition. Verb objects (and transitive/intransitive) are another difference between the dialects. In AmE you can say “I wrote Grandma yesterday”; in BrE that would be “I wrote to Grandma yesterday”. A lot of AmE usage is becoming commonplace in Britain thanks to the Internet, though. You’ll now see commercials in Britain that implore you to “Search ‘Fred Insurance’ for full details”. Five years ago that would have been “Search _for_ ‘Fred Insurance’”.
- bitwize 5y ago> A lot of AmE usage is becoming commonplace in Britain thanks to the Internet, though. My girlfriend and I were watching the Harry Potter movie cast reunion, and I noticed how the younger cast members let a lot of Valley-Girl-isms slip into their speech. "So I was like" (introducing a quotation), and "totally" (meaning very, extremely), and so forth. Quite different from how I expect a British person to talk. The younger generation of Brits seem to have fully embraced what Stephen Fry called "Buffy talk, Sabrina the Teenage Witch talk" and "the language of the Sunny Delight generation": https://youtu.be/xs5fH1ECzWc https://youtu.be/xs5fH1ECzWc (Note that Fry was specifically addressing the related phenomenon of AQI, a.k.a. "uptalk", but he diverts into things like "I was like" to introduce a quotation.)
- xen0 5y agoI'm a little surprised at the notion that British English is more likely to preserve full pronunciation of 'T's. In my experience, and in my own speech, it is quite common for British accents to completely replace a T with a glottal stop, unless one is being very deliberate with their speech, especially amongst younger speakers.
- retrac 5y agoMany British and North American dialects both reduce /t/ and /d/ in spots, just differently: > In North American English, the cluster /nt/ (but not /nd/) in the same environment as flapped /t/ may be realized as a nasal flap [ɾ̃]. Intervocalic /n/ is also often realized as a nasal flap, so words like winter and winner can become homophonous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flapping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flapping
- jraph 5y agoI heard "pretty" pronounced with a glottal stop in Cambridge and with a hard T elsewhere (London or around). It probably depends on the location or what surrounds the word?
- andybak 5y agoSee my other comment. I'm originally from London and it's very unnatural to pronounce 't' in my normal speech.
- kergonath 5y agoAround London that would be “pre’y” (most of the time; you can hear just about any accent in London). From my experience, Ts are harder in Yorkshire, for example.
- andybak 5y agoCame here to say exactly this. Pronouncing 't' is the main distinction I've noticed in my own speech between speaking normally and self-consciously attempting to "speak properly". It's not natural for me to pronounce 'T' without trying. The glottal stop is natural.
- eps 5y agoAsk your nearest British person to pronounce "Altered", as in Altered Carbon. This is really something else.
- smcl 5y agoScot here. I'd just say it pretty much as you'd expect -like "awl turd". Maybe I'd drop the "t" and use a glottal stop if I'd been drinking. But I know plenty of people from the south of England who would pronounce this like "ooltered". Update: I have been flipping back and forth between article and comments, and just discovered this is mentioned: """ So you hear the two different ts in “water” again, but more prominently you hear the British use “ooo” where the Americans use a sound that’s closer to an “aaa”. W/ooo/ter. W/aaa/ter. This one is also quite easy to learn because it’s a general thing. Somewhat more difficult is the next one. Again pay attention to the vowels. """ I think it's a slight mistake to describe this one as a "British" general pronunciation. While there are things we'd all pronounce similarly the "a" in "altered" and "water" would be pronounced "aw" in Scotland and Northern Ireland and possibly some of England.
- eps 5y agoOoltered is the one I was referring to. It was twice as jarring, because they won't even recognize all-tered as a proper word at all. Had to literally spell it out.
- smcl 5y agoOh that must have been quite funny :)
- imbnwa 5y agoI've always been of the suspicion that Scottish and Irish English remained rhotic cause they derived from English as it was spoken when they first heard it, namely, when it was fully rhotic. Likewise, America/Canada of course since English was rhotic when the colonies were first founded.
- bitwize 5y ago
- supernova87a 5y agoOf course some people will say it's a matter of style and preference, but I just cannot mentally abide the use of the phrase "different to" in English English. As in "well, that's very different to the current version", etc. Difference indicates departing from something. It's "different from". Oh well, I guess they'll just have to continue being obviously wrong...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Doctor_Fegg 5y agoIn the Guardian this weekend: https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/01/different-from-is-correct-and-iconic-is-meaningless-what-i-know-after-two-decades-as-a-subeditor https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/01/differ...
- gefhfffh 5y agoBritish English is music in my ears
- 988747 5y agoBritish English sounds fun, kind of like stand up comedian making a parody of normal English. I’m not sure how Brits can speak it with a straight face.
- seanhandley 5y agoIt requires a stiff upper lip.
- jaclaz 5y agoOr a pipe in your mouth. One of the best (funny) characterization of the British (not only the accent) remains the by now almost forgotten (and obviously largely outdated) "How to be an alien" by George Mikes (1946). > The easiest way to give the impression of having a good accent or no foreign accent at all is to hold an unlit pipe in your mouth, to mutter between your teeth and finish all your sentences with the question: 'isn't it?' People will not understand much, but they are accustomed to that and they will get a most excellent impression.
- Toutouxc 5y agoIt's always funny seeing native speakers obsess over tiny differences between accents. My non-native english usually sounds like whatever show I've been watching lately on Netflix.
- TulliusCicero 5y agoTo be clear, the author here is not a native speaker.
- hermitcrab 5y agoI (a Brit) was a councillor on summer camp in the US in the 1980s. One of the other Brit councillors asked an American councillor to "hold my fag" (in the UK fag=cigarette). The American looked very confused. I also still chuckle every time I hear an American talk about being "bummed" (in the UK bummed=anally penetrated). So just bear that in mind next time you tell a British person "I was bummed when ...". The common American name "Randy" is also a source of some humour (in the UK randy=horny).
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> The common American name "Randy" is also a source of some humour (in the UK randy=horny). We know that sense of the word in America too. I saw a friend once try to forestall that interpretation after saying "I'm Randy" by elaborating "Randy with a capital R". Since that's a standard way to express emphasis, it did not succeed at disambiguating what "I'm Randy" meant. We all had a good laugh.
- Lio 5y agoI can remember seeing British comedian Frank Skinner explaining to Kenny Rogers why his name was funny to Brits. Still raises a smile when I think about it. The phrase “to love… forcefully” was used.
- hashimotonomora 5y agoI like Dick… he’s a cool dude.
- bch 5y ago> hold my fag > American talk about being "bummed" (in the UK bummed=anally penetrated) But isn’t “bum a fag” still acceptable Brit phrasing? Also reminded the Cannondale bicycle company (American) used to have a child trailer called “Little Bugger”, where in Britain bugger is principally associated with buggery, but in America, could be swapped with “ankle biter” or some such nickname for “child”.
- hermitcrab 5y ago
- thedevelopnik 5y agoAs an American my favorite thing to hear British and similarly influenced (Australia/New Zealand) people say is “h.” We say “aych” but they say “haych.” I don’t know why but an English dev saying “haych tee tee pee” is just one of my favorite sounds.
- tomstuart 5y ago“Haych” is common but nonstandard in Britain: https://youtu.be/j4hvh5e8-nw https://youtu.be/j4hvh5e8-nw
- nailer 5y agoHaitch is incorrect (in the UK too) but feels more natural as most letter sounds begin with their letters. Aye, bee, cee, dee, etc.
- d1sxeyes 5y agoEspecially in Northern Ireland, “haych” tends to be used by those from Catholic communities, and “aych” by those from Protestant communities.
- jjgreen 5y agoA Derry mate of mine confused me no end with an anecdote on Kois (Koi carp I assumed), "No KOIS, where the moilk comes from (bloody English)"
- bitwize 5y agoMy favorite was when an Aussie asked me if I get Game of Thrones on Haitch Bee Oi up in America.
- housecarpenter 5y agoI believe "haitch" is normal in the Republic of Ireland, a shibboleth for Catholicism in Northern Ireland, and common in various odd areas where there's a lot of Irish influence. I'm English but some of my grandparents were Irish Catholics, and I come from Merseyside, where a large proportion of the population has a similar family background, and I say "haitch". But for English-in-England, "aitch" is definitely the more common pronunciation.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nailer 5y ago
- bazhova 5y agoThere are larger differences, even in grammar. Brits will say "I've lost my keys" using the present perfect to indicate something in the recent past. On the other hand, Americans will says "I just lost my keys" using the past with 'just'. These are grammatically different tenses and I think this constitutes a significant variation between the two. This is often overlooked. Moreover, Brits will more often say "I've got" and American will more often say "I have". You can find this in ESL textbooks and by talking with people. For such a fundamental verb, I consider this a big difference. Source: I was an ESL teacher and I have lived in both the US and the UK
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> Moreover, Brits will more often say "I've got" and American will more often say "I have". You can find this in ESL textbooks and by talking with people. For such a fundamental verb, I consider this a big difference. You shouldn't. There might be differences in frequency of use, but "have" and "have got" are fully synonymous. Even a significant difference in how often one or the other option is chosen would only add up to a tiny difference in the languages. At best, this is a difference on the level of how Americans say "math", but the English say "maths". > Brits will say "I've lost my keys" using the present perfect to indicate something in the recent past. On the other hand, Americans will says "I just lost my keys" using the past with 'just'. These are grammatically different tenses and I think this constitutes a significant variation between the two. This is often overlooked. I'm not sure you've really grasped what's happening here. Either option is fine in American English. They mean different things, or more accurately they focus on different aspects of the situation. That means the choice between them is not arbitrary but heavily context-dependent. My view of "I just lost my keys", with just normally used to mark the immediate past, is that it's a strange example of marking the recent past, because losing an object is something that might have happened in the recent past, but it's not something you're likely to recognize as happening in the recent past. If you lost your keys a minute ago, you probably don't yet know that you've lost them.[1] So while "I just ate" can only refer back maybe an hour or two, "I just lost my keys" could easily refer back a week, if e.g. it's an excuse for why I'm having logistical difficulties. [1] Note this fully natural American usage of "you've lost your keys".
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> But let’s come back to English and talk a little bit more about those rs. Not all r’s are silent in British English. You keep them at the beginning of words, right?, but you also keep them between two vowels. For example, wherever, in American English has two rs in British English you drop the one at the end but keep the one in the middle. This isn't really correct. British English (of at least one prestige variety) requires an R to appear between consecutive vowels. ("Intrusive R".) So it's not that the word has an R in it that's preserved by the local phonological context when it might otherwise have disappeared. It's more that the word really has no R, because there is no such thing as a syllable-final R, but an R is generated anyway by the local phonological context. I met a Brit who refused to believe that Americans could pronounce the phrase "law and order" instead of the obligatory "law rand order".
- CRConrad 5y ago> the obligatory "law rand order". I've always "read" that in my mind as "lawr and order". (Yes, it is of course hard to tell, since it's pronounced "lawranawrder".)
- thetadot 5y agoI was developing a software application for a British customer. I sent him an update to review and in the README noted that I had disabled one of the features "for the nonce". Fortunately he had a good sense of humo(u)r and forgave me. (More hazardous than cookies and biscuits) References: American Eng: "for the nonce" = for the moment. i.e. temporarily https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/for%20the%20nonce https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/for%20the%20nonce British Eng: "nonce" = a person who commits a crime involving sex https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/nonce https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/nonce
- kingkawn 5y agoNever heard for the nonce in America
- kanwisher 5y agoIt’s used in software for sequencing in protocols so stuff doesn’t get repeated
- selimthegrim 5y agoAlso cryptography.
- Beldin 5y agoSure, but there it's generally understood to mean "Number used Once".
- thaumasiotes 5y agoHuh? I immediately assumed the use in cryptography was related to... the normal use. Compare https://www.etymonline.com/word/nonce-word https://www.etymonline.com/word/nonce-word : > "word coined for a special occasion," and not likely to be wanted again, 1884, from nonce "for a particular purpose" + word (n.). And despite what you say, I still feel certain that's what's going on. The meaning is identical.
- mongol 5y agoFor anyone not natively English-speaking, there is a kind of choice to make - which English to use? Especially when spelling. Curious what others have settled on.
- School-Cotton 5y agoIn my experience, Europeans and South Asians tend to use British spellings. East Asians and Latin Americans tend to use American spellings. Not sure about people from other parts of the world.
- dustintrex 5y agoAs a rule of thumb, former British colonies like India, Australia and Singapore tend to favo(u)r British spellings, while other countries tend to go with American spellings.
- Someone1234 5y agoCanadian-English being an exception, since they use neither British nor American English. They use some kind of mish-mash of both. For example, they spell "Colour" the British-English way but "Analyze" the American-English way.
- andrewshadura 5y agoAnalyze and analyse are both British English spellings, even though analyse is more widespread.
- elondaits 5y agoHere in Argentina, in the 80s (at least) teaching British English was the norm… but probably most people end up with American spelling due to the internet, books, magazines, etc.
- Tomte 5y agoI'm German. My English lessons started in 1992, I think. Our English teachers back then were highly influenced by England and the United Kingdom. They strived for "correct" British pronunciation. They had most of their vacations (sorry, holidays) in England. Maybe Scotland. Our school book began with "X lives in Hatfield. Hatfield is near London." One of the first words we learned was "biro". We were "pupils", not "students". Today's English teachers have grown up with American TV series and music. I'd be surprised if that British bias still showed. I've mostly felt that influence, as well, and I think my English is more American than British, thanks to Star Trek, Friends and the like. Although I have once put the word "connexion" in document at work, and I'd love to use "gaol" some day before I retire. ;-)
- christophilus 5y agoReminds me of this one: Say “beer can” with a British accent. You just said “bacon” in a Jamaican accent.
- jameshart 5y agoOr how an American saying “Space ghettos” sounds like a Glaswegian saying “Spice Girls”?
- bigmattystyles 5y agoFor Americans to say Michael Caine the way he would you just say my cocaine. (Is his accent cockney?)
- salmonlogs 5y agoAmerican English you ask for someone to please pass the salt. In British English you first apologise for it: “I’m very sorry, excuse me, would you mind, could you please pass the salt, thank you very much”
- jleahy 5y agoDepends on the dialect, “toss me the f*ing salt, would ya” is also acceptable. (edit: but after writing this I note that ‘would ya’ is a contraction of ‘would you kindly’, so maybe I have defeated my own point)
- spurtrenolds 5y agoSeconded. One would be far more likely to hear "Oi, cunt, the salt" here in Blightly than in the USA.
- throwawayboise 5y agoDoesn't that go wrong immediately with the "toss me" phrase?
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago“Pass us salt” also works in some British English dialects
- Overtonwindow 5y agoA comedian said this same question but answered it with “alcohol.”
- Huntsecker 5y agoto me a brit their is only british english, and badly spelled / pronounced british english :)
- jgwil2 5y ago*there
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- alistairSH 5y agoThe author seems to be under the impression British English only has one set of pronunciations - Queens English/RP. Much of Britain (by area, not population) does pronounce Rs. I can think of at least 5 very distinct dialects/pronunciation patterns from the UK that nobody would ever confuse with each other (RP, Glaswegian, Cockney, Scouse/Liverpool, Yorkshire). There are many more, these are just ones that popped to mind as easily identifiable.
- moogly 5y ago> I want to be clear that of course there are many different accents in both the UK and in the US, and it’s not like there’s only one right pronunciation. But the differences that I’ll be talking about are quite general
- alistairSH 5y agoFair enough. But she continued to use “British English” when describing RP. And the same with “American English” instead of General American. These “generic” accents have names just like the more regional/stronger accents. It would have been proper to at least mention their names.
- tomxor 5y agoWest country accents are where the Rs broadly come back, and are even emphasised (think pirate speak if you are American, this is the accent it was based on). source: I grew up there.
- alistairSH 5y agoI was thinking most of the Scottish accents, since I’m a Scottish expat. I’ve been in the US nearly 40 years and still get asked to say phrases with lots of Rs and WHs whenever I’ve had a few drinks and my accent comes back. Funny aside - Mom was an ESOL teacher in the US and got some funny looks from colleagues because her students had “odd” pronunciation habits. WH was the big one - in the US it’s a much softer sound than most British accents.
- 5y ago
- lebuffon 5y agoOne difference that I notice that no one has mentioned yet is that Americans like to "go ahead" and do something. Example: "So now I'm gonna go ahead and put the cake in the oven"
- Tagbert 5y agoExcept for my Arkansas relatives who are always “fixin’” to do something.
- adventured 5y agoIn my observation the primary difference between the two is that the statement of I'm fixin to do a thing rarely refers to immediately / now; whereas "I'm going to go ahead and put the cake in the oven" means essentially right now. Versus: "I'm fixin to put the cake in the oven" would be sometime in the next N minutes, when I get a free moment to do so. I'm going to go ahead and do a thing - can be used for any time (eg as a confirmation, I'm going to go ahead and mow the lawn (referring to later today at 4pm, confirming intent)). I'm fixin to do a thing - is more often a delayed action set into the future (by at least several minutes) and can be used for any longer timeframe as well, and is often less definite of a statement (fixin usually means I'm going to attempt to, if I can get around to it; or I'm going to try to get to it).
- dkdbejwi383 5y agoI’ve noticed this in informal instructions too, in the UK I’d expect something like “combine the beaten egg with the flour”, but I’ve noticed Americans often tend more to something like “so what you’re going to do is you’re going to go ahead and combined the beaten egg with the flour”
- kwhitefoot 5y agoAmericans always use more words than necessary.
- llimos 5y ago"Pass the pasta" is a nice shibboleth phrase. British: Pars the pahs-ta American: Pahs the pars-ta Australian: Pahs the pahs-ta South African: Pars the pars-ta
- kingcharles 5y agoAs a Brit in America, no American can ever understand me when I say the word PASTA. I always have to say it several times, and then break down and just describe the stuff. In Subway I often have trouble asking for tomato on my sandwich. "Tomatoes please. Tomatoes. TOMATOES. The round red things? Thank you."
- Bud 5y agoThis would work much better if you used the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
- Tagbert 5y agoBut would restrict understanding to those few who understand IPA. I prefer when you use both IPA and a more colloquial representation.
- Bud 5y agoTrue, although it takes 5 seconds to access a simple IPA index and not much longer than that to look up a given sound. And once you do, you have a clear and (reasonably) exact specified sound, not an easily misinterpreted and inexact thing like "ah" or "ar" or whatever.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago> American: Pahs the pars-ta As an American, I’m confused about who pronounces pasta that way. I don’t think that fits General American.
- dkdbejwi383 5y agoIn my experience Australians tend to say “parsta” Also anywhere above the trap/bath split in the UK is going to give a different result.
- momentoftop 5y agoI did my PhD at Edinburgh, and my second supervisor was a proud Scotsman. I had a sentence in my thesis that began "Under the hood..." He wrote in the margin: "bonnet?" I immediately corrected it, and have since been hyper-aware of the fact that the Americans call the bonnet the "hood" and the boot the "trunk".
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoIf this sort of thing interests you, two blogs and a book: https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/ https://notoneoffbritishisms.com/ https://bookshop.org/books/the-prodigal-tongue-the-love-hate-relationship-between-american-and-british-english/9780143131106
- john-tells-all 5y agorelated: a discussion of American and British English, with examples from native speakers. Bonus: the teacher is German (Sabine Hossenfelder) and has a great sense of humor :-D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP0GQS-s4Gw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP0GQS-s4Gw
- jibcage 5y agoIsn’t this the same video in the article?
- motohagiography 5y agoStuck in between, Canada is just weird. I learned speak a liminal dialect of Canadian from a mix of 1970s CBC radio presenters, UK expat caregivers and teachers, theatre school educated neigbours. It wasn't just "Canadian dainty," as people who said shed-ule were considered to have an affectation, but that influence was prominent. Both the anglo Westmount area in Montreal and the uptown neighbourhoods of Toronto have a detectable patter that isn't so much british as an emphasis on articulating complete thoughts, which at the time came from being raised by parents with multiple generations of education. Kids who went on to go to school in Boston or New Haven tended to come back with a more American mannerism, which abraded off some of their recieved colonial agreeableness, but you could hear them code switching because Americans typically don't play at banter the way people from commonwealth countries still do. American banter is closer to a spectrum of what we would call chirping or passive aggression, as their culture didn't inherit a presumption of benevolence or a sense of noblesse oblige, but what I like about American culture and language is that where commonwealth deference is based on the polite presumption the person you are speaking to is secretly noble, Amercan deference respects that the person you are speaking to is plausibly equally dangerous. Having worked with a number of cross-border teams, the misunderstandings can be both comical, and irreconcilable.
- jollybean 5y agoThat's an interesting point, but I don't think the American distinction relates to 'danger' rather, it's just that they are less formal, more gregarious, less social protocol, and more familiar.
- motohagiography 5y agoIt's danger because the concept of polite has remnants of frontier culture, and just like the commonwealth doesn't have "nobles" anymore america doesn't have gunslingers, but I'm saying the origin of the etiquette that forms the culture is related to them. Americans are very formal with very strictly observed social protocols, you're just not allowed to talk about them because then it would acknowledge class, which is the last great taboo there. If you want to see what breaking American formal rules and social protocols looks like, tease them for crossing personal boundaries or poke fun at uniquely middle class aspirations, and it can make you an enemy for life. Recent American etiquette requires that you just "get it," in terms of who has the power in a situation because they very-officially don't use formalisms, and this tacit alignment and sensitivity to its shifts in particular is a big class signifier there. Most of them don't have a cultural abstraction for relating impersonally, where in other cultures you would acknowledge you are relating based on implied rules. Sometimes it's a relief, and sometimes the cringe is almost fatal. A personal example would be that to me, west coast culture is a lot like being around revolutionary marxists who make a point of being rude to wait staff because they think civility is bourgeois oppression, so as an outsider with normal adult boundaries, I can find it a bit alien. The culture I'm from emphasizes relating to service by learning to be worthy of it, which is probably equally bizarre to someone not familiar with that kind of interaction. You don't get a lot of "americans are weird," perspective these days because the internet just assumes everyone has been educated by television shows that were written to entertain people, and mimicking actors is normal behaviour, but since we're into accents and culture, yes, americans can be pretty weird. :)
- CannisterFlux 5y agoOne Americanism I've noticed a lot is "sure" replacing "yes". It happens all the time in interviews and stuff on podcasts, TV, etc. Where did that come from? Now some British people podcasts have started doing it. It sounds fake, like marketing-speak, to my ears. Also I really dislike British exaggerated r sounds added to eg pass staff mask so they become parse starf marsk. And also American A in pasta or Mario (more ree oh) or words like mango becoming almost mongo. Speaking is weird. We need an English academy that officially standardises (or is that with a z? Zed or zee? ) all this and fixes the silly spelling while they're at it.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago> And also American A in pasta or Mario (more ree oh) My experience as an American is that most Americans pronounce these with ‘ah’ sounds, not with the American A sound. Someone using the American A for those words would come across as very…regional, it would really stick out. Well, to me anyway.
- canjobear 5y ago[pæstə] is pretty much Canadian. You do hear [mæɹioʊ] in northeastern American dialects. I think it's also more common in older speakers.
- dkdbejwi383 5y agoOn the typical American “A” sound, I was always confused as a bairn when people on telly would say “holloween” instead of “halloween” Also took me a long while to realise “Wall-E” is a pun in American English.
- lbrito 5y agoAmericans also want to check if you know things, you know? Also for those mentioning words that are lewd or harmless depending on which side of the ocean you're at, those are nothing compared to Portuguese in Brazil/Portugal.
- guiriduro 5y agoDove is a bird and rhymes with Love, not a false irregular past participle for dived. Route and router derive from french and so are pronounced likewise - root, excepting the guttural french 'r' which no english speakers anywhere are capable of. It is quite jarring to hear the AmE version pronounced like some kind of chaotic battlefield retreat.
- el-salvador 5y agoBritish city names are hard. El Salvador, the country were I lived has one of the highest consumptions of Lea and Perrins' Worcestershire Sauce. You'll find a bottle of it on every local restaurant table and probably in most homes. Yet no one knows how to pronounce it, most people will just call it 'Salsa Inglesa' (English Sauce), or 'Salsa Perrins' (Perrins Sauce). I've never heard anyone say "Woustersher sauce" here.
- shaftoe 5y agoSouthern US here. It's not Worchestersher sauce?
- zinckiwi 5y agoPronounced “Wooster-sher”, though commonly you drop the “shire” for just “Wooster”. (That’s a short “woo” like in “wool”, not “woo” as in a romantic interest.) “Wooster sauce.”
- celticninja 5y agoWooster-shur
- kingcharles 5y agoI would go one step further - I always pronounced it Wooster-shuh, even while living in the West Country where the R is normally elongated.
- onei 5y agoBicester (Bister) and Gloucester (Gloster) are another couple of gotchas off the top of my head, and it's not like it even stops with places with *cester in the name.
- fatboy 5y agoI lived for a bit in a tiny town called Barnoldswick (stress on the "nolds"), but anyone from the area calls it "Barlick"! (stress on the "bar"). The accent here means that the phrase "pork pie" becomes "poo-wuk paaah" (stress on "poo" and "paaah") and the related steak-and-kidney-pie (which is served upside-down) was called a "babby's edd" (although I'm not sure if that's actually from nearby Bolton and is less about pronunciation I guess).
- pyuser583 5y agoMy favorite distinction: “rubber.” In the UK, an eraser. In America, a condom. I know more than one ex-Brit who had the unpleasant experience of shouting “does anyone have a rubber? I need a rubber really bad! Can anyone give me a rubber please?” In middle school.
- markb139 5y agoThere are others that work the other way. If you visit the uk and fall over don’t say ‘I fell on my fanny’ Or ask for a fanny bag
- robomartin 5y agoA British friend of mine is fond of saying the US and UK are two civilizations divided by a common language.
- cmacleod4 5y agoAs a brit on holiday in Florida, I stopped at a petrol/gas station and asked if they had any maps. The guy told me I should go to Home Depot. Only later I realised that he thought I was asking for mops.
- gumboshoes 5y agoThe linked piece and video are very amateurish attempts to explain what has been well-studied by reputable linguists. We can do better. American linguist Lynne Murphy, married to a Brit and working as a linguistics academic in the UK for many years (and with a stint in South Africa) has a fantastic blog and book on the subject. Very easy to read and nobody has covered the subject better. https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
- gumby 5y agoLearnt English as an Australian kid, then went to high school in Boston and then mostly stuck around since. I notice that I pronounce words you learn as a kid in a more Aussie style and adult words in an American style. More interestingly to me: when I’d go back to AUS my family would laugh at how my English had become completely Americanised. But over the past decade or so other people I meet in Australia who learned I’ve been living in the States have commented, “you haven’t lost your accent!” I think what they are really saying is, “I watch a lot of TV” as there is a ton of US shows being broadcast and available online.
- lnxg33k1 5y agoTo be honest as italian this hits me deeper than I'd like to admit, but it's also one of the things that some british people appear stupid to me, complaining about american english, not being their english, like, if that's their native language, haven't you realised the amount of ocean between the countries, but other than that, isn't every population allowed to have their language? But even with accents, like sometimes I meet some british and complain about my italian-accent-spoken-british, does it even make sense, have you ever listened to yourself speaking italian? I think british (londoners mostly) are mostly introverts because they really create a lot of un-existing issues for themselves it's really that sometimes you feel scared of doing anything because it could be slighly wrong
- systemvoltage 5y agoI wrote a PR release for our startup and one of the British contractors volunteered to double-check the grammar. Oh boy, I got back was a massive annotated word document with red marks everywhere. I promptly accepted everything as if nothing had happened - I really do not care about American english (I am American) or British english and wanted to spend zero further effort on going back and forth. Even when accepting without qualms, he sneered at me about how American my english was, while completely unaware about the exact points you made! That said, I prefer British english for the most part but just being immersed in a land thousands of miles away, it is hard to not assimilate.
- ggm 5y agoCan I just add that the internet promulgates a meme that in Scotland and Australia "cunt" is used all the time in spoken discourse. It isn't. It obeys the McNaughton rule: would you do it (say it) in front of a policeman (your mother). It's used for humour, by a small minority. It's used to offend routinely. It's not normal to ask for things by saying "oi, cunt.. pass me the salt" If you want an american version of this, propose people start casting the same meme with the N* word. I think you'll find this falls flat.
- lleb97a 5y agoIn my experience it's a lot more common as you move towards the low-end of the socioeconomic ladder.
- ggm 5y agoYes, but people codeshift. The minute Jaydon heads inside he doesn't say "oi cunt, where's my coke" to his mum or nan, having said it five minutes earlier to his mate Davo outside. And he's bored of being sent to the headmasters office so he uses it less in class now. And because he wants to keep that job at Maccas and buy a jetski he doesn't use it at work...
- kingcharles 5y agoAs a Brit living in the USA for over a decade the first thing any American says upon meeting me is: "Whoah! I love your Australian accent! It's so strong!" What my family says to me on the phone when I call back to England: "HAHAHA! You sound so stupid. You have no hint of an English accent left at all. You are totally American now!"
- tpoacher 5y agoWhy stop there? There's also Indian English, International English, Singaporean English, Scottish English, Australian English, African English ... and that's just the standardised ones.
- Karsteski 5y agoTrinidadian English! :D I love switching to heavy dialect for a second just to annoy Canadians
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- peanut_worm 5y agoIt is so confusing to me why youtube embeds arent responsive by default I never noticed the thing about “T”s being pronounced differently but I suppose that makes a lot of sense
- loonster 5y agoAmerican English is British English before they changed their accent to be all uppity. A southern accent is closer to traditional English before they split apart.
- a0-prw 5y agoSimple: Americans are assholes and Brits are arseholes. Ok?