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Got an example? Sounds interesting.

• JohnFen 3y ago
  Sure. "Soccer" is one. It started in England as college slang. "Soc" short for "association" from "football association", and "er" added as a jocular formation. That guy is a soccer. Rugby players were similarly called ruggers. Also, more vague but fascinating, is that the American "southern accent" (quotes because there isn't a single southern accent, but most people think of a specific one when they think "southern accent") is largely a "British accent" (quotes for the same reason), but British circa the 1700s. This is actually a fascinating subject, well worth looking into if you're interested in English language history. Also interesting is that the division between American and British English has been growing softer over time, and more and more modern Britishisms are being used regularly by Americans (and vice versa).
  • forgotusername6 3y ago
    Whenever I hear the "British accent of the 1700" I just don't really believe it. There isn't a British accent now. There are many many different accents, all wildly different.
    • arp242 3y ago
      They said "a British accent", as in, "one accent among others".
    • JohnFen 3y ago
      Right, as I mentioned. Same with American or even Southern American accents. There are a wide variety of distinct ones on both sides of the pond. The various accents do tend to have features in common, though, so you can hear that the various southern accents are part of the same family, and similarly with the various British accents. There are, of course, exceptions to this as well. This bit of linguistic history is really referring to a fairly specific American accent and a fairly specific British accent.
  • jahewson 3y ago
    This isn’t true though! The Southern accent in the US did not emerge until after the Civil War, replacing a diverse array of local accents. It came from the Appalachian South which was settled by the Scotch-Irish and Germans, none of whom had English accents.
    • toyg 3y ago
      It's quite funny and depressing, how one of the youngest and wealthiest countries on Earth has already fundamentally forgotten huge chunks of its history - after barely 250 years. Ten generations are clearly enough to lose a lot of data.
• czinck 3y ago
  Rhoticity is the big one I know. Parts of Britain started dropping the R before 1776, but it became more widespread after that. The US port cities (most notably Boston, but it was also a class difference) had enough contact with Britain that they dropped the R too, whereas the rest of the US kept it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English
  • JetSetWilly 3y ago
    I don't think anyone would consider rhoticity as especially American considering several dialects across the UK, ireland & canada are rhotic. It is just another way in which english varies globally.
    • czinck 3y ago
      True, and I didn't mean to imply it was. I was just thinking of things Americans say because of the British that the British no longer do, wasn't thinking America-exclusive things.
• robocat 3y ago
  Gotten: “English speakers in North America preserved gotten as the past participle of got. Outside of North America, the shortened version [got] became standard.”
  • JohnFen 3y ago
    This is hilarious, because when I was in grade school, "gotten" was considered incorrect English and you would be corrected or marked down for it. I do hear "gotten" said occasionally in my part of the US, but it's not common. It's a bit like "ain't" in that way.
  • brigandish 3y ago
    gotten still remains in occasional use in Britain, certainly in spoken English.
• parminya 3y ago
  "Tire" and "curb" were once the normal spellings in the UK; "kerb" is an innovation whereas "tyre" is either an innovation that is coincidentally the same as an archaic spelling, or the restoration/repopularisation of an archaic spelling. The spelling "kerb" upsets me whenever I see it because it's clearly referring to the curvature of the kerb, but fortunately I almost never see it. Likewise, spellings like "programme" are deliberate changes to mimic the French spelling. These have been rather more successful than they have any right to be, but some have completely failed (like "gramme") and a lot of people still use the older spelling. -ize, also, used to be the standard spelling with -ise an alternative also found in the UK. In this case, it's clear that an understanding that -ize is used in the US and -ise is used in the UK became an understanding that -ize is the US spelling and -ise is the UK spelling which raised its currency. But I think they both remain in use in the UK (-ise has more-or-less chased out -ize in Australia though). -or spellings like "honor" and "color" were once much more common in places where they are now rarely seen and vice versa. To an extent they follow the same story as -ize/-ise, with the US standardisation of one chasing its use out in the UK. In Australia, -or was much more common (than now) when the power to distinguish oneself from was the UK, but now that the main power one needs to distinguish oneself from is the US, -our has chased it out except in the name of the Labor party (because the paperwork was filed by someone who happened to prefer the shorter spelling in a time when both were current) and some uses of "honor" that are literally etched in stone. (The last general use was until about the year 2000, by "The Age", a Melbourne newspaper which used -or as its house style, but by then it was seen to be improperly American and they switched to -our.) Generally, spellings and spelling variations remain open and subject to gradual change in all English-writing countries.
• hiccuphippo 3y ago
  Beyond words, the imperial units and Fahrenheit for temperature and I wonder if the mm/dd/yyyy format happened that way too.