British English vs American English

[Pauline]

There are many differences between British and American English, in use of words and pronunciation, and I still notice them after 7 years here.

One expression that amazes me is that Brits call anything you walk on "the floor". For example, "I came out of the pub and sat down on the floor". I hear "floor" used like this all the time. To me a floor is in a building. Outside it is the ground. "I stumbled out of the pub and sat on the ground". Or sat on the sidewalk, which Brits call "the pavement".

What differences have you run across?

 

[Felicity]

Well, our family is English and Irish and we never use 'the floor' for when we mean the ground. Outside just doesn't have a 'floor'. However, that is not to say I haven't heard people who don't ...ahem....have a great command of correct English use floor instead of ground and it makes me wince when I hear it.

Just yesterday it struck me how different the pronunciation of Caribbean is in the two 'languages'.

 

[Mom83]

Our daughter's boyfriend is British - from Oxford. I often have to ask him to explain certain words for me. He uses "mates" for his current adult good friends, but "lads" for his long-time childhood friends. He is getting his MBA at John's Hopkins - calls college "uni" (short for university). He says "ace" when we would say great. Biscuits when we say cookies. Knackered when we would say we are tired. Many more that I cannot recall just now. His mom is Irish and his dad is Scottish - they have even different terminology!

 

[Ian Sutton]

My favourite is not a US interpretation of an English placename, but that of an Australian.
Loughborough (pronounced here as Luff-burra) he pronounced as Looga-barrooga and I have to say I think it's much better than the original!

One very subtle difference is our use of the word 'Quite'. An American described how he badly offended an English lady after saying spending time with her was "Quite pleasant" (meaning he had a pretty good time). In English usage this translates as moderately / somewhat pleasant but not especially so. Put this together with our subtlety in language, this is akin to "Not awful, but I'd not be rushing to spend time with you again!".

I do like our ability to use the word as a non-committal agreement e.g. Person A:"What an atrocious eye-sore!" Person B: "Quite".

 

[Pauline]

How about "whilst"? You never hear that word in the US whilst it is used all the time in the UK.

@Felicity - Me too. I wince whenever I hear it and I hear "the floor" for the ground all the time. Is everyone spending too much time indoors?

Speaking of ground, I was doing a knitting project for someone who wanted a knitted vegetable bed. (I will post a photo because it turned out so well.) I called it knitting dirt but was told that is not the right word because it has associations with dirty. So what do I call that brown stuff we dig into? Soil. Which sounds soiled to me.

Knitted Vegetable Garden
​

@PatrickLondon I have copied the way you did photo descriptions in your trip reports. It looks very nice!

 

[Felicity]

I call soil "earth" as I don't like the word soil either - those two are interchangeable but perhaps I am old-fashioned (or Irish?) because I don't hear it talked about much. I plant my potatoes in earth. Clever knitting!

 

[PatrickLondon]

"Floor" for "ground" was common - in both senses - in my childhood.

Mom83's daughter's boyfriend is bringing up a number of possibly ephemeral examples of young people's slang - a lot of these words come and go. "Uni" is quite new, and comes from the Australian TV soaps that had (maybe still do) a cult following among the student-age generations from the 1980s onwards.

"Mates" and "lads" could probably serve for a sociolinguistic PhD. "The lads" (or sometimes "the boys") would be a longstanding group of male friends, "lads" on its own something a bit more generic and neutral. "Mates" on the other hand suggests a rather more fluid group of people of either gender. I think.........

You might be interested in this rather scholarly blog on this sort of topic:
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/

 

[PatrickLondon]

Aha - the thick plottens.

Today being St Patrick's Day, BBC Radio 3 invited the Irish Ambassador to read a poem, and he chose Yeats's Song of Wandering Ængus:

...I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,.......

which rather suggests that "floor" for "ground" might have been identified at some time as more Irish than English and therefore frowned upon, like saying "Haitch" for H.

 

[Pauline]

I was reading @Ian Sutton 's post about using flashlights that you attach to your head and I was going to reply "that sounds very Anorak". Would that be a correct usage? To mean practical and nerdy?

 

[Ian Sutton]

I was reading @Ian Sutton 's post about using flashlights that you attach to your head and I was going to reply "that sounds very Anorak". Would that be a correct usage? To mean practical and nerdy?

Harumph!

Only kidding, yes that's the meaning, although probably likely to be referred to as 'Anoraky', though geeky is probably used more these days.

 

[Pauline]

Thanks!

 

[PatrickLondon]

Yes, I think it's a generational thing - if memory serves, "anorak" comes from train drivers' slang for the gaggle of trainspotters collecting loco numbers, which was a big craze among mostly young boys from the 40s to the 60s (and their mothers always made sure they were sensibly dressed, hence the anoraks). As it dwindled away with regular trains becoming boring, the term attached itself more to middle-aged men who become expert in heritage engineering of all kinds. So for the kind of person who likes peering into the innards of huge engines, or going potholing, a torch on the head would indeed go with an anorak.

For a more general obsession with detail and getting things right, then I suppose geeky is the more widespread term these days.

For show-off urban cyclists, who also have lamps attached to their heads or headgear, some reference to lycra might be more appropriate - like MAMIL!

 

[Pauline]

The phrase that we use in the US/Canada to remind us how to change the clocks doesn't really work in the UK.

Spring forward, fall back. But Brits say "autumn" instead of "fall". Autumn is a nicer word.

What phrase do you use here? Or do you all just remember which way the clocks change?

 

[PatrickLondon]

The same phrase is used here as a mnemonic, not universally perhaps. But the newspapers, radio and TV news will usually put in a reminder anyway.

 

[Roz]

I have a question about British pronunciation. We have listened to some audiobooks set in Southwest France, and the reader (a Brit) always pronounces Dordogne as Dordoyn. Is that how it is generally pronounced in the UK, or is that a quirk of the reader?

 

[Ian Sutton]

Hi Roz
Yes that's how we'd pronounce it. I can't vouch for the French pronunciation as we English are known to butcher most languages with ease
regards
Ian

 

[Ian Sutton]

Here's a tricky impossible one for you to pronounce. It's on the Norfolk Coast.
Happisburgh

Guesses welcomed

Spoiler: Click here to reveal the local pronunciation

Hays-burra

 

[Roz]

Thanks, Ian. Here's the pronunciation in French: https://www.howtopronounce.com/french/dordogne/
which is more or less how I've always tried to say it, so I was surprised to hear it the other way.

Also, I think the British pronounce Medici with the accent on the second syllable (MeDIci), whereas in Italian the first syllable is stressed. https://www.howtopronounce.com/italian/medici/

There are probably other words where the Brits have adopted their own pronunciation, but those are the two I recall hearing differently most often.

I have no idea about Happisburgh. For what it's worth, the spoken pronunciation on that howtopronounce website says it more or less the way I'd expect. But then they also have it written out in a very different pronunciation, which I'm guessing is what you're referring to. I won't write it here in case anyone else wants to chime in.

- Roz

 

[Ian Sutton]

Hi Roz
Yes we are quite appalling at pronouncing European place names, hence so many have anglicised equivalents.

I've added Happisburgh as a spoiler above so people can guess, then open the spoiler, then look back at the name Happisburgh, then recheck the spoiler, and finally go shake their heads in confusion and disbelief.
regards
Ian