Separated by a Common Language

The hardest thing to cope with for an English learner of Swedish is not the gender system in nouns, nor the voiceless palatal-velar fricative, nor the verb-second syntax. No, the toughest thing to learn is how to make do without a word for 'please'. I end up saying Tack ('thank you') in all sorts...

Hej från Sverige! That is to say, Hello from Sweden! English in Sweden is interesting because (besides being impeccable) it more often sounds American than British (at least in terms of vocabulary). My former Swedish tutor attributed this to the fact that Swedes get a lot of their English from television,...

Had another "Is that a Canadian accent I'm detecting?" moment today, bringing the Canadian count to six. This one, upon hearing that I was American, said "I thought so. I always guess Canadian first. That way, I don't offend anyone." I told you that people are afraid of Canadian...

Howard wrote recently to ask:What about the word Toilet? From correspondence and discussions with American friends, I am given to understand that this is very much a no-no word in AmE.In AmE, toilet is used to refer to the porcelain receptacle for human waste, but not usually to the room in which...

Allie (the Kiwi) wrote to say: I have a friend from LA staying with me at present. This evening she cooked supper, and one recipe included spring onions (or whatever those are called in the US). Anyway, after supper, I was doing the dishes when I noticed the spring onions sitting beside the pig...

Paul pointed out this article and discussion on BBCNews about the tendency for Americans to assume that the British are brighter (and their lack of recognition of non-RP accents as British). Better Half says that he's not sure whether Americans think he's smarter because of his accent, but he does...

Postscript  Since writing this post, I was a part of a Numberphile video, which gives a quicker reply to the math or maths question. So, you might want to watch that, then if you want more on the linguistics of it, continue to the post below the video. As promised in the comments of my...

Was out with my friend the Blinder tonight, talking about my plan to re-establish a gym routine and improve my diet. (Let's see how long that lasts.) I need to make my plan as numbers-driven as possible, and need to involve Better Half in the process in order to discourage his practice of showing...

Better Half has been unwell (which sounds fairly BrE--I'd usually say sick in AmE) for more than a week now. The doctor says he has a chest infection, but an American doctor might've preferred to say bronchitis. It's not that bronchitis is an AmE word--just that people talk about being diagnosed with...

James Henry wrote to say: I had a hard time believing that an utterance such as 'He was cited for drink-driving,' wasn't a typo, or some other error. Apparently it is standard usage, and I'm left wondering if there are 'drink tanks' in the UK. If there aren't (AmE) drunk tanks in the UK, I'd guess...

I'm sure I missed many opportunities when writing about games recently, but I almost immediately reali{s/z}ed I'd omitted (BrE) noughts and crosses/(AmE) tic-tac-toe. Clearly, the BrE name is naming the symbols used in the game: O and X. In AmE, however, those symbols are usually called by the...

The Guardian, particularly its Weekend magazine, has been publishing a lot of things that relate to transatlanticism these days, and I keep ripping them out and putting them on the 'blog ideas' pile. But here's one that I don't feel the need to say much more about: Simon Pegg on why British and American...