Separated by a Common Language

I've been teaching in England for 11 years now, and I've come to the point where I cannot tell whether the weird things that (some of) my students write are generational (after all, I've never taught their generational equivalents in the US) or dialectal.  For the past couple of years my pet peeve...

I looked at my collection of e-mails from readers that request coverage of this or that Americanism or Briticism. The collection contains just those that I've not blogged about yet and that I think have at least a little potential to be an interesting post. At my current rate of one post a week,...

So, last weekend the hospital released me to continue my treatment as an outpatient, then two days later on my first outpatient visit , they re(-)admitted me. Now I'm released again, but have been told to bring a packed bag to my outpatient visits...so you can expect my posts to continue to be erratic...

Better Half got back (on) Tuesday after eight days in New York. He had a great time promoting his work at an English teachers' conference and enjoyed working with his US distributors, except for one thing that niggled. He'd be chatting with the American folk, cracking jokes as he is apt to do, and...

I told my friend The Poet about the RateMyProfessors.com site and its complement, the blog RateYourStudents. Some days later, she e-mailed me to say that she'd found RateMyTutor.com, but didn't think it did what I said it did. What had happened, you see, was that she unconsciously translated the...

How am I avoiding marking/grading? Let me count the ways... Every time I finish a dissertation (which in AmE would be called a thesis, since it's an undergraduate piece; thesis and dissertation are used in reverse ways in BrE and AmE), I reward myself by going on-line. I probably read more on-line...

I know I promised another posting on determiners, but here are just a couple of items that I want to slip in between posts: 1. Benjamin Zimmer points out the linguistic issues that are allegedly related to the Prince William-Kate Middleton break-up over on Language Log today. The post and the links...

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...

The American Heritage Dictionary lists bollard as 'Chiefly British', and indeed this is a word that I hadn't encountered before I lived here, though I'd certainly encountered the things before. A bollard (in its most frequent sense in BrE) is a post that is used to get in the way of traffic--for instance...

Kate, a Canadian attached to a South African, wonders about handbags, having noticed that Britishoid Englishes use that term where North Americans would say purse. What's more confusing is that the word purse is used in BrE, but for a different kind of object than in AmE. The thing to the right (from...

I was at a party again today. It must be the party season, as I've got another to go to tomorrow. Thank goodness. If it weren't for parties, I'd just be sitting alone at my computer most of the time, not having interesting interactions with British English. First thing to note about the party was...

At the post office today, I needed to pay 64p for stamps, but only had 63p in change. The following conversation ensued: Me: I'm afraid I'll have to give you a big bill. A really big bill. PostOfficeMan: That's ok, we like big bills. Now, hearing an Englishman call £20 a bill rather than a note...

Bbrug pointed out an article on British and American authors' renditions of the other dialect's speech on the Telegraph website. Not being a Telegraph reader, I was grateful for the link. The author starts with the following premise (BrE: premiss): America has become more interested in the outside...