Separated by a Common Language

We're four months into a major renovation project and the walls (at least) are finished, so we're getting our brains around painting them. So far, one wall is painted so that the radiator can be (more BrE) fitted (in AmE, I'd say installed) this week. I've marked the same space as 'same wall' on the...

pic from marshalls.co.uk (AmE) What's up with the spelling kerb? This is one of those topics that I *thought* I had blogged about. But no! BrE has kerb for the edging alongside a road or path and curb for the 'restraint' verb (as in curb your enthusiasm). AmE uses curb for both. In general, there...

As previously announced, this was the sixth October during which I tweeted an 'British–American untranslatable' (that is, item lexicalized in one national dialect and not the other) on each weekday. If you'd like to complain that any of these does not qualify as 'untranslatable', please first read...

This was the fourth year that I declared October Untranslatables Month on my Twitter feed. (Here's 2011 , 2012, and 2013.) Instead of offering a 'Difference of the Day', I offered an 'Untranslatable of the Day' every weekday.  Last year, I swore that I wasn't going to do it again. In part...

British correspondent PurpleClaire was having trouble buying bedding on-line to be used in the US, so she tweeted "what on earth is a full-size bed?" I gave her a tweet-sized answer...but here is a fuller version of the story--with lots of help from Wikipedia. The short version: the basic sizes for...

When I don't know what I want to blog about, I stick a virtual pin into the email inbox and choose the first do-able request/suggestion that I find. This is supposed to be a fair method, though perhaps not as fair as 'first come, first served'. Truth be told, many of the oldest ones in the inbox are...

The linguistic difference of the day is inspired, as they often are, by a non-linguistic difference.  Better Half returned to our table at a restaurant to complain about the men's room. (For more on what else men's rooms might be called, see this post on toilets.)  The complaint, formed as...

I've got a few posts brewing in my head that require me to (a) take my camera out with me and (b) remember to take pictures of the relevant things when I get to them. So far, I've only managed (a), which, it must be admitted, is pretty pointless without (b). But there's a lot of pointless activity...

Sorry I've been quiet--was trying to finish a book before coming on holiday. So, 'hello' from the US, where Grover is getting reacquainted with her cousins and I only have a little editing to do in order to finish the book. (I think my honeymoon was the only non-working holiday I've had in years...)In...

How to choose among the dozens and dozens of unfulfilled requests? I just clicked blindly in my inbox and found American ex-pat Liz being driven crazy/mad (in 2007!) by her British colleagues spelling window cill rather than sill. Liz works in architecture, so perhaps the UK specialists use cill...