Separated by a Common Language

When Twitter tells me I have new followers, I can see their name and self-description before I can see their location (if they've given any). So I play a little game of 'guess which country they're from' before I click through to see it.  I seem to be good at picking out the Americans (or at...

Now that the Term from Hell has finished, I'd like to get back to blogging on an at-least-weekly basis.  Toward(s) this end, I've stuck my cursor into the e-mailbox that holds the 'potential bloggables'. Since it's nearly midnight as I start this, I consider myself very lucky to have blindly...

I've had various requests to cover various telephone-related vocabulary. Most of it is simple enough that I can do that thing that I think of as not-really-writing-a-legitimate-blog-post--that is, writing a big list of equivalent words. Some aspects might prove harder, though. Take, for instance,...

So, I haven't seen The King's Speech, and yes I'd like to and yes I should, but you've got to find me a (orig. AmE) babysitter and (more difficult) a few hours first. Sometimes these days it seems like my cinephile wedding in England's oldest (BrE) cinema/(AmE) movie theater should be annulled on the...

Christmas is a time for dealing with family, and when you have a transAtlantic family, many dialectal conversations arise.  But this time, it wasn't my family.  Grover's little best friend is a little girl who lives in our (very AmE-sounding) neighbo(u)rhood/(more BrE-sounding) area with...

Frequent contributor Marc wrote to say that he:received this comment about a draft letter I prepared:"Can you please put in I AM WRITING TO YOU NOT I AM WRITING YOU..this is amercian and bad english."Comment is from an England-born Australian.I am willing to admit that this may be American English...

On to April's queries--with the goal of getting through them before the term starts. On a visit to Colorado, Chris was puzzled: Lining the roads were expanses of trees, and every so often I'd see a sign nailed to a tree that said "Posted." Nothing else. We have signs like this in my native New...