Separated by a Common Language

Each year since 2006, I've designated Transatlantic Words of the Year (WotY). This year is a little different in that I declared the US-to-UK WotY at an online event earlier this month. Those attending the event voted on the UK-to-US WotY, which I'll blog about tomorrow. For US-to-UK, the choice...

A(n) historian I know has taken to calling me his favo(u)rite linguist. I have a suspicion I'm the only linguist he knows. Nevertheless, flattery gets you a blog post. And a flattering pseudonym. So, Generous Historian, when he emailed me about Important University Business, included this: P.S....

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...

I promised @matthewddsg weeks ago that this would be the next blog entry. Then I did another one instead and had to write other things for other places. So here it is, not quite a month since I promised it. For me, that's pretty good! The upshot: in BrE one hires things (and sometimes places), employs...

Ben Yagoda at some point asked if I'd tackled raise and rise. And I haven't. So here we go. In AmE one asks one's boss for a (pay) raise. In BrE, one asks for a pay rise (or perhaps one seethes with quiet resentment instead).  These differing expressions are both nouns, of course. The verbs...

JL in New York wrote recently with this observation: Last week's Economist included an article ("Executive Pay: Money for Nothing?", in the Britain section) that begins: Hard work builds character, and should be rewarded. But many Britons believe the link between graft and gain has broken down. The...

Still buried deep beneath teaching. For your amusement, here are the 'untranslatables of the day' posted on Twitter last month, as promised in my last post. Where there's only a link, it's an expression that I've already written about in some detail. Please click through to see (or take part in)...

Feeling a bit guilty that I haven't blogged in more than a week, but then I'm also feeling guilty that I haven't finished all the things that I need to finish.  So, here's a quick one, largely in other people's words, starting with an email from an American colleague in another department at Sussex. ...

Editor Mark recently wrote (to) me to suggest the different meanings of pound sign (or pound symbol) as a Twitter Difference of the Day.  In the US, pound sign/symbol is usually understood to refer to this thing: #.  It is also called the number sign in AmE, where it is used to signify the...

Thanks for your patience while I was not-really-blogging for the past month.  During that time, I've been working in five UK cities/towns and two other EU countries (Germany, Malta)--not to mention preparing for all those meetings and (BrE) marking/(AmE-also) grading my brains out end-of-year...

Now, you could say that the following doesn't fit here because it's not about language, but I'd say it could be covered under the realm of pragmatics or interactional sociolinguistics...and anyway, it's just too interesting to pass up.Via Boing Boing, quoting this source:A price comparison website,...

Better late than never, I hope (I have a fairly good excuse...), here are my picks for SbaCL Words of the Year. Thanks to all of you who have nominated words... US-to-UK Word of the Year In the category of Best AmE to BrE Import, I was fairly convinced by dearieme's nomination of subprime (though...

I don't know that I've ever mentioned here that I was raised in a funeral home. (Actually, that's easily checked, isn't it? And I have mentioned it before.) That little fact might go some way toward(s) explaining some of my personality quirks. (I like to think of them as endearing, but you may...