Separated by a Common Language

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...

One of the things I've found most useful during lockdown is to have routines that distinguish the days. The routines have become most distinct on weekends: Saturday is Cleaning Day and No-Laptop Day; Sunday is Blogging Day. After the last topical blog post, I planned to do another topical one this...

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...

Regular reader JHM sent me a link to this article from a Washington Monthly blog, in which an American complains about British (and European, more generally) road signs: And as long as I'm venting a bit here, what is it with Europeans and compass points? Their road signs tend to be gloriously well...

For my birthday in October, Better Half promised me a weekend away before the birth of Grover. But since I (a) spent the first half of my third trimester in (the) hospital and (b) was cheated out of the second half entirely, that didn't happen. So this week he took Grover and me for a plush few days...

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...

In our e-conversation about upping sticks, Nancy F mentioned finding a book called How to Move House and Stay Sane, noting the Britishness of the phrase move house. Americans simply move (and the British can too). So: AmE or BrE: We're moving this weekend. [intransitive] BrE: We're moving house...

They're doing some fixing-up on campus, and this week I was faced with the following in my path: (In case you can't read the writing on your screen, the left(-)hand sign says "Please go around" and the right(-)hand one says "Please go round".) I liked this bit of linguistic indecision. Adverbial...

After the recent discussion of signs you wouldn't see in America, Amy in San Francisco e-mailed to say: I recently obtained a few stick-on signs when last in the UK that I prize (for our hazard-ridden basement): "Mind the step" and "Mind your head." It occasioned some talk around here---the very...

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,...

An old American friend, Lord Affectation (I've got other less flattering names for him too), has moved to Kent and informed me that "The British call bicycles push irons!" I said, "Your English friends are pushing your leg." Most English people call them bicycles, just like the rest of the English-speaking...