Separated by a Common Language

(December 2010 updates in red)

Once upon a time, Grant Barrett forwarded to me the following item from issue 343 (29 March 2007) of Popbitch:

Confessions of an 80s pop fan
ishouldhaveknownbetter writes:
"I met Simon Le Bon at a house party. Everyone was playing it really cool so when he came to say goodbye I just exchanged air kisses, but then as he turned away for some reason I blurted out, 'Simon, I just want you to know that when I was younger I had a whole wall covered in posters of you at jaunty angles'. He went quiet. So I continued, 'And once I had a dream that you and Roger Taylor came to call for me on horses and then we all went out and played on the climbing frames.'
He left the party immediately."

Grant thought a girl [*ahem*] of my generation would appreciate the Duran Duran reference (I never actually bought any of their albums, but did bother to have an opinion on which was the [orig. AmE] dreamiest). He also pointed out the non-Americanness of climbing frame, which he ably figured out is equivalent to (orig. AmE) monkey bars and/or (orig. AmE) jungle gym. Monkey bars is used in the UK now too, and in both dialects it can refer specifically to a contraption like the one below, from US company ChildLife, with a ladder-like structure several feet above the ground.


But in both dialects monkey bars is also used more loosely sometimes to refer to any kind of structure built for children to climb on--i.e. a climbing frame/jungle gym.

Most of the other amusements on a playground have the same names in both dialects, although swing set, to refer to the apparatus involving swings and the frame that they're suspended from, seems to be more popular AmE. Better Half says he'd just call the whole apparatus swings [although the OED does not mark swing set as AmE--see comments]. See-saws are see-saws, but teeter-totter is a dialectal AmE word for the same thing. (I grew up with both terms.)

And those round things that one kid pushes (a)round and (a)round while the kids on it get sick--well, as a child in New York State we called these things merry-go-rounds or roundabouts, but the American Heritage tells me that roundabout in this meaning is 'chiefly' BrE. As a child, I preferred roundabout, because I liked to reserve merry-go-round for the kind of powered thing with horses, also known as a carousel. (Let's ignore the traffic-related meaning of roundabout. That deserves its own post.) Oxford dictionaries like to claim that carousel is spelt carrousel in AmE ('frequently' in OED2, but simply presented as the AmE spelling in my [admittedly out-of-date] Concise). I don't recall seeing it spelt that way anywhere but in an Oxford Dictionary--and, now that I've looked, in the American Heritage, which lists it as an alternative spelling, but not the predominant spelling. The OED also says that attributive use (i.e. placed in front of another noun, to modify it) of carousel, as in carousel music, is chiefly AmE. Nevertheless, their most recent (2007) addition to the carousel entry in the OED On-line is BrE carousel fraud (a kind of scam to reclaim [BrE] VAT/[AmE] sales tax)--indicating that BrE speakers use it attributively too.

Going through my mental playground inventory, the only other dialectal difference that I can think of is AmE sandbox versus BrE sand-pit. But I suppose that this is as good a place as any to mention BrE bouncy castle versus (in my day) AmE moonwalk (or today) bounce house, even though they're generally not found on playgrounds everyday. The naming difference reflects the different ways in which these things are decorated and marketed. The bouncy castle is a big inflated thing that is usually shaped like a castle. Moonwalks tend to have space themes. I've found inflatable castle as an AmE term for the castle shaped ones as well. Apparently, there's some controversy about whether these things were invented first in the UK or the US.

Other business:

• This is it! I've finally got to the end of the answerable queries from March! Now I'm only five months behind!
• As for tomorrow's appearance on Ant & Dec, it might be a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of affair. We spent at least an hour together taping yesterday (charming young men!), but I have no idea what they'll edit it down to. But here's the evidence that we have breathed the same air:

Ant, Lynne, fellow Scrabbler Kat, and Dec (thanks to Stewart for the photo!)

Still making my way through the backlog of queries I've received, and still in March. It must be said that while I'm trying to get through the backlog in chronological order, some luckier souls have their queries answered more immediately. It just depends on what else is going on at the time. Anyhoo (that's an AmE and extremely colloquial, allegedly humorous version of anyhow), the_sybil wrote back then to say:

Had you ever considered writing about the way in which the spelling of words with vowel groups originating from Latin dipthongs (oesophagus/esophagus, oestrogen/estrogen) have been simplified in AmE usage? Don't know whether there's anything of interest to say about them or not.

I got thinking about it because the other day I came across the spelling "Edipal" in an online text about psychology - and being a BrE speaker rather than an AmE speaker, I had to do some googling to be certain it was an error rather than an acceptable alternative spelling.

Let's start with some history. As Oedipal hints, most of these can be traced back to Greek, then to Latin, then to English. Greek oi became Latin œ (with a ligature between the letters) became, more commonly, oe in contemporary (post-typewriter) English. In Latin and English, oe and ae are pronounced as a single sound (which sound is another matter, and can vary from case to case), rather than as two vowel syllables or as diphthongs, i.e. a combined vowel sound. (Still, because they're written as two vowels, many people refer to them as diphthongs--but they should be calling them digraphs instead.) The simplification of ae and oe to e is present in Noah Webster's dictionaries (late 18th/early 19th c.), but I'm not sure whether the shift (like many others) originated with him or not, as it's not mentioned in any of his spelling reform documents that I've found.

It's tempting to believe the kind of advice given below from Ask Oxford's Better Writing guide (as well as other sources on BrE/AmE differences), that:

British English words that are spelled with the double vowels ae or oe (e.g. archaeology, manoeuvre) are just spelled with an e in American English (archeology, maneuver).

But as the_sybil has discovered, there are cases in which ae and oe are not reduced to e in AmE, including:

• many names and derivatives of them, whether from Greek/Latin or not (Disraeli, Michael, Caedmon, Aelfric, Caesar/Caesarean, Oedipus/Oedipal)
• a few ae words that are not from Greek/Latin (at least not directly) and in which ae is usually pronounced as a diphthong (maelstrom, maestro)
• some recent-ish borrowings from French and other languages with oe: oeuvre, hors d'oeuvres, trompe l'oeil
• the Latin feminine, plural suffix -ae, as in (predominantly AmE) alumnae, lacunae, ulnae, etc.
• words with aer(o)- as a prefix or root: aerial, aerosol, aerodrome (but, of course, aeroplane is almost always airplane in AmE).
• some Scottish English words, and words from Gaelic: Gaelic, nae, brae, etc.
• (Probably not worth mentioning, but words that end in oe like toe and shoe are never reduced to e in AmE, since the vowel sound here is /o/ or /u/or similar. And, of course, the oe that straddles a morpheme boundary in 3rd person verbs and plurals like goes and potatoes are not reduced to e.)

Edward M Carney in A survey of English spelling estimates that the BrE ae is e in AmE in 89% of words and 63% of names. (I was a bit puzzled that the name claim was so high, as I have a hard time thinking of names that are spelt differently in the two dialects. The only one I can come up with is Rachel, which I'd never seen spelt Rachael until I moved to the UK--but now I notice that an American cooking celebrity has that name.)

Still, there are some Greek/Latin ae/oe words that I learned to spell with the ae/oe back in America, and which are often spelt like that, regardless of the 'rule'. For example, aesthetics is taught in most American university philosophy departments, not esthetics. In fact, aesthetic gets 28.9 million Google hits, while esthetic gets only 3.5 million. (Compare a more reliable AmE/BrE distinction favor/favour in which the AmE form gets 243 million hits and the BrE form only 39.3 million.) Still, in lists of spelling differences, esthetic is frequently cited as the AmE equivalent of BrE aesthetic, with no further qualification. In spite of this AmE strongly prefers anesthetic over (BrE) anaesthetic.This can result in some difficulties in finding information in the Information Age. Last week, I tried to look up haemolysis in the index of the British-i{s/z}ed edition of an originally American book. It wasn't there, and I just couldn't believe it. Only later did I accidentally stumble upon it, and all of the other haemo- words, between HELLP and hepatitis. Once they changed the spelling from hemolysis, they forgot to re-alphabeti{s/z}e that bit of the index, apparently. (They did manage for foetal, though, which comes between fluid and folic acid.) Another problem occurs when I suggest that my students use encyclop(a)edias of linguistics as sources of background material and ideas for their research projects. They come back to me and say that our library is (BrE) crap and no such books are there. I point out that there are, if you remember to use both spellings of encyclop(a)edia as your key words in the electronic catalog(ue) search.

The divide between BrE and AmE spelling may be narrowing, according to some sources:

Even in British English there is a slow trend toward simplification: For example, the form encyclopedia is now much more common than encyclopaedia. (from English Toolbox)

foetus vs fetus: In American English, foetus is usually not used. In British English usage is divided. In academic literature, fetus is preferred. (Wikipedia Manual of Style)

The OED notes that (usually AmE) eon is preferred over (usually BrE) aeon in Geology. So, there seems to be a tendency toward regulari{s/z}ation in international academic fields.

Most AmE/BrE spelling differences reflect no particular differences in pronunciation, and most of the ae/oe cases are the same, but some have come to be pronounced differently. (O)estrogen is one such case. In AmE, the first syllable in estrogen rhymes with west. In BrE, the first syllable of oestrogen typically sounds like east. However, many BrE speakers pronounce (o)esophagus with a short vowel, like the Americans do. [This last claim edited since original post.] Another case is p(a)edophile. In BrE, the first syllable is usually pronounced like peed, and in AmE it more usually (though not exclusively) ped. But both dialects pronounce p(a)ediatrician with a 'peed', regardless of the different spelling.




P.S. Since writing this post, I've written a more in-depth one about the problematic f(o)etus.
 
Other business

• I don't know if cross-Atlantic spelling differences will come up, but I'm going up to London this week to appear on Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway. It seems they'll be doing a spelling challenge and want to be trained by some serious Scrabble players. Should be a (BrE colloq/jovial) larf.

*This site spells it pyjamas, most other music-lyric sites spell it pajamas. I don't know how Chris Difford spelled it, but it was probably with the y.

So, for those of you who didn't listen to Squeeze, I've now done flannel/washcloth. Now go and download Eastside Story to complete your education.

(Brixton I knew about from the Clash--but I've got(ten) to know it better because BH used to live there. Not as scary as the song.)

Better Half has found himself surrounded by out-laws (not quite in-laws) who like to get together and play games. My out-laws (BH's family) think this is hilarious, because of BH's reputation as a games-hater, which stems from several throwing-over-the-board-in-disgust incidents from when he was a child. When I met him, he was willing to play Connect Four with his godchildren, but only because he could still obliterate them. I count it as great progress that he now actually volunteers to play Yahtzee and Cribbage and will tolerate a few more games. (God, I've been good for him.) But games still remain a source of transatlantic miscommunication in the family since they, as we've seen already, frequently have different names in different places. The ones I'll cover in this series don't require a lot of discussion, hence my putting them all together like this.

Most of you will know that (BrE) draughts is (AmE) checkers. Or checkers is draughts -- I can't figure out whether I think the earlier term should go first or last in that equation, I can see the connotations going either way. You may also know that Americans spell draught as draft, reflecting the fact that the 'gh' is pronounced 'f', but while I have seen the board game sold as Checkers/Draughts in the US, I've never seen the BrE name of the game translated into AmE spelling. (I'm not going to get into the pronunciation of the vowel...suffice it to say that it too is different in different places.) Where do these names come from? It's a tricky question, since the OED, amazingly enough, includes neither draughts nor checkers. (No, what's amazing enough is my poor dictionary search skills in this instance--see the comments.) The Online Etymology Dictionary tells us that draughts is related to dragon and goes back to about 1400. Checkers, alluding to the appearance of the board, arose in America in the 18th century. That "OED" (shall I call it OnEtyD?) also notes that "British prefers [the spelling] chequer, but the U.S. form is more authentic." Another case (cf. -ise) of British spelling being influenced by French. So, (AmE) Chinese checkers is known (though not very widely, it seems) in BrE as Chinese chequers. (Chinese draughts seems much less common, and seems mostly to be used by non-native speakers).

BrE Ludo (left, from Wikipedia), from the Latin for 'I play', is the game that Americans call Parcheesi (right, from Robby Findler's software construction course), though as you can see their boards are slightly different. It derives from an Indian game, and the AmE name is based on the Hindi name--which has been spelled in many ways in English, with pachisi sometimes regarded as 'most authenthic'. Parcheesi is the most familiar spelling in the US, as that's how the game was marketed by Selchow & Righter, 'the house that Parcheesi built'.


Once you know about Ludo, it makes more sense that the game that is called Clue in AmE is called Cluedo in BrE. Cluedo came first, as it was invented, A.E. Pratt of Birmingham, in the 1940s (though he had originally called it Murder). Since the pun wouldn't be appreciated in the US, it was marketed there as Clue. The game is the same, except for the names of some of the characters, weapons and rooms. There are a few linguistic differences in the game:

• Miss Scarlett (UK) v Miss Scarlet (US)
• Rev Green (UK) v Mr. Green (US)
• Mrs(.) White has recently been replaced in US by Dr. Orchid
• According to Wikipedia, the dagger is called the knife in some US editions (it was dagger in mine growing up, so I don't know...)
• The lead pipe was originally called lead piping in BrE

As far as I know, the names of all the rooms are the same, but it's worth noting that conservatory is often pronounced differently in the two. You can hear the difference here. Boards even within countries seem to vary in whether they consider the conservatory to be a glass-enclosed room full of plants or a music room. The original board just had blank areas label(l)ed by room names, but more recent ones illustrate them. I've seen this one on both Clue and Cluedo boards:


The Hollywood film based on the game, incidentally, was called Clue internationally and used the American character names.

I've got other board games to cover under part 2—children's games. There may be a part 3 on card games, if I can find more to mention. Email me if you have any suggestions.

[This post was updated 23 March 2020 with the details of US/UK Clue(do) differences, replacing a no-longer-working link on the topic.]

You can buy this

I've just come from Scrabble club, where I often have to suffer the indignity of people putting down completely silly misspellings of words and saying "Maybe the Americans spell it like that." (The Association of British Scrabble Players started playing to the international Scrabble dictionary, called SOWPODS in American Scrabble circles, in 2001. The American National Scrabble Association has taken an isolationist position, and now only North America doesn't play the combined dictionary.) I take great joy in telling the people who guess silly "American" words that the American spelling system is more regular than the British. Unfortunately, no one pays attention to me when I do so. So, I'll subject this audience to my rant, since I can't know for sure if you're ignoring me or not, and can pretend that you're all fascinated by my opinions on spelling-rule complexity.

The American rule is: if the stress is on the syllable that attaches to the suffix, then you double any final consonant that follows a short (lax) vowel. But if the stress is elsewhere, you don't double the final consonant.

So:
comMIT --> committing (not *commiting)
reFER --> referred (not *refered)
BUS --> bussed (not *bused)

but:
EDit --> editing (not *editting)
LAbel --> labeling (preferred over labelling)
aBANdon --> abandoning (not *abandonning)
FOcus --> focused (preferred over focussed)
SEver --> severed (not *severred)


British English follows the same rule, EXCEPT when it comes to words ending in L, which are doubled after short vowels regardless of the stress. So, for no particular reason labelling, travelling and gambolling have one more L in the preferred BrE spelling than in the preferred AmE spelling. Notably the 1990 Concise Oxford Dictionary (COD) doesn't even mention the possibility of labeled, labeling and labeler. The American Heritage Dictionary lists the double-L versions after the single-L ones.

For some reason, focus is also an exception. While the COD and Microsoft's UK English spellchecker prefer focuses over focusses, I have been "corrected" for using only one s.

Ones that really strike my American eye as wrong are BrE dialling and fuelling. Since the l is preceded by a 'long' vowel (the diphthongs /aj/ and /ju/) in my pronunciation), they shouldn't have doubled consonants, just as one doesn't double the L in tailing or healing. They seem to come under the 'doubling' rule because dial and fuel are perceived as having two syllables each, with the latter one being unstressed--i.e. di-al and fu-el. The COD presents the BrE pronunciation as /dai(ə)l/ and /'fju:əl/--so definitely two syllables in fuel but not necessarily in dial. I'm not convinced that the second syllable in fuel is regularly pronounced. Better Half pronounces fuel with one syllable and dial with close to two.

I'm not a big one for spelling reform, so I don't mind that the two spelling systems differ. Just don't insinuate that American spelling makes less sense than British!