Separated by a Common Language

This entry is mostly an excuse to post a picture of the pretty (and, in person, pretty imposing) Christmas tree at Rockefeller Centre, which Better Half and I visited a week ago. This was the first time I'd been to New York City during the (AmE-preferred) holiday/(BrE-preferred) festive season, and...

Happy holidays is an American seasonal greeting--one that I find very useful, because (1) I don't like to say (AmE-preferred) Merry Christmas or (BrE) Happy Christmas to people unless I know for sure that they celebrate Christmas, and (2) it saves having to say Happy New Year as well. To Christmas-celebrating...

In the comments for my last entry, Paul Danon wondered about the names of school years in AmE and how they compare to those in England. The Brackley Baptist Church in Northamptonshire has on its website (for some reason!) the following table summari{s/z}ing these differences. Update: It's important...

Americans have a well-established distaste for taxation without representation. This is part of the reason why, this past Wednesday, I became a British citizen (while retaining my American citizenship as well). Since 2004, the naturali{s/z}ation process has involved a test on "Life in the UK" (which...

Last time, I mentioned a (BrE) fancy dress/(AmE) costume party at which everyone was to come as a metaphor they'd been accused of being. I learned that among my friends are three dark horses, one social butterfly, a piranha with manners and an 40-year-old trapped in the body of an 8-year-old (that...

Ben Zimmer of The Language Log forwarded the following to me some time ago. It originally appeared in the Financial Times (UK), but was reprinted in the Los Angeles Times: George Bernard Shaw suggested mischievously that "England and America are two countries divided by a common language." Here...

There I go, confusing the students again. Earlier today, I left a message on a course website, instructing students to bring to the next session any questions they have about (among other things) 'essay writing/revision'. This set off a panic in some that there might be an exam that they hadn't...

One of my more entrepreneurial students is trying to earn a little cash by (BrE, informal) flogging* a word on eBay. Here's a bit of her sales pitch: The perfect gift for wordsmiths, linguists and bookworms this Christmas. Buy your loved one their very OWN word! This auction is for something really...

The American Dialect Society will soon be voting on its Word of the Year for 2006. The WotY is a word that best captures the Zeitgeist of that year. (They/we [when I'm there] also vote for words in other categories, for example 'most likely to succeed', 'most unnecessary', etc.) The WotY is often...

The theme today is "issues my Italian colleague, La Lettrice, has raised in the past (BrE) fortnight / (AmE) two weeks". While at first glance these are very different topics, they have a nice symmetry about them. Each case involves English doing something strange with an item that comes from a Romance...