Separated by a Common Language

It's been too long since I've posted here. And it will be a bit longer still. I'm currently in the US doing a tour of dictionary archives as part of my research for some on-going projects. Since I have limited time here, I'm working in the evenings to prep for the days in the archives. But I did...

I suffer. I do. At this point, the pollen people tell me it's alder trees. But it's always something. Alder catkins, via Wikipedia I complained about this on Facebook last night with the status "Hay fever? Already?" and this led a former (British) student, now working in New York to ask: They...

Being a parent has opened my eyes to differences I probably wouldn't have otherwise noticed. Not so much because of interactions with my English child, but because of the situations in which I see English parents. I have already noted the well done/good job divide, which was very apparent at preschool...

Did you know that lengthy is not only an Americanism, but a much-protested one? Early on in its life, lots of American patriots used the word; John Adams seems to have coined it, and Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and (though English) Thomas Paine all used it. But here's what they thought of...

In the last post, I looked at of instead of have after modal verbs--as in should of gone and might of known--in contrast to the more standard spelling of the contraction 've: should've gone, might've known.  As we saw there, the of spelling was more prevalent in British online writing than...

A few years ago, The Telegraph ran an article about Americanisms on the BBC—or rather, an article about complaints about Americanisms on the BBC: Nick Seaton, Campaign for Real Education, said: “It is not a surprise that a few expressions have crept in but the BBC should be setting an example...

The most obvious difference in American and British theat{er/re} is the spelling, but on top of that there are a number of meaning differences. And then the meanings interfere with the spellings again. Much fun, but this is why I can't write short blog posts. Here we go... the spelling Theater...

One of my new year's resolutions is to read all the unread newspapers in the house before buying another. It is a Very Big Task. I started before Christmas and thought I'd have it done before New Year's Day, but I still have a substantial pile. We only buy the Saturday Guardian, but it has lots of...

And now...the US-to-UK Word of the Year! Nominated by Rosemary, and supported by Simon K and my spouse, I'm sure this is going to be met with a chorus of "Bah, humbug! I've never heard that" (as was said in the nominations discussion). But these things happen. We are not each the cent{er/re} of the...

It seemed a relatively quiet year for transatlantic words (after last year's two-words-per-country madness). As ever I'm very grateful to readers who make nominations for the title--especially those in the US who have a better eye on what's going on there than I do these days.  And so for UK-to-US...

It's that time of year again. Dictionary publishers are already starting to announce their words of 2015, ignoring anything interesting that might happen in November and December. Poor November and December. The twist on Words of the Year on this blog is that I choose the most 'of the year' borrowings...

One thing that was particularly rewarding about Untranslatable October this year was that fans started discussing my tweeted offerings in the comments of the blog post that introduced the month.  They've made it clear that at least one of the 'untranslatables' is fairly translatable. Here they...

I've been meaning to blog about the British greeting All right?* or You all right? in part because I wanted to get feedback on whether I'm responding correctly, since it is something that flummoxes Americans (and New Zealanders too, it seems). Then this happened in my Intercultural Communication class...