The INQUIRER guide to English English

EARLIER THIS YEAR we found ourselves in San Francisco with a German tech journalist, highly fluent in English, but whose clever sniffing apparatus had detected some important differences between American English and UK English.

What are the differences between the two, he asked?

We cannot hope to cover all of the differences between the two.

The Internet has bridged some of these differences so that no longer are America and the UK necessarily two countries separated by the same language, as Irishman George Bernard Shaw (GBS) once said.

Right now we're not going to extend this to Indian English, Australian English, Canadian English, Fiji English, New Zealand English, Zimbabwe English, nor to Pakistani English, to Scottish English, to Franglais or to other varieties including Marketing English - itself an intriguing area of study...

The whole question is thrown into relief by an email from a reader who queried our spelling of organisation. It, he said, should be spelled organization.

Even in the United Kingdom, there's no agreement on this one. The Times uses the z (zed here, zee in the USA), and has done for many many years. Other UK broadsheets prefer the "s" spelling for this and similar words.

Favourite, travelling, colour and a large number of other words are spelt differently in the two jurisdictions.

What, our German colleague wanted to ask us, were the major differences we could spot in downtown San Francisco?

First, the boot of a British car is the trunk of a US automobile and the hood of a US car is the bonnet of a UK automobile. A US tyre is a tire and a UK tire is a tyre.

The elevator is the lift and the apartment is the flat.

Gas is petrol here, while petrol is gas there. Gas here is used for ovens and for fires but it's a different gas from petrol which is a liquid although it vapo(u)ris(z)es easily in both spots.

Fags here are cigarettes there while fags there are not the same as faggots here - faggots here are a kind of food. Fags here are also kids at a public school here which is a private school there while a private school there is a public school here.

A film here is a movie there and is shown in a cinema, pronounced "sinema" these days here, although in living memory the Greek spelling was used and the thing was called a Kinema. How and when did it turn from a hard K into a soft S?

Spectacles here can often happen in the Kinema and are also worn on the nose so you can see what's happening better. They are often called glasses here but if you go into an English pub and ask for a glass of beer, expect to be poured half a pint, not a full one. It's quite a spectacle.

We've noticed in our worldwide travels that when the lights go off in a bar (pub), it means they want your very clean glasses pretty quickly.

A radio there used to be called a wireless here but now we often call wirelesses radios - and it should be noted that when they were called wirelesses here they had loads of wires, plenty of valves (vacuum tubes) and no transistors.

Soliciting here applies to whores while solicitors there are lawyers. Lawyers here are often solicitors but rarely whores in the sense of sexual soliciting. Or at least, we haven't come across a lawyer standing on pavements here, sidewalks there, who has solicited for sex - yet.

Pants are worn under your trousers/skirts here although pants there are worn over your undergarments. Except in Scotland, where skirts are called kilts and are worn by both men and women and for the male gender should not be worn under kilts. Do not say to a Scot he's wearing a skirt when he's wearing a kilt. Kilts in Yorkshire refer to womens' skirts.

A pink slip here is something that used to be worn under a Yorkshirewoman's kilt while the direct equivalent of losing your job here is called a P45, because it's green.

Arsenal here is the name of the Gunners football (soccer) team, so called because it's based near the site of the Royal Arsenal. Arse here is the same as ass there, while ass refers to a kind of quadruped in both lands. Arse never does, as far as we know.

Butt (ass/arse) here means a keg or cask full of a liquid. A flagon is rarely used in either territory these days. A bottom here is a bum but a bottom there is a bit of trouble in the stock market, which is a bit of a bummer, no doubt.

We call trash rubbish but in the US rubbish is called trash -- hence rubbish.bin and trash.can. We must also mention curb and kerb, the first being a bit on the edge of a sidewalk and the second being a bit on the edge of a British sidewalk, or pavement. Then there's motorways and freeways... but... ... I could care less there is I couldn't care less here.

Pronunciation
Patent is pronounced paytent here and patent there although even very well-educated solicitors that have been to public (private) schools here have started to adopt the US version.

Schedule here is pronounced as if it were shedload, while schedule there is pronounced as in skedule here. School is pronounced in the same way in both countries - that is, as if it had a k after the s.

Minute here and there are pronounced the same way except if it relates to something that's small in which case it's pronounced as if there was a "y" after the m - in both cases.

Charlatans here and there are pronounced as if the word was spelt sharlatan but character both there and here is pronounced as if it was a car, or an automobile.

Church here is pronounced differently depending on whether you're a Scot, in which case it's pronounced and spelt kirk.

Swearing
There's very little difference between US English and UK English although some of ours have fallen into desuetude to be replaced by some pretty ripe ones such as [that's enough US English/UK English comparisons, Ed.] µ

See Also
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