The Wednesday Word Wise Roundup

• I’ve tried several times over the years to write about the difference between American English and British English but have never been able to do it in a way I found useful to readers. I’m not British, don’t live there, don’t travel to England often, and don’t have too many friends from there who live here (ok, I only have one friend who’s from London who lives here, and by “here" I mean New York, which isn’t where I live day to day). Yes, I have a lot of colleagues in London but not regular contact with them. My only regular contact with British English comes from the telly (haha) via Hyacinth Bucket ("I cannot abide people who run around making a meal out of their little social triumphs"). So I was pleased to find separated by a common language, "observations on British and American English written by an American linguist in the UK." I especially like that the tags on her most recent post were “humo(u), sex, spelling.”

• Where I work we have a strong mentor program and I’m fortunate that a younger colleague asked me to be her mentor. I suppose she’s my "mentee," though that word – mentee – sounds like it exists because there wasn’t a better alternative. Dictionary Evangelist agrees and has some interesting things to say about it and where words come from more generally.

Comments

[Stuart Mudie]

The "(haha)" makes me wonder if it might not be intentional, but for the sake of pedantry I'd like to point out that we actually call it a "telly" rather than a "tellie".

[Dan Santow]

Stuart, I'm not clever enough to misspell "telly" on purpose. Thank you for pointing it out; I'm going to correct it in the post. (If nothing else the error supports my claim that I know little about British English.)

[JP]

This is an endlessly intriguing topic to me. Here are some of the more interesting differences between common American and British English words that I’ve documented through travel and language study:

American Word - British Word
cookie (small) - biscuit
dessert - pudding
flashlight - torch
gelatin - jelly
period (punctuation) - full stop
pharmacist - chemist
program, plan – scheme
résumé - CV (curriculum vitae)
tennis shoes - trainers
zee (pronunciation of the letter z) - zed

Another great site to consult to distinguish between American and British words is http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/dictionary/dictionary.php .

[Rebecca Laffar-Smith]

According to dictionary.com "mentee" is a word but I've always prefered "protege". For some reason the soft lilt of a accented French word is so much more delightful to the ear than a mangled English one. *chuckles*

When it comes to British vs. American English there are many changes. I'm in Australia and it's so much fun to learn the American words. Australian English is different again (slightly) especially when spoken.

realise -> realize
humour -> humor
colour -> color
boot -> trunk
jam -> jelly

Of course, when I'm trying to think of a whole list I get a mind blank. lol There are so many. :-)