English: US vs. British

I always find it irritating that my computer wont let me use a British English dictionary. It always wants to use US English. Funny story, I was talking to a Guy from Texas on MSN and he asked me where I was from. I told him Australia to which he replied "where in the US is that?" I told him its not in the US and his response was " but you speak American"

Also I was watching balls of steel and the Guy had this spelling show that he ran in the US and he asks how to spell colour. The Guy spells it color and he failed him for it:p that show is funny as hell
 
James R said:
We don't have "faucets"; they're "taps".

The word "buoy", which Baywatch and Survivor teach us must be pronounced "BOO-EE", when all along we thought it was "BOY".

There are no such things as bumpers, fenders and indicators on a car. There are bumper bars, mud guards and blinkers. And cars don't run on gas; they run on petrol. I won't give you a ride in my car, but I might give you a lift. When we get to the city, we'll park in the car park, not the parking lot.

There are no cookies in Australia; we eat biscuits here. And there's no candy; we eat lollies. We also eat chips rather than fries (except at McDonald's, but that's your fault). And what Americans call potato chips, we do too, but the Brits call them crisps. We don't put ketchup on our fries; we put tomato sauce on our chips. And I won't even start on meat pies, pasties, pavola, sausage rolls, lamingtons...

At university in Australia, you start in 1st year, then 2nd and 3rd year. We don't have freshmen, sophomores, juniors or seniors. And university is not school. School is where you go up to the age where you can get into a university.

There is no trash in Australia, only rubbish or garbage. And no trash cans in Australia, only rubbish bins. We have letter boxes at our front gates, not mail boxes. Our houses are sited on blocks of land, not lots. We put our babies in nappies, not diapers.

People have arses, not asses. An ass is a donkey. As for women's bits, only women have a fanny, and it's at the front, not the back.

We barrack for a footy team, but don't usually root for it (which would involve having sex). And by "football" I either mean Aussie rules or rugby (depending on where I live in Australia), not that British round-ball soccer stuff or US gridiron. Ice hockey is virtually unheard of in Australia, so when we play hockey it's field hockey.

When we want to pick up some bread and milk, we go to a milk bar or corner shop, but not usually to a convenience store and never to a drug store. We don't even get our drugs from a drug store; we get them at a chemist.
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I need to catch a few more Australian shows. I've watched PM's questions and Kath and Kim (a few times, and not the horrible American version). But there are only so many foreign shows and movies we get here. They are almost always Canadian (which is pretty much indistinguishable) and British.

In the instances where we get a Canadian programme, the accent is almost exactly the same, but the police uniforms and occasional terms are off by just enough to make us think we're seeing a series from a bizarro universe. It's funny. I was watching a few Canadian home shows (like home makeovers, reconstruction, etc; like "Holmes on Holmes", "Income Property" or "Sarah's House") and the prices they quote for work is SOOOO astronomical that I kept thinking, "Where the fuck are they!!!".

Also, I watched the show "Flashpoint" (about a Canadian special police task force uses) with my parents when it first aired. In it--of course--they used the occasional Westminster Terminology that threw my parents for a loop. It was amusing watching their bewilderment (they'd never watch a foreign programme of their own volition (tricked'em I did!!!). I caught on pretty quick (I'm the snooty, worldly fellow that in other nation's is appreciated, but in the US is looked upon with bewilderment, like: "Why would you ever want to know anything about what goes on outside the US, much less go there!!!?). I had to explain the adjusted terminology to them.

And, of course, there's "Law & Order|UK" which is just different enough but similar enough to be delightful.

~String
 
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Asguard said:
I always find it irritating that my computer wont let me use a British English dictionary. It always wants to use US English. Funny story, I was talking to a Guy from Texas on MSN and he asked me where I was from. I told him Australia to which he replied "where in the US is that?" I told him its not in the US and his response was " but you speak American"
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Lol! Sounds about right.
 
Funny story, I was talking to a Guy from Texas on MSN and he asked me where I was from. I told him Australia to which he replied "where in the US is that?"
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On behalf of the thinking part of Texas, I offer my apologies. It's a very small part, but I nonetheless offer it.
:rolleyes:
 
It wasn't the lack of awearness of places outside the US, that's just sad. The ammusing thing is the fact that he didn't even know what language HE spoke. :p
 
Whay shure 'E deid, 'E spoke 'Murkin! Yeah!

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I don't imagine the show "King of the hill" ever caught on outside of the US, but the few times I watched it, I was like, "Yeah, I know these people."

Boomauer and Dribble especially, but every character on the show.
 
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Asguard said:
I always find it irritating that my computer wont let me use a British English dictionary. It always wants to use US English. Funny story, I was talking to a Guy from Texas on MSN and he asked me where I was from. I told him Australia to which he replied "where in the US is that?" I told him its not in the US and his response was " but you speak American"

Also I was watching balls of steel and the Guy had this spelling show that he ran in the US and he asks how to spell colour. The Guy spells it color and he failed him for it:p that show is funny as hell
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Spell the way you want. You want to put that extra u in there, for whatever reason, then by all means do so.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
The rest of the differences usually reflect actual word choices, ... wrench instead of ... spanner.
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We do use the term 'wrench' but sparingly, and I don't think it's an Americanisation. Generally, smaller tools with fixed apertures would be 'spanners':

spanner.jpg


but larger, adjustables would be termed 'wrenches', although there's the 'Hoover' effect at play here, and a generic term for these in the UK is also a 'Stillson':

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Then to confuse matters, one of these, which could be up to 12" long ish:

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Would be called an 'adjustable spanner'.
 
phlogistician said:
We do use the term 'wrench' but sparingly, and I don't think it's an Americanisation. Generally, smaller tools with fixed apertures would be 'spanners':

spanner.jpg


but larger, adjustables would be termed 'wrenches', although there's the 'Hoover' effect at play here, and a generic term for these in the UK is also a 'Stillson':

41PlzOW4rSL._SL500_AA300_.jpg


Then to confuse matters, one of these, which could be up to 12" long ish:

41s5XE2sX7L._SL500_AA300_.jpg


Would be called an 'adjustable spanner'.
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1- open end
2- pipe wrench\monkey wrench
3- adjustagble wrench

When you force twist something you wrench it.
 
Do they have "cheater bars?" in Britain?
Basically, you stick a long pipe on the end of your ratchet or wrench to get leverage...
 
superstring01 said:
trolley shopping cart [what southerners annoyingly call a “buggy”]
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As a northerner, I didn’t know about southern “buggy”. :bugeye: However, I've heard that instead of soda, some Americans drink pop, sodapop, tonic, soft drink and even a coke (regardless of the brand).

Then there’s the double-confusing US undershirt = UK vest but also US vest = UK waistcoat (pronounced as weskit).

Is there still the US water heater = UK geyser difference?

Also US attic = UK garret, and also US rotary = UK roundabout, but as wild and crazy as Americans are, we would never make something like the Swindon Magic Roundabout.

In the UK, they go to hospital, but in the US, we go to the hospital, although we do go to school.

When at school, we study physics, but in the UK, they read physics. We might have spelled a word wrong, but they spelt it wrong.

Then there's the puzzling UK whilst, where a readily available UK while seems to exist. When I don't have a clue, they haven't a clue.

Dywyddyr said:
If you read wartime memoirs this caused much confusion to US aircrew stationed in the UK when some old guy in the pub would nod at all the young women in the pub and explain to the Americans that he knew those women because he regularly knocked them up...
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:D​
I read that, during WW2, American men dating British women might quickly end up in the sack with both claiming the other was “fast”. Turns out that Americans thought nothing of kissing, whereas the British considered kissing as “very serious”. So the men unreservedly kissed the women, and the women thought they were practically married, so into the sack they might go!

BTW, it seems typical to me that US World War Two = UK Second World War

And their horses run "the wrong way" around their racetracks. Go figure!
 
Cifo said:
Is there still the US water heater = UK geyser difference?
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New one to me. A geyser is a natural high-pressure "spring".

Also US attic = UK garret
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Hmm, an attic is the space at the top of the house where you stuff all the things you'll find a use for one day. A garret is more of an opened-out (and lit) attic for an artist to work/ live in.

When at school, we study physics, but in the UK, they read physics.
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Not quite. We study (or learn) physics at school but read it at university.

And their horses run "the wrong way" around their racetracks. Go figure!
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What a silly idea! Our horses run forwards, the same as anywhere else.
 
Asguard said:
It wasn't the lack of awearness of places outside the US, that's just sad. The ammusing thing is the fact that he didn't even know what language HE spoke. :p
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I grudginly admit that a lot of Americans I know call their language "American".

Though, I will admit, this isn't totally unexpected. Long story short, at the current moment, the US is at the top of the global food chain. There's just no reason for those of lower intelligence and/or lower information awareness to have an awareness of what's going on in the world. This, coupled with the fact that the US is just pretty goddamned huge, and our two neighbors are huge (one of which is a spring break destination and the other speaks "American" almost like the rest of us), means that most people's "world" is sadly very small.

~String
 
Both of you are so weird even your water goes round the wrong way:p and while we are on that it snows in July and Christmas should be around 30 C:p BTW its autumn, not "fall"

Oh and I pity scientists in the US, the rest of us use the metric system in general society as well as in science where as the US scientist has to constantly convert everything from one to the other. The metric system is designed to be simple and easy to change from one unit to another. For instance 10 cm x 10 cm x 10cm =1 L which if water = 1 kg which freezes at 0C and boils at 100. Easy
 
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