Something I never realised, despite a lifetime of being British, is that while Americans say potato, apparently we say Portarto.
Only Suvverners...my son was mocked when he first moved down South for not mowing the grarrrsss, and for not having a barth when he was dirty...now he gets mocked FOR saying it when he comes home!¬
Cheers for the edits. A few thoughts: 11) I have never seen this! Where do you shop? I had never even heard of the word aubergine until a British bloke moved in to my sharehouse last year and we had a great big discussion about UK/AUS lingo. 12) I think it's fair to say that much of the world has been, and continues to be, very Americanised in its language (and many other things) through the over-saturation of American media in non-US countries. I would argue that the 'true' Aussie term is rubbish, and it is the Americanisation of our culture that leads to the use of words like 'garbage' and 'trash'. 15) See point above. Hood is definitely an American term that Aussies are absorbing just like we are slowly absorbing much of American language and culture tics. Bonnet is technically British in origin, and being a Commonwealth country, we naturally have used this term for much longer than the now widely-accepted term 'hood'. 16) This is true. I've heard bum and 'the homeless' a lot, too, now that you mention it. 25) Ah yes. The movies! I didn't even think that one through. I think I was going with 'technicalities', but our day-to-day speech rarely reflects technicalities, I suppose! 26) Ditto my comment for #11. I've only ever known it to be eggplant, here in Aus. You must have had a more cultured upbringing than me. 31) good point with calling it 'fuel'. 32) Really? I hear it called petrol station fairly regularly. Not as regularly as servo, though. Servo definitely is the go-to term.
It's going to get too complicated if we go into all the nuances of these words. I need somebody who will manage the Aus column, someone who will manage the US column, and someone who will manage the Canada column. Firstly because it's a lot of updating for one person, and secondly because someone will need to be the arbiter of which words best reflect the common usage in their country. Volunteers please! @BayView do you want to do Canada, since you already have access? @ChaseTheSun do you want to do Aus?
Hmmm... so far I haven't seen that much action in the Canada column, so... I accept. Unless it gets busy, in which case I quit. Ah. If only I had this freedom in other areas of my life...
I'd argue flip-flops are thongs in the US too, but the 'insert comment' feature doesn't work. At least not for me.
I've never heard them called thongs, though I suppose it could be regional. The only thong I've heard of is a type of underwear.
The term thong for flip-flop is going the way of the Dodo in the US. My dad would say that. I suspect it's also regional.
I think you'll find cowboys massacred the early Dodos of mainland America. Yet, you suggest pockets may exist in the regions?
11) IGA mostly. But I see it most frequently at the farmers market and victoria market in melbourne when i am there. 26) see above. In regards to the language. I find it interesting how must a language will change over the course of years. In two hundred years time what they call english might not even be understandable by us or very-very strange. (Middle english or Old english anyone?)
Quite so, this is why videos like this one are interesting: The big thing that has happened in the last few hundred years is increasing standardisation of language. Sure, new words are getting invented and changing meaning all the time, but we can still all broadly be understood by one another (apart from teenagers. Does anyone understand teenagers?). The standardisation of written English that came with the invention of the printing press (and lead directly to some of English's more peculiar spellings - Flemish typesetters spelling English words with Dutch sounds!), and with the advent of television and radio, the rapid and drastic weakening of local accents and dialects as well. In a few hundred years' time, I'd expect English to have shifted much less drastically than the last few hundred years, since it seems to have slowed down a great deal in general. Writing from the 17th century is still perfectly understandable to us (though some of the words feel a little old-fashioned) - but the shift in language between the 14th century and 17th centuries is much more noticeable than between the 17th and 21st. Since pretty much everyone now has instant access to books, movies, sound recordings, etc. from the last hundred years, the basics of pronunciation and so on are unlikely to change too much (assuming we're still speaking English at all, naturally). What I would expect to see is that increasing homogenisation; regional accents and dialects disappearing completely. And new words which we don't currently have or need a word for. Remember back before we knew what an "app" was, and a "phone" was a speaking device attached to a cord in the hallway, rather than an elaborate pocket computer? [Edit on this point: remember reading old books, where "tele-vision" was hyphenated and " 'phone" got apostrophed like the abbreviation it is?]
I'm watching Mary Berry's new show, and noticed: US: mashed potatoes UK: mashed potato As in "Cover the shepherd pie with mashed potato."
Just a minor thing, but in Ireland, ketchup is often referred to as 'red sauce'. Also @Tenderiser I've never used 'petrol garage' myself, depending on the context it's always been 'petrol station' or 'services' (when denoting the stops along the motorways).
I can only speak as a Canadaian vs. The States, but serviette is very common here, where I find it exceedingly rare in the states. (If anyone is unfamiliar with a serviette it's a napkin)
Of course we are correct in the UK, since potato becomes a collective noun when there are several potatoes mashed together.
Unless, of course, they only used one potato....... *whistle* But on a more serious note. I found a few more differences. (Australian english to US) Australian -> US Beetle - bug duster - Chalkboard eraser Booking - Reservation CBD - ??? Not sure what the american equivalent of this is, though i heard it's not used (CBD that is). Can anybody elaborate? Doona - Duvet Esky - Cooler (box where you fill with ice and then put beer in to keep cool) Also a few small things I noticed: Aeroplane - Airplane Sandpit - Sandbox Truckies - Trucker
Mortician vs undertaker I remember when I first came across the word "mortician" and used it in conversation as a teenager, my English friends immediately "corrected" my English, saying "mortician" isn't a word. Except I knew it was, because I'd read it in a novel and I'd even looked it up in a dictionary and knew its meaning. Always a weird feeling when I know something an actual English person didn't know. Now I know it's just an American/British English difference, but back then I was genuinely baffled.
Technically we're the correct ones here, because plurals can only be used with objects that are countable. You can have a potato, but you can't have a mashed potato. All right, I guess you can... but then it no longer refers to the dish. You cannot count how many potatoes have been mashed in the mashed potatoes, hence uncountable, hence no plural
We use duvet in the UK - but in the US, I think they call them "comforters". Old folk in the UK might refer to them as "continental quilts" too.
Just found this and had to share it in case we ever add Italian-American English to the chart. This guy is a gem!
Rather, 'cover the shepherd's pie with mashed potato.' Otherwise I might think there was a shepherd inside, I think.
I'm not sure why potato isn't a collective noun in the US. In the US it would be: The rice is in the blue bowl. The potatoes are in the blue bowl. The mashed potatoes are in the blue bowl. The potato salad is in the blue bowl. Why? No clue.
