What are some words you feel sound more right in both the American and British English?
I use a mix of the two depending on the word.
For example, I stand by pronouncing words like “Amazon” with an “ehn” sound at the end ovet an “ohn” sound, prefer spelling colour and flavour with a u, and also like using double Ls for words like travelling. Also, it is “grey”. (British English)
However, I pronounce Z as “zee”and call them fries rather than chips.
There are also spellings where I sort of alternate between depending on my mood, such as “meter” vs “metre”and“airplane” vs “aeroplane”
Are there any words that you think sound better in British and American spellings/pronunciations?
When I am talking about fibrous material, like individual strands of carbon in a composite, I naturally type “fibre” but when I talk about nutrition or the internet it’s “fiber”
I also tend to spell armor armour and color colour despite being American.
Oh and I write grey instead of gray.
I also catch myself writing units like metre and litre instead of meter and liter sometimes.
It really all depends on if there’s a spellchecker turned on that will tell me I’m spelling things wrong.
Strong chance op is a millennial who grew up reading Harry Potter.
Nope, gen z, and I haven’t actually read any of the Harry Potter books myself.
But you’re on the right track; I think it was reading The Hobbit that did me in lol
Colour and armour is insane especially if you’re American lol
It’s “grey” not “gray”. I don’t know which side prefers which, I just know what I prefer.
They’re different words. Grey is more of a dark white, while gray is more of a light black.
But for real, to me grey is a name and a feeling, and gray is a color. And I have no idea why.
I use a mix of the two depending on the word.
Hello, may I introduce you to Canadian English?
Eh?
Do you by any chance know where I could read a good introduction to Canadian English?
I can write fluently in UK and US English but Canadian sometimes has me stumped.
I’m not sure about online sources, but this is a solid reference book: https://editors.ca/publications/editing-canadian-english/
Yup. I use whatever feels best, which is usually American words, British spelling (except for the -ze instead of -se for words that end in a “z” sound).
Also, there are our own Canadianisms, like “washroom”.
Wait, everyone else doesn’t call in a washroom?
Heathens!
Washroom promotes the incorrect assumption that people wash their hands. Any time spent in a public latrine will show this to be inaccurate.
Water closet, on the other hand, tells you exactly what to expect. Cramped, likely too dark or too bright, and riddled with moisture of both expected and occult origin.
Water closet is the way.
Compelling argument.
Yeah, and bathroom suggests that there are baths or places for bathing.
Water closet really is the right thing to call it!
Even some places in the US are switching over to calling them WCs.
Being British, I obviously almost entirely use British spelling. However I’ll concede a couple of points in specific circumstances:
- spelt, and other past tenses which end in -t instead of -ed, are silly. I prefer spelled.
- Capitalising the word after a colon: Sometimes does feel right somehow, but sometimes doesn’t.
The Z’s are silly.
Losing the argument on “aluminum” and agreeing to call it aluminium but then calling it aluminum anyway, is silly.
Dropping the U’s from words such as “colour” - I get the simplification argument and I’d take or leave them, but I’m pro-U.
Depends on the tense.
I spell it wrong.
I have spelled it wrong.
I spelled it wrong.
I had spelt it wrong.
“I had spelled it wrong” sounds like a hillbilly.
“I had spelled it wrong” sounds like a hillbilly.
I wouldn’t say that. I’d say “I spelled it wrong”.
If you use the wrong past tense all the time, that will definitely make you sound like a hillbilly.
Dropping the U’s from words such as “colour” - I get the simplification argument and I’d take or leave them, but I’m pro-U.
The pronunciation seems slightly different too, Color (Kolor) vs colour (coul-err). Or at least I pronounce them slightly differently depending on which word I read.
I prefer Traditional English over Simplified.
Herbs, because there’s a frikking h in it.
Thanks Eddie Izzard for her skit, that still stuck with me.
Is that the one about the monkey in the tree? I remember absolutely cracking up at that.
Possible. It’s been years since I watched the show on YouTube.
Schedule, I have to say the correct pronunciation every time I hear it said differently.
Glad you agree on the correct pronunciation of schedule. Fuck the people that say schedule.
Damned right
I propose a combined American, British, Australian vernacular only using the word with fewer syllables. (New Zealand and Canada are welcome too)
British Wins:
- lift not elevator
- chips not french fries
- bin not trash can
- torch not flashlight
- loo not toilet/restroom/bathroom
- pram not stroller/baby carriage
- tap not faucet
- petrol not gasoline
- chemist not pharmacy
- sweet not candy
- jug not pitcher
American Wins:
- fall not autumn
- hood not bonnet
- truck not lorry
- pants not trousers
- cart not trolley
- subway not underground
- eggplant not aubergine
- sink not washbasin
Australian Wins:
- thongs not flip flops/slippers
Since your Australia section is lacking, here’s a couple:
transport > transit
ute > pickup truck
bogan > redneck
metro > subway
cyclone > hurricane
Re fall/autumn - is there a US equivalent for the work autumnal? Falllike doesn’t seem quite right, nor fallish, nor fallumnal.
I’ve only ever heard Autumnal used for the equinox. Otherwise Autumn and Fall are also used as adjectives in American English. Fall colors. Fall planting. A cool autumn breeze.
But how do I differentiate between visiting the chemist and visiting the chemist?
“Thongs” could be misinterpreted in a hilarious way though.
Advertisement sounds better in British pronunciation. Adver-tis-ment (/ədˈvɜː.tɪs.mənt/) as opposed to the American Adver-tize-ment (/ˌæd.vɚˈtaɪz.mənt/).
I’m British and have never said the first one you mentioned and don’t think I can recall hearing it. Nearly everyone one will use the second version - adver-tize-ment, although it’s most common to hear ad or ad-vert.
I work in healthcare and it’s an append-i-cectomy not an appen-dectomy. It should have the i pronounced. The Americanised version is just lazy.
The most noticeable for me are privacy /ˈpɹɪv.ə.si/ and urinal /juːˈɹaɪnəl/. I can’t say I feel any of them are right or wrong, though, it’s just a bit of colour in the language.
A big shout out to Oxford spelling which mixes American and English spelling and is incredibly hard to find a spell check for. It gives you all the extra u’s and z’s you could ask for.
Oxford spelling, Oxford comma: what’s not to like?
Anything with a United Nations style spellcheck will sort it for you.
Somehow even as a kid in America I always had a preference for the OED at my library. It just exuded this sense of supreme rightness to me.
Never occurred to me that normal grade school kids don’t all have a favourite dictionary. Ah well.
There’s often words that trip me up and I can’t remember which is the Australian English spelling.
It doesn’t help that devices are often misconfigured to use American English spell checkers.
I don’t “feel” as though different spellings are more correct in these cases.
I will spell out aluminium, but when I have to pronounce it I go with aluminum.
It was found in alum, so it should really have been alumium all along.
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I think you’ll find everyone agrees that it should be fixed but no one wants to compromise on changing how they spell things.
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A silly colloquialism isn’t indicative of success. If you tell people to do something they don’t want to they’re not going to decide they actually like it later on.
There’s just no fucking way most Australians would decide to discard the current spelling of words in favor of the American spelling. I feel certain American’s feel the same about British spelling.
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Sure mate. I’m sure the engineers will step in and fix all the language problems any day now.
Going by how ortography changes have gone in other languages, I doubt it.
Besides English, if English fix its ortography it’s going to become much harder to learn for speakers of other European languages - as confusing the pronunciation rules and exceptions are, they are caused by writing things similarly to other European languages while mangling the original pronunciation.
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As a native Portuguese speaker I found it very useful when I started to learn English. And even nowadays having some form of “visual map” between English and Portuguese at least for more erudite words - which tend to be the ones that are shared between more languages - helps me write English better.
The similarities between English and German also ended up helping me learn German.
