Observations on British and American English by an American linguist in the UK
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Neil W. wrote to ask: I am seeing lots of advertisements for a new film called "The Invite". (Sounds quite promising with Seth Rogen playing his usual character). Here is a review from the notoriously picky Peter Bradshaw, who quite liked it. Within this article he uses the phrase "extend the invitation of the title". So my question: is it an Americanism to use "invite" as a noun? I (Scottish)…
I’m very pleased to present a guest blog by one of my students at the University of Sussex. The author, Elize Holyoake, recently completed our English in the United States module and will be entering her third year in the BA English Language and Linguistics in the autumn. I’m grateful to her for researching and writing this post! Every four years since its inauguration in 1930, the FIFA World Cup…
In April, Jody V. sent me a link to this New York Times article with the note " I noticed the word shouty in this piece. I can’t recall having seen the word used in an American publication before." Here it is in the context of the article: But in a social media post after talks with Mr. Rutte, the president reiterated his ire and threw in Greenland for good measure: “NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE…
Tibs wrote to me in October 2020: A few years ago, Americans started adding “ of ” in places it didn’t occur before. It gradually spread into books, and across the atlantic to here as well. I don’t have an exact timing - less than 10 years? I find it hard to remember examples, because it’s become part of the scenery, but it’s always a case where leaving out the “ of ” leaves the meaning identical…
It's about time this topic has its own blog post. It's been an aside to other discussions on several occasions . It's not so much a difference between American and British English per se , but a difference in how our political systems work, and hence a difference in which words we need to use about them. PM's Question Time at UK parliament (Wikimedia commons) Because the UK has a parliamentary…
A few months ago, an American friend of my spouse asked him to ask me: "Why is everyone suddenly saying alongside ?" I hadn't noticed it at that point, but once he'd mentioned it, I felt surrounded by alongside . As this Google Books ngram shows, the word has taken off in the 21st century: Separating out the British and American books, we can see that this is a British-led trend. Alongside climbed…
The people at WordUnscrambler.pro sent me a list of "the most misspelled (BrE misspelt *) words" for the UK. I get a lot of these "we did this thing so that your blog will give us free advertising," and I usually ignore them, but I'll give this one some attention—partly because they sent a US list to Language Log (who published it), so I can do some comparison. But I first have to gripe a bit.…
I get various Google Alerts for things related to my interests, and today I got one for a story in The Sun and the Daily Express about the '20 English words the public wants to revive'. Now, if I want to read these articles, I have to pay or give them my first-born, or something like that, so I'm not rushing to read them. But I've got enough of a gist from the Google Alert (orig. AmE) blurb : The…
And t he 2025 Separated by a Common Language US-to-UK Word of the Year is (sorta kinda): zee (but mostly Gen Z ) I must start by assuring you: British people generally do not call the letter zee . Nevertheless, I have reasons for choosing zee this year: It is winning (particularly among[st] the people it describes) as the pronunciation of the generation name: Gen Z . It is a word that comes up…
The 2025 Separated by a Common Language UK-to-US Word of the Year is: fiddly Here's an English teacher explaining the word Someone might have recommended this to me this year—if so, please out yourself in the comments, since I cannot find a pixel trail for a recommender. But I did find it in an email conversation I had with Ben Yagoda in deciding the 2022 WotY, where he said: Interesting slate of…
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