I was at an anniversary of a English / American couple twenty tears ago, and a speaker gave a brilliant but mind bending speech, in which he told simultaneously two different stories, depending on the dialect. It began with:
"Well, I had a flat, see? So I took a lift..."
(He hitched a ride after puncturing his car's tire, or he took the elevator from his apartment..)
That's all I remember. It continued with something in his boot (a car's trunk / footwear), and then.. who knows?
I've searched for something similar, since I have neither the vocabulary nor the talent to create something like that. Anyone here knows of something similar?
"Took a lift" is a stretch for American English. We'd say "got a lift" for getting a car ride. If someone said that phrase to me I'd assume they're speaking British English and adjust my comprehension accordingly.
We've been inundated with British television and media (and even British-sounding actors in American productions!) to the point that the apartment interpretation was the only one I understood without reading further.
Probably the least understood: Pants. There is a line from a Doctor Who episode, "My house full of soldiers and I'm in my pants." That joke doesn't make sense in America.
I was watching QI a couple years ago. One of the guests was a Canadian actor who had been working in the UK for years and still she still had not realized the different uses of the word.
In the Harry Potter books, when Harry is watching a flashback scene where Snape is being bullied, the last line ('Who wants to see me take off Snivelly's pants?') - is the same in the US and UK versions of the books.
That scene is meant to make the reader feel very uneasy (and it makes Harry quite depressed). But in the UK English edition, despite using the same words, the scene is far worse.
"Pants" can also mean that something is ridiculous. There was story a while ago about a Chinese building that looked like a pair of trousers. "The building is pants" means that the building is silly, not just that it looks like pants.
I think they mean they don't get the joke even knowing the correct interpretation. (I'm British so read it as underwear naturally, and also don't get it.)
I don't think it's meant to be a joke with a punchline, more like an absurdly comical Dr. Who-esque situation. "You think you had a bad day? Well, I..."
It's at least equally awkward to suddenly find your house full of soldiers while you are in your underwear whether you are male or female. In fact I would say that it would be more embarrassing for many men. Male underwear is not really meant for public display.
Oh - is full of soldiers. Maybe I'm just tired, but for some reason the lack of 'is' made it seem more distant and I didn't grok that the speaker was in the house with the soldiers (and no trousers on). Or I just tied up looking for a 'joke'.
Stuck in between, Canada is just weird. I learned speak a liminal dialect of Canadian from a mix of 1970s CBC radio presenters, UK expat caregivers and teachers, theatre school educated neigbours. It wasn't just "Canadian dainty," as people who said shed-ule were considered to have an affectation, but that influence was prominent. Both the anglo Westmount area in Montreal and the uptown neighbourhoods of Toronto have a detectable patter that isn't so much british as an emphasis on articulating complete thoughts, which at the time came from being raised by parents with multiple generations of education. Kids who went on to go to school in Boston or New Haven tended to come back with a more American mannerism, which abraded off some of their recieved colonial agreeableness, but you could hear them code switching because Americans typically don't play at banter the way people from commonwealth countries still do.
American banter is closer to a spectrum of what we would call chirping or passive aggression, as their culture didn't inherit a presumption of benevolence or a sense of noblesse oblige, but what I like about American culture and language is that where commonwealth deference is based on the polite presumption the person you are speaking to is secretly noble, Amercan deference respects that the person you are speaking to is plausibly equally dangerous. Having worked with a number of cross-border teams, the misunderstandings can be both comical, and irreconcilable.
That's an interesting point, but I don't think the American distinction relates to 'danger' rather, it's just that they are less formal, more gregarious, less social protocol, and more familiar.
It's danger because the concept of polite has remnants of frontier culture, and just like the commonwealth doesn't have "nobles" anymore america doesn't have gunslingers, but I'm saying the origin of the etiquette that forms the culture is related to them.
Americans are very formal with very strictly observed social protocols, you're just not allowed to talk about them because then it would acknowledge class, which is the last great taboo there. If you want to see what breaking American formal rules and social protocols looks like, tease them for crossing personal boundaries or poke fun at uniquely middle class aspirations, and it can make you an enemy for life.
Recent American etiquette requires that you just "get it," in terms of who has the power in a situation because they very-officially don't use formalisms, and this tacit alignment and sensitivity to its shifts in particular is a big class signifier there. Most of them don't have a cultural abstraction for relating impersonally, where in other cultures you would acknowledge you are relating based on implied rules. Sometimes it's a relief, and sometimes the cringe is almost fatal. A personal example would be that to me, west coast culture is a lot like being around revolutionary marxists who make a point of being rude to wait staff because they think civility is bourgeois oppression, so as an outsider with normal adult boundaries, I can find it a bit alien. The culture I'm from emphasizes relating to service by learning to be worthy of it, which is probably equally bizarre to someone not familiar with that kind of interaction.
You don't get a lot of "americans are weird," perspective these days because the internet just assumes everyone has been educated by television shows that were written to entertain people, and mimicking actors is normal behaviour, but since we're into accents and culture, yes, americans can be pretty weird. :)
Somewhat recently I stumbled upon a commentary about how sometimes Russians are perceived by Amercians as almost snobby by the way they talk. As I understood it's just the result of Received Pronunciation and a pretty formal English by the book, without an actual, "live" language.
'Polite' has nothing to do with 'fear' of gunslingers.
And 'common, middle class politeness' is just a behaviour along the same way as not farting, swearing scratching your balls.
"you're just not allowed to talk about them because then it would acknowledge class"
No, nobody is worried that you're going to bring up class.
There are some PC taboos which if broken, will cause some people to be upset, but that's more or less social politics, not class.
"west coast culture is a lot like being around revolutionary marxists who make a point of being rude to wait staff because they think civility is bourgeois oppression,"
I don't want to upset you but this is a ridiculous. I respect creative contemplation, but this is nowhere near reality.
I was developing a software application for a British customer. I sent him an update to review and in the README noted that I had disabled one of the features "for the nonce".
Fortunately he had a good sense of humo(u)r and forgave me.
I am a New Zealander, and a common difficulty with visitors is the difference between “can’t” and “cunt”. The vowel has exactly the same sound, but it is long for can’t, and short for cunt. Can uses a different vowel sound from can’t, which means we can misunderstand Americans who don’t pronounce the t in can’t properly. Fortunately we can usually pick that a tourist using the word cunt usually means can’t. It is especially difficult for some people, because they don’t naturally understand vowel length changes. In Māori and Latin vowel length is critical to differentiate words.
Kiwis often understand both British and American usages of words, for example calling something “completely pants” makes sense to me. Pissed can be used in either a British or American sense.
I have only ever heard of nonce in the software engineering sense, and never in the perverse sense (and I have a much wider vocabulary than most).
Pants here means trousers, following the American usage.
Usage of some individual Māori words within an otherwise English sentence is becoming more common here (cultural pride versus historical cringe), but I would expect most kiwis avoid using them if speaking to a tourist.
For the nonce means the same in British English, it's just not very common. He was just winding you up because it can be interpreted as for the kiddie fiddler. Think of Tommy: Fiddle about, https://genius.com/The-who-fiddle-about-lyrics
As a recently arrived Brit at Bell Labs in Naperville in the early 1980s I was presenting code in my first US code review. The code was typical K+R C with single character variable names x, y, and z amongst others. All seemed to be going well until near the end when somebody asked what I meant by the variable "zed."
In the 90’s I worked at a Canadian company that developed a CNC machining training simulator. We produced some professionally narrated training videos for a new release of the software and sent them off to the publisher. A few days later our US publisher got in touch to have us re-record all mentions of the “zed axis” as “zee axis”.
My first introduction to Canadian English being slightly different than American was a physics professor my sophomore year who in the first lecture kept saying zed. I thought it was a tic.
Later I moved to Germany, I finally figured out that zed was a Commonwealth English thing from my Canadian coworkers. None of my German coworkers could understand me when I said zee, because it sounds like "c", I guess. So I'd say tset (the German zed equivalent).
I (a Brit) was a councillor on summer camp in the US in the 1980s. One of the other Brit councillors asked an American councillor to "hold my fag" (in the UK fag=cigarette). The American looked very confused.
I also still chuckle every time I hear an American talk about being "bummed" (in the UK bummed=anally penetrated). So just bear that in mind next time you tell a British person "I was bummed when ...".
The common American name "Randy" is also a source of some humour (in the UK randy=horny).
> The common American name "Randy" is also a source of some humour (in the UK randy=horny).
We know that sense of the word in America too. I saw a friend once try to forestall that interpretation after saying "I'm Randy" by elaborating "Randy with a capital R".
Since that's a standard way to express emphasis, it did not succeed at disambiguating what "I'm Randy" meant. We all had a good laugh.
> American talk about being "bummed" (in the UK bummed=anally penetrated)
But isn’t “bum a fag” still acceptable Brit phrasing?
Also reminded the Cannondale bicycle company (American) used to have a child trailer called “Little Bugger”, where in Britain bugger is principally associated with buggery, but in America, could be swapped with “ankle biter” or some such nickname for “child”.
> But isn’t “bum a fag” still acceptable Brit phrasing?
Well, er, I guess it depends on if you went to Eton or not…
Certain very old “public” schools[1] have a tradition of using the younger boys as a sort of personal servant for the older boys. The system is known as “fagging” and the servants/slaves are known as “fags”.
1. Where a public school in the UK is a very posh private school. It’s a public school vs a private tutor don’t ‘cha know.
To be honest as italian this hits me deeper than I'd like to admit, but it's also one of the things that some british people appear stupid to me, complaining about american english, not being their english, like, if that's their native language, haven't you realised the amount of ocean between the countries, but other than that, isn't every population allowed to have their language?
But even with accents, like sometimes I meet some british and complain about my italian-accent-spoken-british, does it even make sense, have you ever listened to yourself speaking italian?
I think british (londoners mostly) are mostly introverts because they really create a lot of un-existing issues for themselves it's really that sometimes you feel scared of doing anything because it could be slighly wrong
I wrote a PR release for our startup and one of the British contractors volunteered to double-check the grammar. Oh boy, I got back was a massive annotated word document with red marks everywhere. I promptly accepted everything as if nothing had happened - I really do not care about American english (I am American) or British english and wanted to spend zero further effort on going back and forth. Even when accepting without qualms, he sneered at me about how American my english was, while completely unaware about the exact points you made!
That said, I prefer British english for the most part but just being immersed in a land thousands of miles away, it is hard to not assimilate.
The author seems to be under the impression British English only has one set of pronunciations - Queens English/RP. Much of Britain (by area, not population) does pronounce Rs. I can think of at least 5 very distinct dialects/pronunciation patterns from the UK that nobody would ever confuse with each other (RP, Glaswegian, Cockney, Scouse/Liverpool, Yorkshire). There are many more, these are just ones that popped to mind as easily identifiable.
me: he's Welsh, like from Wales? that's in Europe, right?
brit: he hails from Northern England, West Yorkshire, obviously. the silent h's point to Leeds, though the scarcity of expletives suggest a flat near the Grand Theatre...294 Vicar Lane?
- Someone on twitter (can't remember the exact source)
> I want to be clear that of course there are many different accents in both the UK and in the US, and it’s not like there’s only one right pronunciation. But the differences that I’ll be talking about are quite general
Fair enough. But she continued to use “British English” when describing RP. And the same with “American English” instead of General American. These “generic” accents have names just like the more regional/stronger accents. It would have been proper to at least mention their names.
West country accents are where the Rs broadly come back, and are even emphasised (think pirate speak if you are American, this is the accent it was based on).
I was thinking most of the Scottish accents, since I’m a Scottish expat. I’ve been in the US nearly 40 years and still get asked to say phrases with lots of Rs and WHs whenever I’ve had a few drinks and my accent comes back.
Funny aside - Mom was an ESOL teacher in the US and got some funny looks from colleagues because her students had “odd” pronunciation habits. WH was the big one - in the US it’s a much softer sound than
most British accents.
Don't even get me started on -- as a Canadian -- I went to work down in San Francisco and my colleagues were all like "what the hell is a prowject?".
They were all saying "prawject".
Fortunately we had good laughs over that and how I kept saying "yeah, I'm sorry" at the end of every fifth sentence.
It seems to me that for the spelling part, American and British orthography are both accepted in Canada. So we could write "center" or "centre". Also "color" or colour". Which I find amusing, as both of the British spellings come from the French -- bolstering my theory that English is just a mispronunciation of French (I jest! :P).
> “colour” is itself a mutation, the French word being «couleur»
That's what the French word is now. But the French word used to be color, which is where the American spelling comes from, a late, backward-looking reform. Are you sure it wasn't colour in French when the English spelling standardized?
I wouldn't bet on that. The u in colour is never pronounced, but neither is the o.[1] The spelling color is much more likely to be motivated by that being the Latin spelling of the word.
[1] I watched Star Trek: The Original Series recently and the cast's pronunciation of "sensors" with the FORCE vowel in the second syllable is really jarring. Do we know if that was an affectation or a natural pronunciation?
Anyway, if someone can't hear the difference in that sample, load it in to an audio editor, and see that (in a time / amplitude graph) the two words have different shapes.
I've not got a tool for graphing the frequency content to hand, so can't easily see how those would be distinguished.
As an American, I pronounce buoy as a two- syllable word: boo-ee.
I have only heard buoy pronounced as “boy” in the northeast, not at all universal across the country.
'prow' as in long 'oh', rather than 'ow my foot' right? Even with short-o, Canadian's say 'prahject' to my (British) ear. (The short O that starts my name, too.)
Which are also commonly used throughout New England in particular. Google Maps still butchers a lot of the pronunciation although it's better than it used to be. (I live about 15 minutes north of a Worcester and even closer to a Leominster which also isn't pronounced like you or apparently Google would expect.)
Well that depends... Leo-minster, Lem-stuh, Leemunster, Lomunster, Lominster, Lominser... New England vs England vs the street in Derby (Darby, not Derby), vs the posh street outside of Bristol.
Paris in France, is "Paree." Paris in Florida is "paris." Perris in California is "Pa-rees" or "Pe-riss" and sometimes "Paris" depending on the age of the person speaking, but that street named Lyon over in Hemet, just East or Perris, (He-met according to Google but Hemmet or 'emmet according to the locals) in California is Lee-on, Lee-yon, or, as one local said, "Lion, and why are you trying to be all fancy?" but is written as "Lyon" and was not named for the city in France but for the construction company that built the area.
Worcestershire is Wurstuh, Wurst-uh-shur, Wurst-uh-shuh, Wurst-er-shuh, Wor-ster-shire depending on where in the UK you are. My local UK dialect, a combination of the bad side of Grangetown outside of Carddiff (Dad) & BBC given English (Mum) so my pronunciation is, and always has been, "wurster-shuh."
Today I learned that El Salvador calls Worstershire Sauce as "Salsa Inglesa" and I shall now use that just to confuse people.
I love local pronunciations because it makes me aware that our languages are continuously evolving.
Local is something more along the lines of leh-minster. (Or maybe Leh-minstuh though you don't really get the Southie dropped r's in this area of the state.)
Sepulveda Blvd in Los Angeles, according to google, used to be pronounced Sep-uhl-vee-dah. I can pronounce Sepulveda like a local, I cannot pronounce Los Angeles like one. But I call SF "frisco" just to annoy everyone in the state.
Some American places have peculiar pronunciation, especially if you're not from around there: Illinois, Arkansas, Spokane, Raleigh, and my absolute favorite Bexar County in Texas.
Bicester (Bister) and Gloucester (Gloster) are another couple of gotchas off the top of my head, and it's not like it even stops with places with *cester in the name.
I lived for a bit in a tiny town called Barnoldswick (stress on the "nolds"), but anyone from the area calls it "Barlick"! (stress on the "bar").
The accent here means that the phrase "pork pie" becomes "poo-wuk paaah" (stress on "poo" and "paaah") and the related steak-and-kidney-pie (which is served upside-down) was called a "babby's edd" (although I'm not sure if that's actually from nearby Bolton and is less about pronunciation I guess).
Pronounced “Wooster-sher”, though commonly you drop the “shire” for just “Wooster”. (That’s a short “woo” like in “wool”, not “woo” as in a romantic interest.)
Leicester (in Leicestershire) is a larger English city with the "-cester" suffix, meaning a Roman fort. The name is used in the US as a personal or family name: Lester.
Where the pronunciation is "ch", it's also spelt that way, as in Manchester.
Brits will say "I've lost my keys" using the present perfect to indicate something in the recent past. On the other hand, Americans will says "I just lost my keys" using the past with 'just'. These are grammatically different tenses and I think this constitutes a significant variation between the two. This is often overlooked.
Moreover, Brits will more often say "I've got" and American will more often say "I have". You can find this in ESL textbooks and by talking with people. For such a fundamental verb, I consider this a big difference.
Source: I was an ESL teacher and I have lived in both the US and the UK
> Moreover, Brits will more often say "I've got" and American will more often say "I have". You can find this in ESL textbooks and by talking with people. For such a fundamental verb, I consider this a big difference.
You shouldn't. There might be differences in frequency of use, but "have" and "have got" are fully synonymous. Even a significant difference in how often one or the other option is chosen would only add up to a tiny difference in the languages. At best, this is a difference on the level of how Americans say "math", but the English say "maths".
> Brits will say "I've lost my keys" using the present perfect to indicate something in the recent past. On the other hand, Americans will says "I just lost my keys" using the past with 'just'. These are grammatically different tenses and I think this constitutes a significant variation between the two. This is often overlooked.
I'm not sure you've really grasped what's happening here. Either option is fine in American English. They mean different things, or more accurately they focus on different aspects of the situation. That means the choice between them is not arbitrary but heavily context-dependent.
My view of "I just lost my keys", with just normally used to mark the immediate past, is that it's a strange example of marking the recent past, because losing an object is something that might have happened in the recent past, but it's not something you're likely to recognize as happening in the recent past. If you lost your keys a minute ago, you probably don't yet know that you've lost them.[1] So while "I just ate" can only refer back maybe an hour or two, "I just lost my keys" could easily refer back a week, if e.g. it's an excuse for why I'm having logistical difficulties.
[1] Note this fully natural American usage of "you've lost your keys".
> So while "I just ate" can only refer back maybe an hour or two, "I just lost my keys" could easily refer back a week, if e.g. it's an excuse for why I'm having logistical difficulties.
OP has correctly identified a difference, but not the exact nature of it.
In contrast to ‘just’ which can be used to mark recency in both simple past and present perfect (“I just lost my keys” vs “I’ve just lost my keys”), the present perfect does not refer to “the recent past”.
In fact, the difference between present perfect and simple past is not really a tense difference at all, but an aspectual one that marks how the speaker perceives the event. In the simple past, the event is complete, whereas in the present perfect, the event is not, either because the event is ongoing, or because it maintains a specific relevance that means we are not looking from ‘outside’ the event as a completed whole.
The difference that OP has identified is the “default understanding” of British English speakers is normally that an action is complete unless otherwise marked. “I lost my keys” in British English implies that you already have your keys back, or you’ve had new ones made, or that you no longer live in that same flat or whatever. American English does not tend to make the same assumption as strongly, and does not normally require you to use the present perfect except for emphasis.
> “I lost my keys” in British English implies that you already have your keys back, or you’ve had new ones made, or that you no longer live in that same flat or whatever
As a very standard British English speaker I'm not convinced of this. Sure, "I've lost my keys" normally implies it's an ongoing issue, but "I lost my keys" also can unless the context says otherwise.
I actually did lose my wallet recently, and can assure you when I told my British family "I lost my wallet" their first response was to ask if I'd checked everywhere and cancelled my cards, not ask me about my new wallet!
"I've lost my wallet" might be more emphatic perhaps, but the conclusions we draw from that are dependent on context too (I've also lost my passport on a couple of occasions, but I don't think anybody's inferring I'm still troubled by a lack of passport from that phrasing!)
That’s quite a specific example with potentially disastrous effects if you’re misunderstood (what if you haven’t cancelled your cards?!), but you’re right, I’m just painting broad strokes as to what is more likely, rather than strict rules. Whatever strict rules you try to apply in linguistics collapse when you look at real people using the language!
The ‘repeated occasions’ is a different use case - I don’t think anyone would infer you’re troubled by a lack of passport, but they might infer that you’re troubled by a tendency to mislay things!
> In the simple past, the event is complete, whereas in the present perfect, the event is not, either because the event is ongoing, or because it maintains a specific relevance that means we are not looking from ‘outside’ the event as a completed whole.
This is an unusual viewpoint. The perfect aspect is so called for the fact that it indicates completion -- that is the literal meaning of "perfect". The fact that an action completed in the past may continue to be relevant in the present is not generally felt to indicate that such an action wasn't really completed.
> American English [...] does not normally require you to use the present perfect except for emphasis.
This just isn't true. The form in question is required to mark experiential aspect and it's also the only way of describing an action begun in the past that continues through the present ("I've been calling for 15 minutes").
Perfect forms are also required, as you note, when the speaker wishes to focus on a present situation related to an action taken in the past, as opposed to focusing on the past event itself. This is not rare.
And from the other direction, I'm not even aware that perfect forms can be used to provide emphasis.
> The perfect aspect is so called for the fact that it indicates completion -- that is the literal meaning of "perfect".
Ideally this would be true (and it is generally true in languages which are more concrete about aspect), but that’s not how it’s used in English tense names.
For example, ‘I’ve been playing tennis since lunchtime’ is not complete, but this is a form of the present perfect. Note that there’s also no indication of whether you intend to complete the action or not, and no distinction between actions which will or can be completed and those which won’t or can’t - apart from the latter sounding ungrammatical (such as the construction ‘I’ve been knowing’ - which is common in certain dialects but violates prescriptivist grammar rules).
> This just isn't true. The form in question is required to mark experiential aspect
I think actually you’re mistaken here. In British English, it is normal to say ‘have you seen the new James Bond film?’, while in American English ‘did you see the new James Bond film?’ Is also normal (although both can be used). In most British dialects, the simple past here sounds jarring and ungrammatical.
> it's also the only way of describing an action begun in the past that continues through the present ("I've been calling for 15 minutes").
This was a clumsy statement on my part. By ‘except for emphasis’, I intended to handwave over cases where something other than the action itself is being emphasised by the speaker (ie: duration, as in your example, persistent evidence of recency, such as ‘it’s been raining [and the ground is still wet]’, or some other dialect or ‘non-standard’ use. For example, often eyewitness statements, police reports, etc. unconsciously slip into the present perfect in cases for which there’s no standard grammatical explanation).
For me it's always words that start with "Tu" that I particularly notice. Americans will usually say twos-day or two-nah, whereas as a Brit I am used to chews-day or chew-nah.
It follows the general Australian pattern of stretching single vowel sounds into diphthongs, or breaking them up into 2 parts Consider for example the Australian pronunciations of 'late' and 'beer'.
This is just an observation but the Australian and some British pronunciations of "no" bear an interesting similarity to the sound of "nij" (no) in some Dutch dialects.
A friend's younger cousin from not far from there (Lowestoft iirc?) would say this - one memory I have is how he squished "can I play the computer?" to "ca' play compoota?" (which after discovering Monkey Island he said quite a lot). Might have been a kid thing rather than a regional thing though :)
As a brit on holiday in Florida, I stopped at a petrol/gas station and asked if they had any maps. The guy told me I should go to Home Depot. Only later I realised that he thought I was asking for mops.
I'm a little surprised at the notion that British English is more likely to preserve full pronunciation of 'T's.
In my experience, and in my own speech, it is quite common for British accents to completely replace a T with a glottal stop, unless one is being very deliberate with their speech, especially amongst younger speakers.
(Brit here) I found that when I asked for a glass of water in a US restaurant that they didn't understand me. I had to use a 'D' sound instead of a 'T' and then things were fine. This is different again from the glottal stop version (wa'er) which would be universally understood (if not liked) in the UK.
On that note, I'm reminded of the George Bernard Shaw quote " it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him."
The story seems to assume that there is one “British” English and one “American” English. There are indeed many British accents where Ts are unstressed or replaced by either something that sounds like Ds or glottal stops.
Same with the Rs, there are many variations across different British accents.
Many British and North American dialects both reduce /t/ and /d/ in spots, just differently:
> In North American English, the cluster /nt/ (but not /nd/) in the same environment as flapped /t/ may be realized as a nasal flap [ɾ̃]. Intervocalic /n/ is also often realized as a nasal flap, so words like winter and winner can become homophonous.
The glottal stop is very common in British English varieties, but the extent to which it occurs is pretty variable, and it's still perceived as somewhat sub-standard (depending on where the T it replaces occurs; replacing Ts between vowels is more sub-standard than replacing Ts at the end of a word, which is more sub-standard than replacing Ts before a consonant [in fact even Americans frequently replace Ts at the end of a word]).
On the other hand, in American English, flapping happens pretty reliably in the appropriate environment, and it's absolutely standard and expected---any failure to flap where required will probably lead to your speech being perceived as having a British twang.
There's also a phonemic vs. phonetic thing here. In British English, a T turned into a glottal stop can still be distinguished from any other consonant, so it's still a T phonemically even though the phonetic realization has changed. In American English, flapping applies to both T and D and the result is usually indistinguishable with respect to having been originally a T or a D. In that sense American is going a step further.
The "Bri'ish" way of replacing it with a glottal stop is definitely more noticeable, but if you really listen to American English, they are more likely to completely drop the sound, or replace it with a d.
There are American accents that have glottal stops too. I always notice it when I hear some Americans pronounce “button” as “bu’inn”. It’s really common in “mountain” too - “mowwn’nn”
Indeed, I would go as far as to say that not glottalizing the /t/ in such words (preceding unstressed syllabic /n/) could sound somewhat odd or affected in American English.
"Important" is an interesting word in American English. I think for many speakers including me the first /t/ is glottalized (following the general rule noted above) but for me at least there's a sound preceding the glottal sound which I don't know how to describe other than "t realization sound".
I feel like I've noticed younger (than me) American speakers omitting that first sound and just using the second (normal /n/-preceding) glottal sound. I think I've only noticed this in the Boston area where I currently live but it may be more widespread. To me it makes the pronunciation of "important" sound slightly more like how I'd expect a stereotypical southern England pronunciation to sound, except for the /r/. I have also heard Americans pronounce "important" with the /t/ realized as (I think) a flap and no glottalization, which sounds sort of affected to me, as though the speaker is trying to avoid the glottal sound.
Came here to say exactly this. Pronouncing 't' is the main distinction I've noticed in my own speech between speaking normally and self-consciously attempting to "speak properly". It's not natural for me to pronounce 'T' without trying. The glottal stop is natural.
Which (speaking as a southern-accented Brit in the US) has hilarious results when you’re trying to order in a US restaurant and you try to clarify by pronouncing ‘properly’.
Brit: “I’d like some uo-uh please”
American Server: “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”
Brit: “Sorry. Uo-tuh please.”
Server: blank face
Helpful nearby American: “WADDER”
Most of the time the southern British accent is pretty comprehensible to Americans (we have more distinct vowels, the missing ‘r’s just make us sound like we’re from Boston and the glottal stops aren’t too important), but the word ‘water’ when you drop the t and the r and aspirate the w basically turns into a mush of unfamiliar diphthongs to an American ear.
I heard "pretty" pronounced with a glottal stop in Cambridge and with a hard T elsewhere (London or around). It probably depends on the location or what surrounds the word?
Around London that would be “pre’y” (most of the time; you can hear just about any accent in London). From my experience, Ts are harder in Yorkshire, for example.
Learnt English as an Australian kid, then went to high school in Boston and then mostly stuck around since.
I notice that I pronounce words you learn as a kid in a more Aussie style and adult words in an American style.
More interestingly to me: when I’d go back to AUS my family would laugh at how my English had become completely Americanised. But over the past decade or so other people I meet in Australia who learned I’ve been living in the States have commented, “you haven’t lost your accent!” I think what they are really saying is, “I watch a lot of TV” as there is a ton of US shows being broadcast and available online.
I’ve noticed this in informal instructions too, in the UK I’d expect something like “combine the beaten egg with the flour”, but I’ve noticed Americans often tend more to something like “so what you’re going to do is you’re going to go ahead and combined the beaten egg with the flour”
In my observation the primary difference between the two is that the statement of I'm fixin to do a thing rarely refers to immediately / now; whereas "I'm going to go ahead and put the cake in the oven" means essentially right now. Versus: "I'm fixin to put the cake in the oven" would be sometime in the next N minutes, when I get a free moment to do so.
I'm going to go ahead and do a thing - can be used for any time (eg as a confirmation, I'm going to go ahead and mow the lawn (referring to later today at 4pm, confirming intent)). I'm fixin to do a thing - is more often a delayed action set into the future (by at least several minutes) and can be used for any longer timeframe as well, and is often less definite of a statement (fixin usually means I'm going to attempt to, if I can get around to it; or I'm going to try to get to it).
For anyone not natively English-speaking, there is a kind of choice to make - which English to use? Especially when spelling. Curious what others have settled on.
I'm German. My English lessons started in 1992, I think.
Our English teachers back then were highly influenced by England and the United Kingdom.
They strived for "correct" British pronunciation. They had most of their vacations (sorry, holidays) in England. Maybe Scotland.
Our school book began with "X lives in Hatfield. Hatfield is near London." One of the first words we learned was "biro". We were "pupils", not "students".
Today's English teachers have grown up with American TV series and music. I'd be surprised if that British bias still showed.
I've mostly felt that influence, as well, and I think my English is more American than British, thanks to Star Trek, Friends and the like.
Although I have once put the word "connexion" in document at work, and I'd love to use "gaol" some day before I retire. ;-)
Our teachers used to tell us that picking either British or American English was fine, but we should make a choice and stick with it. In my opinion, what matters is being understood, and I haven’t really followed that rule.
I try to follow British spelling conventions, but for vocabulary, the American cultural influence is just so much greater that it becomes the natural choice.
For pronunciation, I generally tend more toward British, and I make an effort to avoid typical Swedish-English mistakes that can impact your ability to be understood (th, sh/ch, voiced s, schwa). But beyond those few items, I don’t go out of my way to avoid influences from my native tongue. Having a natural flow is more important than imitating a specific accent.
In my experience, Europeans and South Asians tend to use British spellings. East Asians and Latin Americans tend to use American spellings. Not sure about people from other parts of the world.
As a rule of thumb, former British colonies like India, Australia and Singapore tend to favo(u)r British spellings, while other countries tend to go with American spellings.
Here in Argentina, in the 80s (at least) teaching British English was the norm… but probably most people end up with American spelling due to the internet, books, magazines, etc.
Swede[1] here, started primary school in 1970. We were definitely taught British English, preferably RP (to the extent that our teachers knew how to talk that way; I only noticed from about year 7, so not sure about earlier).
Still what I use.
___
1: Northern European confusenik: Born German, lived in Finland almost half my life.
Who’s the target audience? If it’s mostly Brits (or former colonies), use British English. If it’s Americans or very broad international, use American English. Of course, ignore that if you’re more comfortable with one over the other.
As a Brit living in the USA for over a decade the first thing any American says upon meeting me is: "Whoah! I love your Australian accent! It's so strong!"
What my family says to me on the phone when I call back to England: "HAHAHA! You sound so stupid. You have no hint of an English accent left at all. You are totally American now!"
It would be “pulling birds” in BrE with no preposition.
Verb objects (and transitive/intransitive) are another difference between the dialects. In AmE you can say “I wrote Grandma yesterday”; in BrE that would be “I wrote to Grandma yesterday”.
A lot of AmE usage is becoming commonplace in Britain thanks to the Internet, though. You’ll now see commercials in Britain that implore you to “Search ‘Fred Insurance’ for full details”. Five years ago that would have been “Search _for_ ‘Fred Insurance’”.
> A lot of AmE usage is becoming commonplace in Britain thanks to the Internet, though.
My girlfriend and I were watching the Harry Potter movie cast reunion, and I noticed how the younger cast members let a lot of Valley-Girl-isms slip into their speech. "So I was like" (introducing a quotation), and "totally" (meaning very, extremely), and so forth. Quite different from how I expect a British person to talk. The younger generation of Brits seem to have fully embraced what Stephen Fry called "Buffy talk, Sabrina the Teenage Witch talk" and "the language of the Sunny Delight generation": https://youtu.be/xs5fH1ECzWc (Note that Fry was specifically addressing the related phenomenon of AQI, a.k.a. "uptalk", but he diverts into things like "I was like" to introduce a quotation.)
As actors, they've probably all spent a lot of time in Southern California or working with people from there, so it shouldn't be surprising that they would pick up some of the speech patterns.
> You’ll now see commercials in Britain that implore you to “Search ‘Fred Insurance’ for full details”. Five years ago that would have been “Search _for_ ‘Fred Insurance’”.
But in many forms of commercials it's advantageous to have a short text: you can use a bigger font while paying for the same size advertisement / poster / pop-up window. So maybe that was more a "shortism" than an Americanism.
I remember clearly it was "pulling FOR birds". I wonder why the difference. Perhaps it was because my anecdote took place in the 80's. Language does shift over time.
Odd, since the pulling would be the act of chatting-up-and-convincing-someone-to-sleep-with-you, so "pulling a bird", "pulling some birds", "out on the pull", etc. Much less common than it used to be in any case.
> But let’s come back to English and talk a little bit more about those rs. Not all r’s are silent in British English. You keep them at the beginning of words, right?, but you also keep them between two vowels. For example, wherever, in American English has two rs in British English you drop the one at the end but keep the one in the middle.
This isn't really correct. British English (of at least one prestige variety) requires an R to appear between consecutive vowels. ("Intrusive R".) So it's not that the word has an R in it that's preserved by the local phonological context when it might otherwise have disappeared. It's more that the word really has no R, because there is no such thing as a syllable-final R, but an R is generated anyway by the local phonological context. I met a Brit who refused to believe that Americans could pronounce the phrase "law and order" instead of the obligatory "law rand order".
It's worth pointing out on both sides that it is a lot more nuanced.
British people will point out that even what is in this article is very superficial and wrong as a generalization to "British English". The "Leicester" accent does not use ə for the -er endings discussed, for just one example. And "sounding like the Queen" isn't "ectually" the same as Received Pronunciation.
U.S. people will similarly point out that it is far from the case that everyone speaks General American.
And British dialects are so wonderfully localised.
Leicester, as you say, has the “Lestah” pronunciation.
Peterborough has the ubiquitous glottal stop (sorry, Pe’erborough has the ubiqui’ous glo’al stop).
Rutland has neither.
It’s 20 miles from Leicester to Rutland and another 20 from Rutland to Peterborough. When I lived there I could often pinpoint a Rutland accent to within a group of villages, though I don’t think I could do so today.
I don’t think US people will point it out as much, though. Regional accents in the US don’t seem terribly strong these days, at least in my experience. Even the southern accent seems to be slowly fading, especially in bigger cities.
One Americanism I've noticed a lot is "sure" replacing "yes". It happens all the time in interviews and stuff on podcasts, TV, etc. Where did that come from? Now some British people podcasts have started doing it. It sounds fake, like marketing-speak, to my ears.
Also I really dislike British exaggerated r sounds added to eg pass staff mask so they become parse starf marsk. And also American A in pasta or Mario (more ree oh) or words like mango becoming almost mongo.
Speaking is weird. We need an English academy that officially standardises (or is that with a z? Zed or zee? ) all this and fixes the silly spelling while they're at it.
> And also American A in pasta or Mario (more ree oh)
My experience as an American is that most Americans pronounce these with ‘ah’ sounds, not with the American A sound. Someone using the American A for those words would come across as very…regional, it would really stick out. Well, to me anyway.
My favorite distinction: “rubber.” In the UK, an eraser. In America, a condom.
I know more than one ex-Brit who had the unpleasant experience of shouting “does anyone have a rubber? I need a rubber really bad! Can anyone give me a rubber please?”
Americans also want to check if you know things, you know?
Also for those mentioning words that are lewd or harmless depending on which side of the ocean you're at, those are nothing compared to Portuguese in Brazil/Portugal.
The linked piece and video are very amateurish attempts to explain what has been well-studied by reputable linguists. We can do better. American linguist Lynne Murphy, married to a Brit and working as a linguistics academic in the UK for many years (and with a stint in South Africa) has a fantastic blog and book on the subject. Very easy to read and nobody has covered the subject better. https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
Why stop there? There's also Indian English, International English, Singaporean English, Scottish English, Australian English, African English ... and that's just the standardised ones.
Yes, but people codeshift. The minute Jaydon heads inside he doesn't say "oi cunt, where's my coke" to his mum or nan, having said it five minutes earlier to his mate Davo outside.
And he's bored of being sent to the headmasters office so he uses it less in class now. And because he wants to keep that job at Maccas and buy a jetski he doesn't use it at work...
As an Aussie it’s definitely the T’s that always stand out for me when listening to American English. Specifically the word “important”, to me it always sounds like it’s pronounced by Americans like “impor-en’”
When I was a kid there were some Australians in town for a youth lacrosse tournament just outside Philadelphia. The most confounding thing for them was figuring out what we meant by "wooder" (a popular beverage, sometimes fatal).
Possibly shaped by the fact that people who speak New York accents reduce T's even more than most Americans. I'll tap, but most NY/New Jersey accents barely even glottal stop.
Of course some people will say it's a matter of style and preference, but I just cannot mentally abide the use of the phrase "different to" in English English. As in "well, that's very different to the current version", etc.
Difference indicates departing from something. It's "different from".
Oh well, I guess they'll just have to continue being obviously wrong...
Scot here. I'd just say it pretty much as you'd expect -like "awl turd". Maybe I'd drop the "t" and use a glottal stop if I'd been drinking. But I know plenty of people from the south of England who would pronounce this like "ooltered".
Update: I have been flipping back and forth between article and comments, and just discovered this is mentioned:
"""
So you hear the two different ts in “water” again, but more prominently you hear the British use “ooo” where the Americans use a sound that’s closer to an “aaa”. W/ooo/ter. W/aaa/ter. This one is also quite easy to learn because it’s a general thing. Somewhat more difficult is the next one. Again pay attention to the vowels.
"""
I think it's a slight mistake to describe this one as a "British" general pronunciation. While there are things we'd all pronounce similarly the "a" in "altered" and "water" would be pronounced "aw" in Scotland and Northern Ireland and possibly some of England.
I've always been of the suspicion that Scottish and Irish English remained rhotic cause they derived from English as it was spoken when they first heard it, namely, when it was fully rhotic. Likewise, America/Canada of course since English was rhotic when the colonies were first founded.
Ooltered is the one I was referring to. It was twice as jarring, because they won't even recognize all-tered as a proper word at all. Had to literally spell it out.
Here's another thing I've noticed that isn't mentioned often. Americans often stress the first word in a pair of words that go together whilst British don't stress either one. For example, Americans would say Robin Hood with Robin stressed.
There is a process that occurs when compound words are adopted. Initially the emphasis is on the second word but as the compound becomes more widely recognized the emphasis shifts to the first word. There is a name for this process though I have forgotten it. I don’t know if this process is different between American English and British English.
As an American my favorite thing to hear British and similarly influenced (Australia/New Zealand) people say is “h.” We say “aych” but they say “haych.” I don’t know why but an English dev saying “haych tee tee pee” is just one of my favorite sounds.
I believe "haitch" is normal in the Republic of Ireland, a shibboleth for Catholicism in Northern Ireland, and common in various odd areas where there's a lot of Irish influence. I'm English but some of my grandparents were Irish Catholics, and I come from Merseyside, where a large proportion of the population has a similar family background, and I say "haitch". But for English-in-England, "aitch" is definitely the more common pronunciation.
American English is British English before they changed their accent to be all uppity. A southern accent is closer to traditional English before they split apart.
related: a discussion of American and British English, with examples from native speakers. Bonus: the teacher is German (Sabine Hossenfelder) and has a great sense of humor :-D
Dove is a bird and rhymes with Love, not a false irregular past participle for dived.
Route and router derive from french and so are pronounced likewise - root, excepting the guttural french 'r' which no english speakers anywhere are capable of. It is quite jarring to hear the AmE version pronounced like some kind of chaotic battlefield retreat.
As a Brit in America, no American can ever understand me when I say the word PASTA. I always have to say it several times, and then break down and just describe the stuff.
In Subway I often have trouble asking for tomato on my sandwich. "Tomatoes please. Tomatoes. TOMATOES. The round red things? Thank you."
True, although it takes 5 seconds to access a simple IPA index and not much longer than that to look up a given sound. And once you do, you have a clear and (reasonably) exact specified sound, not an easily misinterpreted and inexact thing like "ah" or "ar" or whatever.
British English sounds fun, kind of like stand up comedian making a parody of normal English. I’m not sure how Brits can speak it with a straight face.
One of the best (funny) characterization of the British (not only the accent) remains the by now almost forgotten (and obviously largely outdated) "How to be an alien" by George Mikes (1946).
> The easiest way to give the impression
of having a good accent or no foreign accent at all is to hold an unlit pipe in your
mouth, to mutter between your teeth and finish all your sentences with the question:
'isn't it?' People will not understand much, but they are accustomed to that and they will
get a most excellent impression.
"Well, I had a flat, see? So I took a lift..."
(He hitched a ride after puncturing his car's tire, or he took the elevator from his apartment..)
That's all I remember. It continued with something in his boot (a car's trunk / footwear), and then.. who knows?
I've searched for something similar, since I have neither the vocabulary nor the talent to create something like that. Anyone here knows of something similar?