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.
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.
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).
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.
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 :)
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.
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'.
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.)
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.
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.
> 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 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?
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.
"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'.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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).
> 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".
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. ;-)
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.
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.
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.
279 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 241 ms ] threadThe former is more nuanced than the latter.
Interesting piece - particularly for those of us British English speakers travelling to the US for the first time.
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.
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.
Source: English spouse and Australian best friend
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).
and pants to mean trousers / slacks
seems to confuse a lot of south east people
Perhaps the have a common source? Old Saxon?
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).
“Centre” indeed comes directly from French, but “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?
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/color-colour/
It seems the French spelling was "colour" at one point.
[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?
"launch a boo-eey"
(Brit's distinguish between "boy" and "buoy" - the latter has the same sound as in "buoyancy")
That didn't clarify much. I would pronounce "buoyancy" as if it began with "boy".
Edited: - Maybe this will help:
http://www.employees.org/~dfawcus/Good-Boy_Life-Buoy.m4a
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.
I don't understand either. As far as I'm concerned, boy and buoy are homophones, and the first syllable of buoyancy is too.
Wiktionary agrees: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/buoy#Pronunciation
Southie Spock would have been amazing though.
Didn’t they also find it amusing how you pronounced “sorry”?
There’s an episode in South Park where Butters has a Canadian girlfriend and he tries to say it like she does.
I asked him what the heck that meant. He said picking up girls, what do they say in America?
I said "cruisin' for babes", and we all laughed.
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’”.
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.)
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.
"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?
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.
US english: pants == trousers
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-20526220
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.
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.
When I read that book I understood as American English.
American English, this is nearly meaningless noise. Possibly some sort of orthodontic apparatus?
Trainers == "Sneakers", casual athletic shoes.
In American English, you’re taking off their pants to expose them in their underwear.
In British English, you’re taking off their trousers to expose them in their pants.
This is just one of many weird, weird, hilarious things about the similarities and differences between the two dialects.
>US english: pants == trousers
To further complicate matters, Russian borrowed "trousers" with the meaning "underwear"
1. Turns out there’s another British slang meaning for pants.
(I rather vividly recall acting out the discovery of one's pants not containing handcuffs, and changing into some with toy handcuffs hanging out...)
If we were using a lift as in elevator we’d “get in a lift”.
:)
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.
> 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flapping
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.
Not at all. Americans reduce many /d/s and /t/s to a flap, which is much weaker than a [d]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tap_and_flap_consonants
Dropping a /d/ or /t/ is not common at all, except in the sense that an /nt/ cluster may be replaced by a nasal flap.
Fair enough.
When most American pronounce "city", I hear "siddie". What's going on there? Is that a flap?
"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.
Same with the Rs, there are many variations across different British accents.
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."
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.
This is really something else.
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.
Difference indicates departing from something. It's "different from".
Oh well, I guess they'll just have to continue being obviously wrong...
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.
My non-native english usually sounds like whatever show I've been watching lately on Netflix.
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).
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.
Still raises a smile when I think about it.
The phrase “to love… forcefully” was used.
> 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”.
Yes. To 'bum' something is quite different 'bum' someone! English is weird.
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.
This is going in a direction I wasn’t anticipating - I thought “bum a fag” would realistically mean “ask for a cigarette”.
Roald Dahl wrote extensively about "fagging" and all that went with it: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/biographyandmemoir...
:)
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
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".
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.
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!)
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!
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.
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).
Brit: "Not very often"
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".
I've always "read" that in my mind as "lawr and order". (Yes, it is of course hard to tell, since it's pronounced "lawranawrder".)
Fortunately he had a good sense of humo(u)r and forgave me.
(More hazardous than cookies and biscuits)
References: American Eng: "for the nonce" = for the moment. i.e. temporarily https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/for%20the%20nonce British Eng: "nonce" = a person who commits a crime involving sex https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/nonce
> "word coined for a special occasion," and not likely to be wanted again, 1884, from nonce "for a particular purpose" + word (n.).
And despite what you say, I still feel certain that's what's going on. The meaning is identical.
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.
Anyone British working with cryptography should know it’s a number only once but, well, it can be awkward.
For example, they spell "Colour" the British-English way but "Analyze" the American-English way.
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. ;-)
Many international organizations¹ like the United Nations use Oxford spelling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling
I think it's an excellent compromise, as it looks slightly foreign to the average American and the average Brit.
¹ Oxford spelling!
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.
Oh you lovely wiking, you...
Still what I use.
___
1: Northern European confusenik: Born German, lived in Finland almost half my life.
In British English you first apologise for it: “I’m very sorry, excuse me, would you mind, could you please pass the salt, thank you very much”
(edit: but after writing this I note that ‘would ya’ is a contraction of ‘would you kindly’, so maybe I have defeated my own point)
One would be far more likely to hear "Oi, cunt, the salt" here in Blightly than in the USA.