UK vs US English?

Erian Dragonborn

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Hi everyone!

As a non-native English speaker, our teachers in high school have the choice on whether to teach us UK or US English. As far as I can tell (though it's a while ago) I think we have been taught UK English in writing but US English in speech (weird) or mostly a combination of the two. I wonder if our teachers knew the difference.

Point is: now that I am in university, I want to distinguish between the two. Because the UK is closer to home (I live in Europe) I have settled on that. However, if I am working in anything that is not WORD or has a similar grammar check, I have a hard time finding out which spelling is UK and which is US. Even worse is trying to find out which words are common in which variant of English. (Lift vs Elevator, that kind of thing).

Are there more people who struggle with this? Who don't have English as native language and try to settle on one variant? If so, what are your tips?

I have one that kind of works:
- Listening to television with subtitles in the variant that you want to use.
For me, if I listen to the BBC I can pick up which words they use. This will not work for all television, I assume, as UK and US English are mixed there as well, but that might also be a level of purism that I don't want to get into :p If they are mixing those words up, than so can we.
 

Curlz

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The differences are small and easy to memorise. You can do a quick search on the internet and there are lists and guides all over the place. Grammar is 99.99% the same, in spelling there are couple of easy rules to remember (an extra letter here and there), and the list of actual word differences is about a page long.
 

onesecondglance

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I think that's probably the first time anyone's said the differences are marginal... in a statistical sense they may be, but we native speakers tend to get very protective about these things, so I think your concerns are rational, Erian.

I'm not sure how you might deal with this other than either potentially spending time in either country and immersing yourself in the language, or by finding beta readers with a special interest in "localisation", as it were. I know in Harry Potter fanfiction circles, "Brit-pickers" were readers who were especially good at identifying and resolving unintended Americanisms.
 

Melody

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I have the same problem with learning Spanish. There are many dialects and differences in word choice. What is mentioned above is what I do. I listen to movies etc. and also ask questions to native speakers. (The ones who don't mind my asking!) And yes, the internet is also a good source for specific words and phrases when you come across them and are unsure. It's one of those things that just takes time to pick up. But I also have problems with my writing when I try to write 'British' English. I've asked for advice here on the board, and people have been very helpful.
 

Anna Iguana

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I'd echo onesecondglance. I'm a native US English speaker, and I've worked as an English tutor. My student asked to work through one New York Times front-page newspaper article in each study session. I'd never realized how idiomatic language is. Lots of phrases like "apple of your eye" are probably common to UK and US English, but lots of phrases and words aren't ("biscuit" springs to mind). Immersing yourself in ONE country's usage as much as possible, for example by sticking with BBC shows, sounds like a smart idea. Good luck!
 

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Tv shows are meant for as wide audience as possible and thus they use more "universal" phrases, which is not good for somebody wanting to expand their vocabulary. Books on the other hand, are more apt to explore the richness of a language and are a much better way to pick up extra wording. I've seen books in English sold in many European bookshops, so it should be easy to find some, wherever you are. But then again, there are words that would seldom appear in books or tv shows but are widely used in everyday speech. It's a mix.
 

blacbird

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The differences are small and easy to memorise.

Echo this, for reiteration. The differences really aren't all that large, and generally involve a limited spectrum of word choices, many of them colloquial, some pretty humorous, on both sides. I'm a Yank, but lived in England for several years, and never had a moment's trouble communicating, or understanding (with the exception of Cockney rhyming slang, which isn't meant to be understood, even by people outside east London).

In terms of writing, if you are setting a story in, say, Yorkshire or Cornwall, or Maine or south Louisiana, you might need to do a little research into localisms of speech and vocabulary. But it's not a problem that can't be overcome pretty easily.

caw
 

skyhawk0

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As a Canadian who's edited Canadian, British, and US English, I can tell you the differences can be small or significant, depending on what you're writing about. As it's the internet age, people have gotten used to the variants and can generally read the different spellings without thinking about it. The varying terms, well, those can be stickier. Using 'lift' and 'lorry' won't confuse Americans, but 'boot' and 'bonnet' might. Your specific audience matters.

Most any program you'd use for writing will have spell-checkers and dictionaries you can add in various languages. As a Canadian, I've seen the effect of such things. Microsoft refused to offer a Canadian English dictionary for ages (while offering a Canadian French one!), expecting Canadians would default to US English ones. Instead, many Canadians installed UK English ones and spellings like 'authorise' have become more common in Canada as a result.

Here's a decent list someone bothered to put together of variants between Canadian, British, and US English:
http://www.lukemastin.com/testing/spelling/cgi-bin/database.cgi?action=home
http://www.lukemastin.com/testing/s...on=view_category&database=spelling&category=A
 

LJD

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Most any program you'd use for writing will have spell-checkers and dictionaries you can add in various languages. As a Canadian, I've seen the effect of such things. Microsoft refused to offer a Canadian English dictionary for ages (while offering a Canadian French one!), expecting Canadians would default to US English ones. Instead, many Canadians installed UK English ones and spellings like 'authorise' have become more common in Canada as a result.

The Canadian English dictionary in MS Word now is pretty much a free-for-all that has both spellings of most words. (Not terribly helpful if you are trying to be consistent.)
 

Al X.

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The best I can offer is pick one, and stick with it. I am an American writer and I cater to mostly the US market, therefore I use American English. But, I do have characters from the UK and Australia. I utilize UK and Australian colloquialisms and word phrases, but preserve American spelling.

'Mate, would you be so kind as to pull the red colored bag out of the boot of the Jaguar?'
 

Brian Cull

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Hmm, well speaking as an Englishman who is the former Editor of a technical magazine that featured both British and American writers (and also as someone who has lived and worked for a time in the U.S.), my opinion would be that the differences can indeed be more significant than most Americans (and Brits, too) realise.

Erian, if you take a look here http://www.effingpot.com/ and check through each of the chapters you might perhaps get an idea of some of the potential problems, which encompass rather more than a few spelling inconsistencies. That site is unfortunately becoming a little dated in places, but it still lists many of the potentially embarrassing words and phrases that it could be helpful to know about.
 

Pixelated Porn

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Well, I think it is important to remember that we speak America in the USA and not English.
 

noirdood

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I watch a lot of British TV thanks to PBS here in the States. I think I like the show "Vera" but I can hardly understand a word they say on the show. This is not, methinks, the Queen's English they speak on that show.
Over here on the other side of the pond we speak 'Merican. Young people speak one version (designed to mystify their elders, like myself) and older folks speak differently. A New England speaker talking to a Down South speaker has trouble understanding what the other is talking about. Then there is cell fone text gobbildegook, and all sorts of Internet/electronics jargon.
GOOD LUCK.
 

Helix

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I watch a lot of British TV thanks to PBS here in the States. I think I like the show "Vera" but I can hardly understand a word they say on the show. This is not, methinks, the Queen's English they speak on that show.
Over here on the other side of the pond we speak 'Merican. Young people speak one version (designed to mystify their elders, like myself) and older folks speak differently. A New England speaker talking to a Down South speaker has trouble understanding what the other is talking about. Then there is cell fone text gobbildegook, and all sorts of Internet/electronics jargon.
GOOD LUCK.

Have you tried switching on subtitles? I don't have a problem understanding Brenda Blethyn in Vera. I mean, yes, she's putting on an accent, but the dialogue is not full of obscure regionalisms.
 

veinglory

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I would agree with Skyhawk that the differences can suddenly become pervasive depending on the type of document. I have written academic and technical documents in the UK, Canada and the US as someone educated in NZ--and the differences I encountered ran about 10 pages by the time I was done. This was not writing full of figurative language but it was expected to be fully correct and conventional.
 

Chase

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If so, what are your tips?

I have one that kind of works:
Listening to television with subtitles in the variant that you want to use.

I'm a native English speaker who's totally deaf. For BBC programs on TV, I watch them with closed captions, which are usually helpful but don't always follow the exact script.

The best and truest to British vernacular are SDH (subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing) on DVDs or Blu-Ray.

Both CC and SDH are lifesavers for deafies.
 
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Azkaellion

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Anyone who claims they can’t follow an accent on TV is usually telling you they’re lazy, hidebound, or both.
 

Harlequin

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Or just unused to it. My mother had to watch Billy Elliot with subtitles on, and can't understand northern dialects.

Quite a lot of people, even americans but especially foreigners, seem to struggle with Deep South accents.
 

Helix

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Anyone who claims they can’t follow an accent on TV is usually telling you they’re lazy, hidebound, or both.

I dunno, mate. I was watching TV in Texas a while back and I wish they'd subtitled one of the interviewees. He was talking really quickly in an incomprehensible drawl*. So what do you reckon I am? Lazy, hidebound or both?

* well, you can't speak quickly in a drawl, but y'all know what I mean
 
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Cath

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The differences are small and easy to memorise. You can do a quick search on the internet and there are lists and guides all over the place. Grammar is 99.99% the same, in spelling there are couple of easy rules to remember (an extra letter here and there), and the list of actual word differences is about a page long.
I couldn’t disagree more. I was born in the UK and lived there for 32 years, I’m now a US citizen and resident of 12 years and I still struggle with knowing which is the English and which is the American version.

Superficially, the differences are in spelling and word choice but, as with anything, the deeper you dive the more subtleties you discover around verbiage, word choice, word order, colloquialisms, pronounciation, etc.

There’s a joke that England and America are two countries separated by a common language. I suspect the truth is much closer to being that they are two countries that speak entirely separate languages that just happen to use the same words.
 

EmilyEmily

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The differences are small and easy to memorise. You can do a quick search on the internet and there are lists and guides all over the place. Grammar is 99.99% the same, in spelling there are couple of easy rules to remember (an extra letter here and there), and the list of actual word differences is about a page long.

I agree. At some point in my childhood, I remember asking my mom why words were "spelled wrong" in a novel (I can't remember the title, but I was about 10 and REALLY into horse stories), and she pointed out some of the patterns in spelling differences between UK and US English. Something clicked, and from then on I really started to notice other smaller points of difference in novels I was reading. It is more than just spelling, and it was fascinating to me as a young adult (when I discovered the Guardian online and started reading UK news sources as well) to notice the way UK English had evolved from the versions I knew from the (older) books I had read and loved. But the differences are there, and there are patterns, and if you read enough, it is easy to recognize.

All of the Pony Club manuals/books were written in UK English as well. I would imagine today's American Pony Clubbers have "translated" manuals, but we had UK English versions only in the 90s.

Related Tangent: UK writers, I mourn your emerging tendency to abandon the Oxford/serial comma. It almost pains me to see its omission in print. This point is an area in which we can see the language changing in "real time", I think: the serial comma is more common with American writers at this point, and most UK writers leave it out. I wonder if it will turn into the new "gotten."