About a year ago now I made a friend from Boston while I was living abroad, and was fortunate enough to get the chance to visit her in the States a few months ago. One night we went to an improvised comedy show, and I really enjoyed it, but truthfully, there was more than one occasion where I didn\u2019t understand what was going on. The whole audience would be laughing, and I just wasn\u2019t getting the references! This was quite surprising for me considering Americans and Brits speak the same language, but you\u2019d be surprised at the number of variations between the two dialects \u2013 so here\u2019s 10 of the funny differences between American and British English I picked up on!<\/p>\n
While I was in Boston, I found that Americans tended to say the time as though it were written digitally, e.g. 18:45 would be said aloud as \u201csix forty five\u201d, whereas Brits would more commonly say \u201cquarter to seven\u201d. The same applies with 18:05, which would be said by Americans as \u201csix o five\u201d, and by Brits as \u201cfive past six\u201d. Equally, 18:15 for Americans translates as \u201csix fifteen\u201d, whereas Brits would favour \u201cquarter past six\u201d. You do wonder how these curious differences developed, don\u2019t you?<\/p>\n
I will never forget my American friend Nora turning around to me and saying \u201cshould I wear pants tonight?\u201d my automatic reaction of course being, \u201cyes, Nora, you should always wear pants!\u201d . This is a difference between American and British English which still baffles me to this day. Pants in America means trousers, and pants in the UK means underwear. I asked my friend what trousers meant to her, and she said it had a connotation of something formal and smart, whereas pants could be anything. This is a difference which I don\u2019t ever see changing either, as pants in the UK will most likely always refer to underwear…<\/p>\n
So in the UK we have terms to refer to a distinct group of young people, which in Scotland translates as Ned (Non-Educated Delinquent), whereas in England they have Chav (Council Housed And Violent). The two words basically refer to the same characteristic of person, someone who is deemed non-educated and sometimes violent, and is usually seen wearing a sports tracksuit. Being from Scotland, I curiously asked my American friend what they call Neds in America, and she didn\u2019t have even the slightest clue what I was talking about. Could it really be that they don’t exist over there, hence there not being a translation? I even showed her a photo of the infamous tracksuit and she was equally as baffled!<\/p>\n
In British English, the name of a floor at street level is the ground floor, with the floor above it being the first floor, and the floor below it being the lower-ground. However, in American English, the floor at street level is usually called the first floor, with the floor above being the second floor, and the floor below being the basement. This can be a really confusing business for Brits staying in American hotels and vice-versa \u2013 why couldn\u2019t it just be the same?! This is one of the funniest differences between American and British English.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never found the pronunciation of American English difficult to understand, it wasn\u2019t until I started teaching English in Colombia, a country with a huge American influence, that I realised how different the two accents were. My students had mostly been exposed to American English, and found me really challenging to understand at times. The simple word \u201cwhat\u201d caused a lot of confusion in the beginning, as one student could not figure out what word I was saying! I soon realised that the American pronunciation had more of an \u201cah\u201d sound, like \u201cwhaht\u201d, whereas the British was more of an \u201caw\u201d sound, like \u201cwhawt\u201d. You\u2019d be shocked at how crucial this difference can be for those learning English as a foreign language!<\/p>\n
This has to be one of the most confusing differences between American and British English, as in the States the temperature scale is measured in Fahrenheit, whereas in the UK we use Centigrade. You\u2019d be surprised the number of times the weather came up as a subject for conversation between me and my friend while I was in Boston, and it was so difficult to understand each other! I never knew what she was talking about when she mentioned Fahrenheit and I hadn’t a clue what the temperature was the whole time I was visiting her. Can we introduce a universal temperature scale, please?<\/p>\n
About a year ago now I made a friend from Boston while I was living abroad, and was fortunate enough to get the chance to visit her in the States a few months ago. One night we went to an improvised comedy show, and I really enjoyed it, but truthfully, there was more than one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24525,"featured_media":133455,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1809],"tags":[15125,15126,12649,8413],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-133448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","tag-america","tag-britian","tag-english","tag-travel"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n