US English v UK English?

Question

What's the difference? There must be hundreds of words the US and UK both use but which have completely different meanings.

Chips, Fags, Gas....

Answer 1

The best is rubbers, my daughter used to collect them. See if you can work out which version of English I am using.

Answer 2

There are too many differences in the 2 "dialects" of the English language to list them individually, but basically, what others before me have written is correct.

However, I must add in response to "megpavlikova's" answer:
Not meaning to sound picky in any way, but I had to send you a message to say that, although you have a perfectly valid point about British English using 's' instead of 'z' & adding extra vowels into certain words, your use of the example FAERIE was totally incorrect. FAERIE is old-fashioned British English & hasn't been used for many, many years. We now spell the word FAIRY, just like the Americans.

Answer 3

Petrol is to petroleum as gas is to gasoline.

The word you use for bottom, "fanny" is slang for a female part on the other side. Also why would you put jelly in a sandwich when the women of England have been making jam for centuries.

We all know what they mean and the USA have different spellings to the originating language ENGLISH (from England) but we know what you mean and you give us a laugh the first time we hear it so who cares if the yanks ancestors got a bit lazy and decided not to use "U"s in our words.

Answer 4

There's no right or wrong when it comes to languages and I personally think it's wonderful how languages can evolve. As mentioned Australian English is also very different, as I found much to my embarrassment when I lived there for a while. One day I went into work after having a late night, a couple of blokes asked how I was and I said I was completely knackered after a night out. They looked so shocked and when I asked why I found out that "knackered" means something completely different in Oz!

Answer 5

You would be surprised how little is actually the same. I have American friends who have absolutely no idea what I'm saying at times because they speak "American" as I like to put it. The variants are extraordinary, from the different syllables that are omitted when speaking, different words used, etc. But really, it's a lot like the differences between Glaswegian and London slang, when it comes to slang, really. American southerners have a lot of difficulty understanding New Yorkers in the same way that we do.
The reason they are different is merely because of the long-term separation. We all think 'well, we settled them, why do they speak differently?', but really, we all have developed our own version of 'English' since the settling of America. We don't speak the same way that Raleigh spoke when he settled Virginia. Both forms of English have evolved separately

Answer 6

As illustrated in one of my questions the other day, the best one has to be fanny. US = Ar'se, UK = Ladies front bottom.
US English doesn't really exist, it's just the bastardisation (or should I say bastardization - see what I've done there) of the English language. As mentioned, the U gets dropped from certain words, but then you have catalog instead of catalogue, I'm sorry, but that's just lazy.
Here are some American words: Elevator, Sidewalk, Trunk.
Here are some English words, Bollocks, Slag, Wanker, Knob, Minge.

Answer 7

There's a big difference, and I can tell you because I teach American English in another country where many people were taught British English by teachers who didn't realize there was a difference. One difference is different words, sure: flat instead of apartment, holiday instead of vacation, lift instead of elevator, and that's not even getting into slang and dialects. Another point is grammar and punctuation: Brits use some singular nouns in the plural sense and vice versa, changing the verb form, and they omit some articles - my least favorite example of this is when they say, "I'm going to hospital," instead of "I'm going to the hospital." Another thing is spelling: British English likes to use the letter s where we use z and they add extra vowels sometimes, e.g. realise instead of realize, and faerie instead of fairy. I think I have a fair grasp of English, but I have to think sometimes when I'm reading a British newspaper if I'm understanding what is meant.

Answer 8

The differences are many, from spelling to pronunciation, to the inflection of different syllables to meanings! I grew up there, but I'm American, so I never picked up the accent, because we transferred back here when I was 8. BUT...I did pick up the spelling since I attended school there for 4 years, and it cost me in school here when we got back, because there were so many words that were so different! I took what I learned here, and embraced both worlds, so to speak. I've got lots of British friends here in the states, who tell me all the time they're doing their best to teach us southerners (NOT me, but others who live here in Georgia) how to speak and pronounce in "proper English". LOL They're great blokes, and more of a party crowd than you'll find in a redneck bar on a payday weekend night!

The two sites below give you a general knowledge of those words you're talking about....have fun learning "Proper English"! (use a stiff upper lip when saying this!) LOL

Answer 9

I did Alevel english and we did about american english. i guy called noah webster wrote a dictionary with the words, spellings of what he called 'proper english', this helped stanardise amerian spelling. The original explorers who went to america said that they were trying to preserve the english language and their version was right. we learnt that there is no such thing as a 'wrong' word no language is wrong. the language changed because it was further away from the centre of the british empire (london) and in order not to associate themselves with the centre, they changed words and how the words are pronounced. This is how accents were developed. There probably are lots of words that are not the same but we can never know them all.

Answer 10

I don't understand why they speak differently to us. People from the British Isles emigrated to America hundreds of years ago but how did the language evolve? It's not like the first people who emigrated there started using the different words because they could not have learnt those words from the Native Americans now could they?

Answer 11

OK, fags in the UK means cigarette, here the word *** means a guy who likes guys in a seuxal way.

The UK calls it the "boot" in a car; we call it the "trunk"

The UK places its emphasis on Naval Officers who can think under stress and in combat- look at their Submarine Captains. Americans Submariners place their emphasis on the technical aspect of their boats.