I once blogged about the difference between the letter Z (here) in the UK and in North America. It was only the tip of the iceberg as far as pronunciations and language differences between these English speaking nations (I should note, out of respect, that Canada actually has two languages... French and English. Oh and the US will probably have to include Spanish as it's other langauge some day soon).
Most people can instantly think of a few words that the UK and North Amercia pronounce differently, such as tomato, but the one word that tickles me everytime I hear it is Herb.
For some reason North America says 'erb and drops the H. When I was living in england the only time I would hear herb said like that was from the Carribean accent so to see a 70 year old checked/checkered (depending where you are!) shirt wearing Canadian say 'erb really makes me chuckle and seems really out of place.
In many instances words mean different things over the water.
In British English pavement means the sidewalk. Chips means fries, pants mean whitey tighty underwear and fanny means vagina!
"We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, the language"
Oscar Wilde , (The Canterville Ghost, 1888).
This Wikipedia article goes really deep into the differences between the languages.
I really love the fact that the differences exist. Here in Montreal I'm teased about not speaking properly and the differences in our english provides at least a small amount of entertainment everyday.
If you can think of any other words that are differently understood between versions of English (or any other language for that manner) then I would love to hear about them.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
I say tomato you say tomato
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4 comments:
Now Aussie english is different again - we do have chips, but have footpaths rather than pavements or sidewalks, and as for vaginas and fannies - well i'll maybe point you to a post on my other blog Sunrays and Saturdays
Those are interesting, especially fanny! Guess we really need to pay attention to our word choices when we're visiting other countries. I find it interesting too the different spellings of words. It seems that the UK uses "ou" spellings in many words that the U.S. uses just the letter "o".
Ian, I'm taggin you in the Four Foods for Friday meme. You can check it out via my link. :-D
I think you'll find that words and their pronunciations will vary from province to province. Here in Newfoundland, being the first settlement in North America, we tend to hang on to a few British and Irish words to this day. Most Canadians refer to their car's hood, while Newfoundlander's say "bonnet". We have developed a distinct dialect that is very different from the rest of Canada and can sometimes be difficult to understand!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newfoundland_English
I love the fact that accents and languages change from area to area.
I am currently working with a guy from Nova Scotia and he almost has an Irish accent.... very strange!
I also used to live with a Frenchman and when he first arrived in England (when I lived there also) his accent was hard to understand and his English wasn't amazing.
He used to work in a chain sandwich shop on the till. He did not realise (or realize, depending where you are from!) for a while that he was offending some customers, because when he asked them if they would like to purchase a certain soft drink with their meal (as instructed by his manager) it was coming out as "Would you like cock with that".
Thanks guys for the links.
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