The Wondering Brit

It won’t take you long if you’re an English speaking person to note various differences between American English and the rest of the English speaking world. There are words that are simply not used in the US, words that have totally different meanings to the Queen’s English and of course habits like driving on the completely wrong side of the road! Some of these things are based on purposeful rebellion after Independence, yet much is not.

Driving on the wrong side wasn’t a rebellious act at all, it was simply down to the evolution of the motor car… In fact nearly all early cars had steering wheels in the middle.  Of course, from a nation that after the Romans became the most warring nation on the planet, we chose to ride on the left to draw our swords and fight to the right. Now I know many will argue this point, but for a great many years after the Crusades, anything “Left Handed” or using the left hand to write, sword fight etc, was deemed as dubious and actual heresy! In fact, children at school back in the day were beaten to write right-handedly as it was deemed evil to use your left.

This of course stretches back to a complete lack of understanding between religions… Muslim countries write left handed and they write from right to left. Thankfully with the onset of technology and use of keyboards, much of that is no longer any kind of torment.

“Fag” of course is a well known difference, only in North America is Fag or Faggot used as derogatory slang for a gay guy… for the rest of the English world a Fag is a slang term for a cigarette, Fag-end, is a Cigarette butt. Faggot is generally the term for a well cooked meatball. Of course this has often raised the odd eyebrow with our US cousins if we say something like “Just smoking a Fag”… You may get various responses like “Jeez the guy is whacking a gay guy” or worse… Its origins are three fold; a fag end is the last part of a weavers’ cloth, Faggot also originally means a bundle of or the picking up of twigs for a fire and also the last burning embers in a fire. (in turn anyone seen doing that may be seen as waving their butt in the air). As such a Brit saying he or she is having a “Fag Break” does not mean they’re taking time off from or going to be homosexual.

Another main difference is the word “Biscuit”, now this one really does stretch back to the rebellious days of post Independence… Biscuit in English has always meant something that is baked hard, often sweet and that our US brethren would call a cookie. But!! In this world there are two types of biscuit… the English language one I just described and the Ukrainian/Russian translation meaning soft cake… In this instance a Biscuit in the US is a plain Scone and served up with eggs at breakfast… So in the post Independence influx of Europeans into the US, many new meanings to certain words followed and were very soon adopted. Possibly the first case of the US taking on Russian Communist ways of doing things

Of course the list is endless, the US is the only country in the world to pronounce the letter “Z” as Zee, the rest call it “Zed” and in English we’d use “Xe” to sound like Zee. But the biggest difference in the written language is how the US dropped the “U” out of many words. As such there have been some hilarious mis-translations to US English in countries who needed to translate English into their own language. Thankfully, due to modern tech and the computer age, the computers recognise the difference and these mistakes have all but been removed. Which is good to know as there are 86 English speaking nations including India which alone has a population of around 1,143,540,000

But also the US has words and statements we’ve not heard of… It took many years for people here to even understand what a “Rain Cheque” was.. Likewise, many don’t know what we mean with the word “Chap”, also in the US they measure personal body weight by the pound where as we use both Stones and Pounds – there being 14 Ib to the stone..

But above all, these differences are fun! The downside is you might not understand when someone is taking the piss…  We do say things that others find odd, stereotypical, a cliché even – after all, having a meal with @Gabsatrucker in London’s Covent Garden almost had the mouthful of food she was containing within her face – exploding in a projectile manner from her head with laughter when I said “cheers love” to the waitress… I on the other hand looked on and thought – no need for the Heimlich Maneuver here then..

But hey, life is for the living – so enjoy

Extended Edit:

There are other things too… as blogger “ThatWoman” points out.

If perchance you’re in the UK and you felt the need to tell some young annoying girls to get off their Fanny’s and clear off – this would result in one or more things : Physical assault and/or arrest… You see Fanny here is a slang term for the female genitalia… and further slang for this gets kinda funny if you refer to it as a “Fan Box”.  The term Fanny Pack is translated directly as Bum Bag…

Keep Checking back, I maybe adding more later