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From: dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: American vs. British English
Message-ID: <2366@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 18-Nov-86 12:56:55 EST
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.2366
Posted: Tue Nov 18 12:56:55 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Nov-86 22:07:00 EST
References: <200@acornrc.UUCP>
Reply-To: dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady)
Organization: Datalytics, Inc.
Lines: 43
Summary: British-American translation

In article <200@acornrc.UUCP> bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) writes:
>Has anyone ever enumerated all the differences between American English
>and British English?

While I have others, I like Norman Moss's British/American Language
Dictionary published by Passport Books.  It's a two-way dictionary
totalling 174 pages and merits cover-to-cover reading as well as
reference use.  He works in a number of very funny stories about
misunderstandings that arise from differences in usage.

All dictionaries of this ilk (or those I've seen, anyway) offer
definitions that are superfluous.  That is, they take care to translate
a British usage into an American one even when that British usage is
quite current in the US.  One should therefore take care not to assume
that, say, an American usage that shows up in such a dictionary is going
to sound alien to a Briton, especially considering how much American
television he or she is likely to have seen.

Such dictionaries also tend to gloss over differences in grammar, such
as the British practice of using plural verbs with nouns referring to
institutions ("British Rail regret any inconvenience..."), and in
subtleties of usage, such as the British practice of saying that
so-and-so lives "in" rather than "on" a given street (which comes from a
difference in the precise meaning of street).  I am writing from an
American perspective, of course, so non-American readers can make the
appropriate adjustments...

Finally, Moss takes the trouble to translate a common hand gesture.  The
American augmented fist, with the middle finger extended, shows up in
Britain as a sort of V-for-victory sign, back of the hand toward the
target and delivered in a sort of upward thrusting motion.  Near the end
of the last Mad Max film someone makes this gesture (the American form)
and I recall wondering if they had shot two versions, an American
gesture and a Commonwealth gesture.  (Which reminds me that, of course,
American English and British English are far from being the only
dialects.  Australian is a font of glorious useful if frequently
unprintable words, and Indian English offers us that magnificent antonym
for postpone, "prepone.")
-- 
D Gary Grady
(919) 286-4296
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