Speedwell

Folks, I just ran across this wonderful blog by an American linguist in the UK. The current post is about words that are arguably untranslatable between American and British dialect. (I wish someone would do one for other dialects of English!)

Check it out:

http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/

robin1234

Uh oh ... I use the expression "it's a curate's egg .." all the time. I guess Americans are just too polite to tell me they have no idea what I'm talking about!

Speedwell

I write documentation for both sides of the pond and had never heard it before. Americans are not too polite to tell you they don't understand, they are too ashamed to admit they don't know.

robin1234

Well, they didn't have the advantage of a childhood & adolescence reading Punch!

This I didn't know, gleaned from the Wikipedia article on Curate's Egg;

RoadWarriorFromLP

I can't agree with the comment about "dude." Depending upon the context, it could be analogous to "mate", or a lot of other terms ("bloody hell", "brilliant", etc.)

This website is a good one: http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/index.htm If anything, he gets points for his discussion of aluminum vs. aluminium.

Speedwell

THIS drove me doolally:

" In the US, toward is more common, particularly in published work; in the UK, towards is."

Incidentally, I stole "doolally" from my mother-in-law, who is so cute when she says it. I evidently give rather the impression of standing wide-eyed and tearing my hair.

Sally Redux

I have only recently worked out that 'marquee' is a noticeboard and not a tent.

The school kept referring to the marquee in messages sent home, and I kept thinking, "Where is the bloody thing?"

RoadWarriorFromLP

I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I learned the British version of the word from a Doc Martin episode.

Sally Redux

lansbury

Is it well you live and learn

TheCreature

I seem to remember that when I was last in the US saying that I had "a fortnight off".
Fortnight seemed to be a word nobody had heard before.

RoadWarriorFromLP

I would say that fortnight is archaic in American English, a term that well-read people should understand even though it isn't used in regular conversation. "Biweekly" would be most similar in meaning.

Going back to the OP, it occurred to me that there is no equivalent for "stone" (as in weight) in American English. Measuring body weight in 14-pound increments would simply make no sense at all here.

Speedwell

Until recently, I was convinced that a "stone" was 20 pounds, which gave me an odd idea of the weight of antique British people It's not as ignorant as it sounds. I had probably asked my father, who, being a Hungarian immigrant, was at a loss to tell me what a "stone" was unless it was the same as the 20-local-pound-equivalent Austrian "Stein".

Cardienscarf

I asked my sister if she had any jumper cables. She thought I was asking about a knitting pattern

robin1234

There was an equivalent word for a week, sennight or se'nnight. Jane Austen uses it in a couple of instances, can't remember which novels. So both are contractions, seven nights and fourteen nights. Sennight has now disappeared so I wonder if fortnight is becoming archaic even in Britain.