Re: How long do Brits take to adjust
 

I'm a Canadian who grew up in Victoria, BC. There is an extremely heavy British influence over there. I have been in the US for four years now and I still write with the Queens English. I also still speak using mainly Queens English, however due to an incident with a police officer I try very hard to remember how the American pronounce the letter Z.

However I am delighted to tell all Brits and Aussies that I have finally found myself a steady source of Marmite (they also have vegemite) and no longer need to stock up everytime I return home.

terminology differences
 

Hey you guys, please don't take offense to the fact that Americans don't know your accent. Ok, let me back up. I am American. I live in England w/ my husband. (This is actually a site he found and I took an interest in.) People are always asking me, "Are you Canadian?" I just laugh and say that I'm American. It's hard to tell accents, especially when you aren't used to the differences.

I know you are talking about adjusting to the USA way of doing things, not the other way around. But my point is, you should keep your individuality and be proud of who you are. I still say, "elevator" for the lift, and "trunk" for the boot. I've been called out on it a few times, but I feel like I deserve to keep some of my identity. As far as writing the dates differently, it will come eventually.

We are moving to America at the first of the year. I would never ask my husband not to say "rubbish" or "bloody." That's part of who he is, and I'd never try and take that away from him. (Plus, I think a British accent is super-sexy.) There are plenty of people who can't understand a word he says, but that's only because as I said, Americans aren't used to British accents, unless they come from Hugh Grant or Pierce Brosnan.

I would imagine that most Americans don't mean any harm by asking you where you're from/what kind of accent you have. I seriously doubt that it's meant to be demeaning in any way. :)

To Allison W - with you all the way ref retaining individuality, although I suspect it may be easier to do that going from US to UK than vice versa. I may be totally wrong, but because of the massive presence of american films and to some extent tv, I think most brits would probably know what a person with an american accent meant by "the trunk". I'm not convinced the same is true of the majority of americans if you mentioned "the boot".

But some things inevitably have to change for practical purposes -I got into all sorts of trouble over my kids vaccination records that were written ddmmyy...thats just about fitting into a new set of practical requirements, its not about abandoning your heritage. And in any event, for me, a large part of the enjoyment of living outside the Uk is in learning about the differences in other countries, even ones which may superficially be expected to be pretty similar, such as the US and the UK

As for the accent, I think in a lot of ways its a great advantage to sound different over here - I don't find the queries about my origins demeaning or annoying at all - in fact they are quite useful icebreakers and I've met quite a few interesting people immediately after hearing those immortal words "gee thats a cute accent - whered'ya get it"? I've only been here a few months, and haven't yet heard it on a bad hangover morning - maybe that'll be the time it loses its gloss......

Hmm.. I suspect my experience is a little diferent from most postings on this thread :). I'm Northern Irish - so people seem to be happy to tolerate my strange pronunciations and words, some commonly used in all of the UK, others more particularly Irish ( especially the swear words..lol). I lived in Wales for several years before coming to the US and was constantly.. I mean CONSTANTLY mistaken for Scottish, not that I minded. I learnt to ' tone down' my accent and regularise my syntax somewhat there, just to be understood. Being from rural NI people in Belfast can have trouble understanding you :).
My husband has adopted several of my words for things and after over 30 yrs in the West, he's originally from CT, my accent is similar enough to have awakened several old pronunciations from his childhood which he had worked long and hard to lose..lol
He was, ironically raised with several Anglicised spellings and after a chat with my daughter's school counsellor, in which I wished to request that some extra tolerance and explanation be shown to my daughter re: her making adjustments to spellings, I was informed that she was sure the teacher who had marked my daughter down on spelling tests for British spellings would accept them if asked to ? Apparently there's still a debate in the US over the whole spelling thing and the American dictionary I have lists the British spellings as valid alternatives. Shame the school didn't argue I was quite looking forward to asking them if my daughter could receive extra help to learn American English as a second language..lol
Curiouser and curiouser....

My fiancee was over here visiting me recently. she had never been to England before, but by the end of her 10-day visit, she had (quite unbidden) started to talk about taking her "vittamin" supplement! She burst out laughing when she realised what she had said.