markonline1

I had to battle to get some torches for my department at work. I started to harrass various managers for torches. I had no idea a torch was something carried by the KKK. When I told the wife they had agreed to new torches she burst out laughing and said "but you didn't ask for torches did you". It was then she told me the difference between a torch and a flashlight. So now we have a stack of wood and some matches at work (they got what I meant really)

g1ant

Absolutely.

Psyman

She's only just started working as a teacher, but began talking like that a couple of years ago. If she spoke so badly when I first met her it would have been a deal breaker! Also, people in my office speak/write emails the same way. Are you saying it's a new thing for kids to talk like that? I'll have to keep my ears open to whether I hear anyone else in the country speaking the same way, or if it's a local thing.

Casual Observer

Forget the words - your roots will always betray you when reciting the alphabet and you reach the 26th letter!

AdrianW2013

unless you entered the US as a young child, I have observed most adults will retain their native accent. so unfortunately my Norn Iron accent will always be with me, no matter how I say Tom - ay - toe, or praw instead of pro, i will end up sounding like all those wannabe irish country music singers. Just plain nasty...... unless we all take speech lessons.

kimilseung

I've had a couple of Brits not know that I am a Brit, now. The locals all know I am a funny foreigner. So, I think I just have a weird fracked up accent these days.

Pulaski

I was talking on the phone to a customer over twenty years ago, when I was in London and she was in Tennessee. It was several years before I first went to America, and she had a regional accent consistent with living in Tennessee. We talked about the business matter in hand, and chatted while I consulted her computer records.

At one point she asked how I came to be working in London when I was from Yorkshire? !!! ..... It turned out she was British and had emigrated and lost/ changed whatever British accent she had had ..... and my accent hadn't changed much since I had left Sheffield when I was eight years old, and I had apparently picked up nothing from living in Gloucester until I left grammar school either.

CAdreaming

my 2 cent worth

Yes
parking lot- rest room - sidewalk - buck - suuurrre - visit with

NEVER
Wader
tomayto
school (for big grown men and women going to college or uni)
gotta go potty _NO NO NO NO NO NEVER EVER EVER NEVER
acclimate
burglarized
Till (as in ten till the hour)

robin1234

We have the School of Oriental and African Studies, and the London School of Economics, though ...

Pulaski

The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

CAdreaming

yup id forgotten!! But I never hear people above the age of 16 say they are going to school - different strokes tho and when in Rome

CAdreaming

enough now!!! My bad

Sally Redux

They learn how to be eye doctors and baby doctors at school.

ShadowBob

No attitude, I use the American English term for things when I'm conscious of it, for ease of communication. What I mean is that I often use the British English term for things naturally and they still understand me because, as others have said, they're educated enough to recognize (zzz) that I'm English.

Speaking of the letter 'z', I believe QI said that the reason so many words use a 'z' instead of an 's' over here (e.g. familiarize vs. familiarise) is that the first writer of the American English dictionary feared the letter 'z' was becoming redundant and therefore integrated it into the language where it was most appropriate. I can't find specific reference to it, but this is the chap: http://education.stateuniversity.com...1758-1843.html

steveq

i had a professor at university with precisely the same problem....