Member-only story
10 Things Americans Say Differently
During my student exchange to the US of A, there were many instances where I found myself explaining what I meant by a certain word. As I’ve said in other posts, the people of the Upper Midwest are a famously affable bunch, and everyone I met made me feel really exotic. Both friends and strangers alike always seemed super-interested in what I had to say, and any detail, no matter how mundane, about my life back home in the U.K was a source of never-ending amusement. One thing my new friends and I loved to discuss were the divergent branches of English we both spoke. Sometimes the Americans liked to tease me and get competitive, saying British English didn’t make sense. But I think when Americans tease they expect the target the give some back, and they were surprised with how passive I was. And in truth, there is no such thing as “Proper English”. A lot of words present in the American lexicon are remnants of Old English that the British changed during the Victorian period, but which survived in the US. The use of “z” instead of “s” in words like “globalization” for example.
Probably the most hotly-debated and offensive word the Americans use (as far as Brits are concerned) is the word “soccer” to mean association football. I remember writing it down in school when I was about 13 and my friend said to me in a cold voice “Never say that again. Change it to football now” as though…
