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When a Swede’s not a swede
Recently I went to the supermarket with a Swedish friend. In the fresh produce section, she was surprised to find a vegetable called a ‘swede’. I was equally surprised to find she didn’t know it as a...
View ArticleGive us a ‘z’! Or is it an ‘s’?
Prioritise. Prioritize. Apologise. Apologize. Same word, one letter different. People often get confused with the “z” and the “s” in words like these. One way is generally favoured by American English,...
View ArticleWe don’t need ‘u’!
As someone who grew up in England and thus speaks British English, I have never really understood why or how Americans felt the need to change our wonderfully obtuse spellings by removing various...
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Ya flamin’ galah!
I found this postcard in a souvenir shop in Australia recently, and it greatly amused me (click for legible full size). Australians have come up with some excellent phrases that (sadly) have not made...
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Inquire/Enquire
It’s easy to get confused with inquire and enquire. They both mean the same thing: to seek information about something or to conduct a formal investigation. But which is which? The difference between...
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“Hey y’all!”
Spending a lot of time talking to an American man from the South, the word “y’all” has struck me as very interesting, although probably unusable if you don’t have a Southern accent. It has, however,...
View ArticleAmericanisms
Having spent a lot of time overseas listening to different versions of English, I’m always amused to note the differences and similarities to British English. At the beach recently with an American...
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Penelope Keith bemoans… pretty much everything
Hot on the heels of Emma Thompson’s attack on ‘sloppy’ language, another actress has been bemoaning the state of English. Penelope Keith, star of The Good Life, has given an interview to The Sunday...
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