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British English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4451 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 9 of 29 30 May 2013 at 11:09am | IP Logged | |||||
Maybe the article was written by an American? I think the Guardian normally just keeps the spelling used by the author of the article. By the way, the Guardian used to be rather (in)famous for having a lot of typos and spelling mistakes, hence its nickname "the Grauniad". 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| vogue Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4066 days ago 109 posts - 181 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian | Message 10 of 29 30 May 2013 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
I would say with court documents, yes that's a big difference. I don't know much UK medical terminology, but that's the other place where I could see that being hugely different if chemist vs pharmacy is any indication. As far as Volte's list, I live in the UK and haven't even heard some of those words used (but keeping in mind I'm in London) and some of the British definitions are also our definitions (mind you that may vary by region). For example, everyone I know calls "hard cider" cider in the U.S unless there's a specific need to clarify, whereas this wikipedia page suggests it's the norm to call it 'hard cider'... Same with kebab - most people I know are referring to doner with this spelling and shish with kabob as the spelling. There are plenty on there that I do hear, but I think I've internalized them as normal so perhaps I'm not qualified to advise on how easy it is to pick it up. I have also gotten the impression that some of that vocabulary maybe falling out of favor, generally in favor of the American usage. All this being said, I work for a political NGO and have never had any problems, but I'm also living in England so I do get to hear British English regularly. Maybe without that "immersion environment" a book would be useful. Now if you wanna' be thrown really off.. try Australian. Edited by vogue on 30 May 2013 at 5:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6968 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 11 of 29 30 May 2013 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My impression is that apart from IT and to a certain degree investment finance which are dominated by terms originating from American English, jargon or specialized terms from other fields (especially law and medicine) would require a prospective user or translator to be comfortable with these terms in whatever variant of English is relevant.
Incidentally this reminds me of some Croatian linguists who stated that among other reasons Croatian and Serbian are different languages because of the formal or semantic differences of the specialized lexemes used in Croatian and Serbian academic or legal documents. They reported (with some justification I may add. See next paragraph) that they couldn't reliably understand Serbian academic papers (although may I pointedly ask was it because the grammar and lexemes as a whole were genuinely unintelligible or the underlying intellectual concepts/meanings were outside their experience or academic training?) I'd argue though that much American legalese (to say nothing of British legalese) could just as well be expressed in Mandarin to me since I have no clue of what's being meant even though it's still in English. Yet just because I don't understand it usefully and would need a translator (or legal expert) to make sense of them, I'm not set to treat legalese from anywhere in the Anglosphere as being a foreign or different language in the sense that English and Dutch are different languages. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4480 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 12 of 29 31 May 2013 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In medical terminology, there are very few differences between UK English and US English (unlike in law terminology). Even ''popular'' British foetus is spelled fetus in medical UK English, in order to be uniform with ''global/US'' medical usage. Many Americans publish articles in British medical journals and vice versa, so the uniformization was/is needed. You're more likely to find differences with measure units (imperial units being used in the US and older mg/L favored over new mmol/L). All British psychiatrists are familiar with American DSM system (since, as a rule, this American classification of mental disorders is used for research all over the world).
As for -ize spelling, it is completely acceptable in British English, it is advocated by Oxford University Press, and hence the name Oxford spelling. British English with Oxford spelling is the ''official English'' of the UN. Edited by Medulin on 31 May 2013 at 1:05pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Belle700 Senior Member United States Joined 5508 days ago 128 posts - 143 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 13 of 29 01 June 2013 at 12:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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Lots of great advice here. Thank you to everyone who responded.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6409 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 14 of 29 01 June 2013 at 12:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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fetus wasn't even foetus in Latin :P
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| espejismo Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4863 days ago 498 posts - 905 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani | Message 15 of 29 01 June 2013 at 12:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There are also slight differences in grammar and usage. In British English, for example, 'which' is often used interchangeably with 'that' in the beginning of a restrictive relative clause, whereas Americans tend to use 'which,' at least in formal writing.
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| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4480 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 16 of 29 02 June 2013 at 1:00am | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't like relative clauses in English. Those who wrote the rules tried to copy the Latin grammar,
but even they failed to know what they were trying to do... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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