Transatlantic English is my name for English that is easily understood on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly in the two biggest English-speaking countries, America (US) and Britain (UK).
Examples: The Economist is a good example. It is a news magazine that comes out of London yet something like half its readers live in North America. Even better examples in my experience are Orwell, Churchill, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, H.G. Wells, and Desmond Morris. Their English seems even less British to me.
Some tips:
- Dates: Write dates out: May 7th 2019 or 07 May 2019, etc, but not 5/7/19 or 7/5/19. The US compared to most of the world writes dates backwards as month/day/year.
- Money: Use US dollars, at least on first mention.
- Measurement: Use metric. Stuff like gallons and tons are different in the US and UK while metric units are always the same. Also, in the US most people do not know how much a league, stone, furlong, or fathom is.
- Spelling, grammar and punctuation: These are clearly different in British and American English, but the differences, by and large, are not confusing. Everyone knows colour and color are the same word.
- Slang: Avoid. In general, the more formal your language the more easily it will be understood. I discovered this by watching “Law & Order: UK”: I could understand the lawyers way more easily than the police.
- Product names: Avoid these too. Some are known on both sides of the Atlantic, like Google and Band Aid, but some are not, like Q-Tip and Ribena.
- Dialect words: Avoid these, of course, but the dangerous ones are not those found mainly on one side of the Atlantic – like lorry or gasoline – but those found on both sides but with different meanings or shades of meaning. Middle school, for example, means roughly ages 9 to 13 in Britain, but 12 to 15 in the US. Or: pants means trousers in the US, but underpants in Britain. Some other examples: Asian, biscuit, braces, brilliant, bum, chemist, chips, the civil war, clever, cot, dear, diary, dumb, fanny, fight, football, homely, keen, mad, momentarily, no question, public school, purse, quite, smart, spunk, subway, surgery, vest.
Transatlantic culture: stuff that is well-known on both sides of the Atlantic:
- holidays: New Year’s Day, Easter, Christmas.
- sport: tennis, Olympics (but not cricket or baseball).
- film: Hollywood, James Bond.
- television:
- channels: Netflix, CNN, BBC.
- shows: Downton Abbey, Sherlock, Planet Earth, Game of Thrones, Westworld, The Walking Dead, The Big Bang Theory, The X Files, Seinfeld, Frasier, Friends, Happy Days, Dallas, Starsky & Hutch, The A-Team, The Waltons, The Sopranos, The Wire, The West Wing, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Oprah Winfrey Show.
- music: most pop music is the same (The Beatles, Rihanna, etc). The most successful musical acts are known on both sides of the Atlantic.
- magazines: Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Time, Cosmopolitan, National Geographic, Marie Claire, The Economist, Men’s Health, Vogue, The Week, Reader’s Digest, Elle, InStyle, GQ, Maxim. Some of these, like Cosmopolitan, have separate US and UK editions.
- Internet: 15 of the top 20 websites are the same: Google, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Wikipedia, Reddit, eBay, Twitter, Netflix, Live.com, Instagram, Twitch.tv, Yahoo, Pornhub, Microsoftonline.com.
– Abagond, 2019.
See also:
- Transatlantic accent
- Transatlantic hit songs
- Transatlantic novels
- style guide
- English units
- The Economist
- Rewriting:
- Law & Order: UK
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The Merriam-Webster versus the Oxford Dictionary way of spelling words is interesting.
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I have been posting on one online community for a couple of years and quite a few posters are from Caribbean islands that were colonized by the British and quite a few Africans from Nigeria. I have noticed they too use the Oxford Dictionary way of spelling words.
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I have to have captions when watching shows from the UK because of the accents.
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You forgot about the British “Loo” their equivalent of what Americans used to called the John” – or bathroom.
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Speaking of understanding English on both sides of the Atlantic both in the UK and USA. I do remember being in London as a tourist. And some black guys laughing at my southern accent and asking about the television show Dallas at the time. Then they started teasing about eating collard greens and cornbread. At that time I was not educated about colonialism. Many black British people immigrated to England from the Caribbean and Africa. I was fascinated with their accents even though it was hard to understand. One of the black guys asked me why were black Americans so violent? I was taken aback by that question, and was dumbfounded as how to respond. It’s true all black people are not a monolith. There I was a black women from Texas being scrutinized by three black men making generalizations about black Americans. I feel this is how first generation immigrant black people felt when being scrutinized by American black people and American black people making generalizations about them.
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British cuisine is horrible. I ate fish and chips for four days. It was good they had American fast food joints like Burger King and KFC. Although I hate both those places and they had Chinese take out places.
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@ Mary Burrell
I was there for almost two months on a summer college course. The school’s food was worse than anything in the restaurants. The poor cafeteria ladies, they kept making us what they called “pizza” because they thought since we were Americans we must love pizza, wouldn’t we be delighted. It was an abomination — the crust was like soggy bisquick, and they put cheddar cheese and eggs on top.
I learned really fast when eating out to go for the curry if there was any on the menu. There was also a Chinese takeout place in town that was really good, like you mentioned.
But there were two British things I did discover I liked: Scotch egg and what they called the ploughman’s lunch.
Tying in with language, I got myself in a small predicament once when trying to translate “bugger” for my fellow Americans without being overly explicit.
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@Solitaire: I actually enjoyed London and all the tourist attractions.
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The money exchange was tricky our American dollar isn’t worth much over there.
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@Abagond: Do you have a British Box? It is a subscription service it contains all movies and television shows and lots of entertainment from Great Britain. An Anglophile such as yourself would enjoy this. But you probably own all those things anyway.
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@ Mary Burrell
I only had one weekend in London, but I did travel to some other places and got to see some touristy things, like Stonehenge and Tintern Abbey.
Most of the time I had to be at the school, which was in a small town. I did enjoy that, though, because I felt I was getting to experience a little bit of everyday life in non-tourist Britain. On the other hand, the town was very very very white. There was only one black person I got much of a chance to know, and he was just a kid, I think about 14. He and a white boy his age were pals and lived near our school, and they liked to hang around with us, but they were both so young and goofy and silly that I never had the type of discussions with him like the ones you described above with the black people you met. If I remember correctly, he was born in the UK but his parents were immigrants from Jamaica. I never met either set of parents. I don’t even know if they were aware their sons spent that summer vacation tagging along after U.S. college students. I learned most of my British slang from those two kids and in exchange taught them a bunch of U.S. cusswords that I hope won them admiration from their peers.
If I had spent the whole time in London, I would have had more opportunity to meet people of different races and ethnicities. London was the only place I went that when I looked around, it felt like America in the sense of diversity.
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That was the best thing about Harry Potter. After the first book they dropped the Americanisms and stuck to British English for books on both sides of the pond. “Brit Speak” was ridiculously popular with fans during the height of the Potter fandom.
I learned a lot and some of my favorite forums, posts and videos online explore the differences between American and British English.
I find that Americans tend to find the differences interesting where Brits tend to find the differences annoying and an encroachment on “their” language.
I worked with some Brits on a project once and the coordinator brought the room to silence and eventually laughter when he asked for a “rubber” when he needed an eraser for the whiteboard.
I’d love to visit Britain someday.
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The responses of Mary Burrell, and Solitaire and this article are an example of the difference of two social groups. While both of them seem to be college graduates my life experiences are based on living without college; but, living with a verity of people from various parts of the world.
I have lived in Germany, England, Alaska, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas,Utah, Washington, Michigan and North Carolina. I served for 20 years in the military with individuals from all over the United States. I worked for 13 years at a bank in an exempt status which allowed me to have a voice which removed any thought that I was helpless or disrespected!
In England (close to Oxford)1951-1954 the English pound was worth $2.54. My landlord requested that I come to dinner to pay the rent. In Germany 1946-1949 the “American was king” I lived in Bavaria and near Frankfurt, Germany.
I have not had any real experience of second class citizenship!
Including Alaska I have spent a little over 9 years outside of the United States.
It is kinda foolish for an American to want to think that their language should be the same as another nation because they are suppose to be the same. The language in the United States is not the same in reality! Only in the mind of someone who is stuck on some imaginary concept of communication.
If a person attempted to talk to a person from a deep south state and they were from let us say New England normal community, they could not be sure they could depend on what each was saying because of slang.
“slang /slaNG/ noun noun: slang; plural noun: slangs
1. a type of language that consists of words and phrases that are regarded as very informal, are more common in speech than writing, and are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people.”
In England my landlady said to me “keep your pecker up”! My goodness what did she mean? She meant “keep your spirit up”!
Please go back to the time of the writing of the Constitution and move forward and see the changes of “our” language.
Have a good day!
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@ thatdeborahgirl
“I find that Americans tend to find the differences interesting where Brits tend to find the differences annoying and an encroachment on “their” language.”
I know what you’re talking about. What I wonder is if they get as annoyed with Australians, Canadians, etc.
Also, I’ve gotten the impression that a big part of it is they feel we are making mistakes, when of course the differences are mostly just the natural progression of a living language in separate regions. But sometimes the American usage is actually a preservation of something older and it is the British usage that has evolved. They tend to assume it is always the opposite way and don’t realize sometimes they’re the ones who are using a more newfangled term, spelling, or grammatical construction.
I’ve seen a similar attitude to how we eat with the fork in the right hand but they use the left hand. Their objection to that often assumes that the right-hand style is an American innovation, but it turns out that is how everyone in Britain ate during our colonial period. The fashion for keeping the fork in the left hand and balancing food on the back of the fork didn’t catch on in Britain until well after the U.S. had become an independent nation.
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Scotch egg
Haven’t had that in ages! Ploughman’s lunch another classic if you like raw onions(i do). A lot of Canadian spelling is the same as the British. As for the Brits, I couldn’t care less as to what those colonizers think of language use. The more you can mangle it the better, it acts as a form of decolonization if claiming it as your own.
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@ Herneith
“A lot of Canadian spelling is the same as the British.”
Right, but you do have some vocabulary specific to Canada:
https://www.geekdad.com/2013/12/55-canadianisms-1/
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@ Allen Shaw
My father wasn’t career military, but he did do a stint in the Army and was stationed in Frankfurt about 10 years after you were there (although I think he was mostly in Heidelberg and Bremerhaven).
I haven’t been able to travel as much as I would have liked, and I do envy you that.
But I have had the good fortune to know people from various countries for most of my life. Half of my dormitory in college was reserved for international student housing. That was where I first learned that people from many countries in Africa spoke French and first met Kenyans of South Asian descent. I could sit in the lobby and hear languages from all over the world as students came and went. It was kind of like a tiny United Nations!
Which reminds me, another word that is used differently in the U.S. and Britain is “common.” I remember a conversation with an English foreign student about the difference in popular first names between here and there. She told me she’d been surprised to discover a lot of American women had her own first name. I said, “Yes, ____ is a common name here, too.” Her eyes flared and she snapped at me: “I am not common!!” Luckily I was familiar enough with the British usage to realize what had happened, apologized and explained that in the U.S. “common” is mostly used as a synonym for “typical” without any negative connotations.
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Right, but you do have some vocabulary specific to Canada
I know eh?
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@Solitaire As citizens of the US we have to be careful not to be too “much”.
Many Americans today have had the opportunity and mental capability to attend other nations higher level academic schools and also many citizens have worked in high level jobs in other nations.
It is not necessary for languages to be the same as it is to not have too many close calls like yours with the word “common”. I had Nigerian tenants who came from very rich families and were seeking their Master degrees at U. D,, Ohio. They were very proud of their social status in the African (Nigerian) community. Not like those “standard” people. I believe even today Tribal Chiefs are very important! It is highly unlikely that a “common” person could get out of most African nations except thru forced migration.
The statement I remember when I went to England was “the problem with Americans is they are overpaid, oversexed and over here”! I feel certain when you went to university you did not hear that.
It has been years (1975) since the US declared the metric system to be the official means of numbering; however, it has not as yet made a dent in how we continue to use pounds, ounces feet and other non metric means of measurement. Maybe you just cannot teach an old dog new tricks.
http://time.com/3633514/why-wont-america-go-metric/
Thanks for your comment, if your father was in Heidelberg (Heidelberg was kinda Headquarters place) he may have been an officer or times had changed. My life in Germany was with the all black Air Force units.
I have asked for someone to find the history of those units.
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@Solitaire
When looking up all the meaning of the word bugger I imagine a person could get in trouble in how it was used.
I have heard “bugger off” (Get away from me) in movies; however, one of the definitions is not very good and a person whould need to understand what the person hearing the expressing though you meant.
I watch both Australian and British movies as a break from the US violence. In mysteries I like Father Brown, and several British movie series. The word “bugger’ has always been uses in an acceptable way, not the less acceptable meaning. I did like the old Sherlock Holmes; but, the new Sherlock movies are boring. I liked Morse but could not keep up with the following series. I have not been keeping up with PBS movies lately.
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@ Allen Shaw
No, my father was enlisted and his highest rank was specialist third class. I was foggy on the details so I texted him earlier tonight. This is his response, misspellings and all:
“We were stationed in Heidelberg. We were in the ASA – Army Security Agency & worked for the NSA – No Such Agency. I was a high speed radio operator. I also spent a lot of time monitoring (eavesdropping!) telephones, telertype & radio telertype. We would go to other cities in Germany and France to work for a month at a time. Some of the cities I went to were: Frankfurt, Bremberhaven, Munich, Kaiserslation, Berlin. I can’t remember all the correct spelling. Other citiies I was in for a shorter time were Nurnberg, Manheim & others.”
Also what you said about being in the all black units reminded me that my father has mentioned before that his stint was right after the Army ended segregation and that he served with some black soldiers. I asked if any of the black soldiers he knew were also radio operators and this was his reply:
“No, but some of them were in Traffic Analysis which was a step higher. We had guys in things like the motor pool & supply, but most of us gathered information & it all went to TA.”
It would be very interesting to find out the history of the black Air Force units you were in. If you haven’t already done so, I hope you will write down your memories of those years for your grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
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@Solitaire
I thought that you had a lot of exposure to southern American English. I remember hearing my Alabama grandmother use the word “common” all the time in a negative context, eg, “She was a very common woman” meaning very unrefined.
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@ Jefe
Not sure how I missed that one. Maybe it isn’t used that much in Tennessee, maybe it is and it just didn’t register in my memory, or maybe my people were the type your grandmother would have called “common” in that context and thus didn’t use it themselves. Remember my mother’s family were hill folk who had neither electricity or indoor plumbing; they weren’t exactly refined.
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@Jefe
Speaking of southern influence, I had another revelation brought about by, I think Mark Twain, who said Southern English is closer to British English than any other accent in America.
I had a chance to test that theory repeatedly, after a fashion, with the Brits I mentioned earlier, working with them on a project .
For the most part we communicated nicely and I could always understand then but there were times when it seemed they just couldn’t understand what I was saying. I learned to speak a bit slower in an exaggerated Southern accent and they could understand me perfectly!
It had something to do with the cadence and the way words and syllables are divided. I’m not sure why but it worked.
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@Solitaire go to the following and you may like what you see about your fathers old outfit. Go thru the entire thing there is a picture.
https://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?https&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/USAFE%20Units/USAREUR_HqUSAFE.htm
@abagond sorry I am off subejct matter again
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@ Allen Shaw
Thank you so much for that link! The first person quoted was a name I recognized immediately; he served the same time as my father. Sadly he died a few years ago. I will print this off for my dad and also show him the photos next time I visit. (Unlike you, he has never become computer literate.)
Yes, we have gotten way off topic but I did enjoy this conversation and am very grateful to you for that link.
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@thatdeborahgirl
Most certainly Mark Twain could say that. He may have traveled to some place in England. Of course he perhaps did not go to the country side and talk with the peasants or whatever those poor people who were without means were called,
Mark Twain was born 62 years after the end of the Revolution War. The US was full of “English” speaking people then.
Wrote Tom Sawyer 1876. Mark Twain’s second book
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910) He died 109 years ago. When did he actually say that. Also it may be true that some parts of the south and some people spoke like the people in England spoke then. The rich of the south, you know those plantation owners and shop keepers spoke one way, while the poor whites spoke another way and the blacks had their own way of speaking.
None of them attempted to sound alike!
When comparing documents prepared during 1777 and today one can see a difference in language in this nation, Every since then the languages have separated more. The similarity is the base of the words which mainly is Germanic. I am uncertain how the Latin language is involved.
https://www.quora.com/How-closely-related-are-German-and-English
Today it is almost fatal to attempt to confuse the two languages as one. Look up the word “bugger” and see its different meanings.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness” Mark Twain
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