Although speakers of the two versions can communicate with each other, there is a saying (commonly attributed to the writer George Bernard Shaw) that ‘The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language’. There are some word differences between the two forms of English – particularly in topics such as food, clothing and the built environment – which can cause some (often amusing) confusion. Here are some fun illustrated examples. My favourite confusion is pants and trousers – which is yours?
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Couldn’t agree more. But my favourite Americanism isn’t listed. Exactly what is a “condominium”?
I can see how there might be some confusion over this word! I believe a condominium is what British people might call a residential complex, or, more simply, an apartment building – whereas Wikipedia describes a condominium (or condo) as ‘a form of multifurcated real property tenure’, which is a very good example of how difficult to understand some Wikipedia entries can be!
In essence, the apartments in a condominium are owned by the individual occupants (rather than rented), and the ‘common areas’ such as hallways and lifts (elevators) in the building are owned collectively by all the occupants.
Oxford standard, ‘proper’ English was taught in Germany when I grew up. This is embedded in me and I’m only very reluctantly accepting some Americanisms from my students now.
Thanks for your comment, Annie.
I think we need to accept that both versions are correct – but must be appropriate for their audiences. Students at UK universities, or writing for UK readers, must take care not to talk about faucets, sidewalks and elevators, and UK-English speaking students who are studying in the US must take care not to confuse their readers with UK English spellings and idioms.
I am concerned that there are learners of English who don’t actually realise that there are differences between the two versions. Some years ago, for example, a student I was teaching – whose English was otherwise excellent – was using US spellings (color, center etc.) and had no idea that these were incorrect in the UK; he didn’t know that he had learned US English rather than UK English.