Despite the fact that many of us assembled here share a ‘common language’, I thought that it might be interesting to actually take a look at some of the everyday words we do not share. I am sure I will have touched on one or two of these before (WordPress will find me out!) but I started to think about it now because it is Fall for a number of my readers whilst, here in England, it is Autumn. Now, I know that Autumn must be the oldest of these words – it is English dammit! – but Fall is definitely more literal. So where does Autumn come from? Well, as large chunks of our language do, it comes from a word left behind by The Romans when they buggered off to somewhere warmer, autumnus, meaning, well… autumn. Except I also learned that following the departure of the Romans from our shores, through to the sixteenth century, autumn was actually known as harvest and, more confusingly did, from that time, begin to be called fall. All to do with the fall of leaves I presume. No doubt we went back to the good ole Latin as soon as we discovered that you guys had adopted fall – we’re not a nation to hold grudges, after all.
So, let us continue for now with our shared differences with the U.S. Films (ok, movies) and TV have made sure that we are completely familiar with your interpretation of the language, but the fact that you insist on calling trousers, pants, always causes us to pause because, as anyone knows, pants is, in fact, the generic term for underwear, of which boxers are just one option. (For the under-forties only: beyond that age a completely different level of support is required.) We know (and to some extent accept) that you have sneakers while we have trainers; you have a fanny while we have a bottom and you have a coochie while we have a fanny; you have diapers instead of nappies, bills instead of notes and faucets instead of taps, but restroom for public toilets always raises eyebrows: anybody trying to rest in a public loo over here faces the prospect of an extremely rude awakening!
And you enter buildings on the First Floor, whilst we enter on the Ground Floor. Over here, the first floor is the second floor, and requires a ladder. Anyone leaving a British building from the first floor will find the step exceedingly steep. Equally sidewalk is a very literal use of the language, whereas we use a pavement (from the Latin pavimentum, which means “trodden down floor.” Trodden down because it’s for pedestrians and not vehicles!) Here sidewalk is something people do after a gin or two too many. Most odd for me is the discovery that in the US a car’s silencer is known as a muffler. Here, a muffler is a scarf, and it now makes me realise that ‘having a muffler wrapped around one’s neck’ is something that, in America, would only be carried out by the Mafia.
Of course, we also have many different names for foodstuffs: eggplant (aubergine), scallion (spring onion), zucchini (courgette), chips (crisps), French Fries (chips) and single portion (an entire family meal).
Which culinary reference brings me on to our Australian friends who employ, without question, the very best use of the English language – generally by abbreviating all nouns and sticking ‘ie’ on the end – but you do have Shrimps which, to us, are some kind of mutant Jurassic-sized prawns. Shrimps, here, are the size of woodlice – if you put them on a barbecue they would definitely fall through. Here, a shrimp of sufficient size to barbecue is called a lobster. Some other great Australian words are Berko (angry – I would love someone to tell me why), cut-lunch (sandwich – cut lunch just sounds impossibly posh), daks (trousers – they were always known as kecks here when I was a kid, I wonder if it’s the same thing), jocks (pants, boxers) but by far the best thing is the fact that you are a nation of thong wearers. Over here we wear the far more onomatopoeic flip-flops on our feet because, in the UK a thong is a very flimsy item of female underwear – known in Australia as bum-floss: surely the word of the century. What’s not to love about a language that can do that?
Getting On 
I had to laugh at trousers and pants. My father was Scottish by birth but raised in England so he always said trousers. My husband, an American born and bred should say pants, but serving 20 years in the Marine Corps beat that out of him. It’s always trousers in our house.
😉
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Hurrah! 😜
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Over here Fall is the right word. But I would not call it that in England. When I first encountered American people they thought me very funny for referring to a flannel which they called a washcloth or face cloth and also a macintosh which to them was a raincoat (or as our Thai gardener called it “lane-coat”. Maybe if I had chosen total immersion when I came here I would have been less confused but I went to work for a British company and anyway my “GI bride” aunt was English (who I lived with a long time). Mum’s last words to me when she launched me off aged 16 “don’t lose your English accent darling”. I’m sure she thought I did, yet all Americans always, to this day say how much they love me “accent” (cheek). I have a nephew who has become Australian and I live with a South African, not far from the border with that other lot, the Canadians. I swear I am never quite sure if I mean what I said or vice versa. Most foreign people speak better English these days.
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The British language includes many variations, most common to each area and country, be it England, Wales or Scotland. In many places Autumn is called just that, but in Wales it is “Hydref”.
In Okney, they are both British and Orcadian, but not always considering themselves as Scottish, celebrating the Autumn equinox as “Gore Vellye”.
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