Thread: Illogical American expressions?

Originally Posted by JDNSW

I think the UK still uses miles on roads.

We do, but fuel consumpsion is no longer rated as 'miles per gallon', which makes matters confusing for us old farts.

Does every car have a built in calculator so you can do the conversions?

Originally Posted by jx2mad

Does every car have a built in calculator so you can do the conversions?

Hey! We're talking about Land Rovers here.....

Originally Posted by Tank

I'm not phased by some american sayings,

Or even fazed!

Originally Posted by Tank

then Noos for News,

Actually, that's a variation in pronunciation used in some places in the UK.

The US pronunciation of "caramel" seems to be "carmel".

Originally Posted by johntins

When I was in the Army, we had 'left' tenants, while our American friends have 'loo' tenants.

I once read that the pronunciation in the RAN (or was it the RN) is as the Yanks do it. Can an ex-navy member confirm/deny?

Originally Posted by Hogarthde

Stillson is more commonly known as a ' pattern' .

I've never known them as anything else but Stillsons.

A monkey wrench is different.

Monkey_and_Stillson_wrenches.jpg

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Also, why do Americans delete the letter 'u'?

Blame Noah Webster who created the dictionary used throughout the US. He simplified spelling for schools. His dictionary was the biggest selling book at one time. Noah Webster - Wikipedia

Originally Posted by p38arover

Blame Noah Webster who created the dictionary used throughout the US. He simplified spelling for schools. His dictionary was the biggest selling book at one time. Noah Webster - Wikipedia

Not quite accurate. Webster had developed a much more aggressive system of spelling reform for English, and was a champion of the idea that the new nation needed a distinctive new language that could not be confused with English.

However, he was faced with the fact that he had to make a living, and how he did it was by selling school books such as spellers. And the parents who bought this did not want their children growing up with a written language that would cut them off from the major source of business and education in the English speaking world (UK), so they were not interested in his spelling reforms. So what he did was to use in his spellers any alternative spelling of words in eighteenth century English that was in the same spirit as his reforms. He probably sneaked in a few neologisms as well.

You need to remember that many of the differences between UK and US English are the result of the mid eighteenth century push to use the French rather than Latin spelling for English words derived via the French, such as the -our words, and these were still new in 1776, and being used alongside the new spelling. The UK spelling was mostly cemented in the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century with compulsory education and a centralised syllabus.

Some American spellings came later for a variety of reasons - a good example is Aluminium, which had an unfortunate typo in the Reynolds metal catalogue at the beginning of the twentieth century. As this was the first catalogue that offered the metal as a commercial product in the US, the spelling became entrenched. The American Chemical Union (I think I have the name right) did not change their spelling for another couple of decades.

There will undoubtedly be similar stories for other words, but as you correctly point out, the blame most of the differences can be laid at Noah's feet, or more accurately, his spelling books!