Can these two ‘languages’ really get lost in translation?

Here’s a story from the good people at the Daily Mail which depicts the tiny differences between two different ‘language’ pairs that share a lot of the same words, in fact they are largely the same.

Now when we are talking about tiny differences between languages which share some same words, we are not talking about similar language pairs like Spanish to Portuguese translation, which both share the Iberian branch of the Romance language group or even languages that originate from the same country such as a Mandarin translation of a Cantonese word or phrase.

The Daily Mail, in actual fact has provided a sort of translation service for the language pair of…….English to English! You would be right to think that they might be going mad here but in truth the two types of English languages we are talking about is the UK Standard and American Standard English which you’ll find out has quite a few differences in which certain words do not match or translate over the other side of the pond.

Thanks to the mass ‘Americanisation’ (or US spelling ‘Americanization’) of the UK through Hollywood movies and US television programs, music and retail translations; Brits are more likely to be clued on certain American lingo than the Americans on UK terms, concluding that it is American English that holds a bigger dominance over UK English. This comes after airline giant British Airways conducted a survey of 2,000 individuals which were split 50% British and 50% Americans to see whether they could decipher each other’s common words or expressions.

British words and phrases that Americans found it hard to grasp where things like ‘brew’ (drink) where 60% had no idea what it meant and ‘titchy’ in which a massive 94% did not know meant ‘small’. Over a third also had an idea about what the cockney term ‘knees up’ (celebration) meant, albeit the wrong and x rated adult description. Where on the other hand majority of Brits understood what Americans meant by ‘zip code’ (post code) and ‘eggplant’ (aubergine) although almost 75% of Brits did not know what ‘broil’ (cook) had meant as well as a massive 93% not knowing Americans use ‘arugula’ for salad rocket.

The survey also found the words we do share often have different pronunciations with Americans finding the British pronunciations of ‘vase’ (varse), ‘schedule’ (sked-ule) and ‘vitamin’ (vit-a-min) the most irritating; Whereas British people found the American pronunciations of ‘aluminium’ (alu-mi-num) and ‘math’ the most annoying.

Although it isn’t all bad having a British accent as it seems to make you more attractive to Americans who associate Brits with ‘class’ but, however they also think of Brits as ‘having bad teeth’. But all in all this hasn’t affected our relationships as both Brits and Americans mutually agreed that each cultures have had a positive effect on each other’s despite the minor language barrier.