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Wednesday, June 17, 2020

American and British English to use when writing and speaking



I looked at a British newspaper headline. Rolling Stones' son says being raised .. nearly killed him. That's an Americanism. Why is it in a UK newspaper. Why am I putting it in my blog?  When I started my blog, writing about London, England, and America, and the world, I was surprised to see that I had more American readers than British readers. My husband is a statistician and he looked at the statistics. To him the answer was obvious. It did not lie in the subject matter but the readers. I had more American readers because there are more Americans reading the internet because there are more of them. The Brits live in a country and think they are in a continent. The Americans live on a continent and everyone thinks they are just a country.


Here's a list of Americanisms and British equivalents:

elevator - lift
eraser - rubber
raised - brought up
make a right - turn right
a quarter after - a quarter past
rubber - Durex/conraceptive
truck - lorry
truck driver - lorry driver
we will stop momentarily - we will stop for a moment /briefly



  • About the Author
    Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
    I and my family have lived in the UK, Spain, the USA and Singapore. I am a travel writer and photographer and teacher of English A level and English as a foreign language.

    Please come to a Toastmasters International Club where the English clubs have a language evaluator or grammarian.  We also have French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil and other language clubs based in Singapore and many more online around the world which because of Covid-19 are now meeting online.

    I am President of Braddell Heights Advanced, meeting every Wednesday, on zoom the first Wednesday of the month but the other Wednesdays are workshops on app 

  • learncool.sg

  • Or quicker to type and easier to remember: 

  •  tinyurl.com/BHACOOL

    Useful Websites
  • https://www.facebook.com/angela.lansbury.121
  • https://www.facebook.com/groups/polygotcommunity/

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reduplicated_place_names

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reduplicated_Australian_place_names

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reduplicated_New_Zealand_place_names

  • https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogs
    https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-say-thank-you-in-several.html
    https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/05/introducing-yourself-in-english-spanish.html
    https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2020/01/second-set-of-portuguese-words.html Please share links to your favourite posts
    https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club
    translate.google.com
    duolingo.com
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