Today’s post is all about the effect the Atlantic Ocean has on English. It’s not another of those exhaustive, leave-no-stone-unturned lists of English–American translations; it’s another of those exhausting, leave-no-pun-unused pieces about language mutation—I mean, evolution. Specifically, I’ll be addressing five differences that manifest themselves as polar opposites in either meaning or wording.
The Problem
The English language continues to evolve—that’s its strength and its weakness. Words take on additional meanings or change completely. Idioms crop up that are suited to the culture that sired them. Words are borrowed from indigenous languages.
Over time, these simultaneous evolutionary processes cause divergence. In a different age, I feel sure that this would have resulted in varieties of English becoming so different that their speakers might struggle to understand each other. The way that middle and modern English evolved from the languages of England’s various conquerors is an example of that divergence.
What’s different these days is how connected the world is. English-speaking countries trade TV shows, books and movies, and borrow each other’s idioms, colloquialisms and so on. Software products like MS Office encourage convergence by providing spelling and grammar checkers that almost respect the non-American varieties of English, but not quite. Yet despite all this connectedness, there are a large number of words and phrases that can trip up the unwary.
Fill In; Fill Out
Here we’re talking about form-filling, not hole-filling or life-filling or…
If I had been writing this article twenty years ago, I believe I could have said with confidence, “’fill in’ is British English, ‘fill out’ is American English, and they mean the same thing.” But the influences of the global market and emigration are such that according to several websites I visited, both are in use both sides of the Atlantic.
However, the online Oxford Dictionary still maintains that “fill in” is chiefly British and “fill out” is chiefly North American, so unless instructed otherwise by my client, I would observe this convention.
For people who are learning English, as well as for children, this interchangeability of apparently opposite terms must provide hours of fun and frustration.
Could(n’t) Care Less
These are not phrases that have seen much use in my technical writing output. However, they are another example of the interchangeability of apparently opposite terms.
I grew up in the UK, so naturally I filled in my emigration forms. However, when I applied for a Canadian passport, I filled out the forms. You likely couldn’t care less. Or perhaps you could.
“I could care less” has annoyed me ever since I first heard it. As with a number of other North American idioms that I first heard in the years following my immigration from the UK, I tried to accept “I could care less” as nothing more than a variation—an annoying one, but a variation nevertheless.
I should point out that I try hard not to take the stereotypically arrogant British point of view that the mother country is right in all things. Maintaining this position of neutrality is harder with some issues than others; when I heard the word “irregardless” the first time, I went into full-bore huffy Brit mode, and was thrilled and relieved when I discovered that Webster’s flags the word as “nonstandard”. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary doesn’t dignify the word with an entry.
But I digress.
There’s a lot of discussion on the wonderweb about could vs. couldn’t care less. One of my most trusted reference sites is www.worldwidewords.org and the explanations there summarize many of the hypotheses found elsewhere. www.slate.com suggests a number of contributory causes of the rise of “could care less” including sarcasm and the general observation that idioms don’t care about logic. Several sites connect the sarcasm angle with the American Yiddish dialect.“I should be so lucky!” is a similar case in point.
My personal theory, based on nothing more than years of observing people pick up phrases from other people, is that sloppy speakers managed to elide the “nt” sound, and lazy listeners didn’t take the time or make the effort to think about the illogicality of “I could care less”.
A different (and slightly amusing) example of the listener mishearing the speaker: back in the 1950s, a friend of my parents wanted to buy a record for her teenage son. She had heard the song, and knew whereabouts in the song the title words were. Unfortunately, this east London lady struggled with Elvis Presley’s diction and pronunciation, and she went to the record store and asked for a copy of “Marsha Cup”. True story told to me by the lady herself.
I acknowledge that my theory lacks scholarly research, but I’d rather “run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it” than pick the theory that sounds most plausible and add my (not-very-valuable) endorsement.
Whatever its origin, my advice is the same as a number of others (including Americans). Avoid “I could care less”.
Pound for Pound
The # sign has more names than a phone book, it seems. Number, hash, octothorpe, sharp, gate, tic-tac-toe, hex, square… and pound.
Voicemail instructions west of the Atlantic tell you to “press the pound key for…” (in some cases, they say “the number sign”.) Apparently, British Telecom refers to it as the “square” symbol, although I have yet to find a sample message on the wonderweb.
In the UK, the pound sign is “£”—the pound sterling currency symbol. By coincidence, “#” appears above the “3” on a US keyboard and “£” appears above the “3” on a UK keyboard. Still, having one name for two different symbols can be confusing. Thank heavens for international standards—if only people would use them.
Pound the Pavement
Now here’s an interesting one (for me, anyway). In the UK, the pavement is for pedestrians. In North America, it’s for vehicles. However, the expression “pound the pavement” is used both sides of the Atlantic, and means the same thing—to walk the streets unremittingly or repeatedly, as to find work. Do out-of-work Americans jaywalk or weave in and out of the traffic in their quest for employment?
How pavement came to mean two such dangerously-different things is a topic I need to research further some time. The only theory I found was actually the same as mine, and was prefaced with the weasel word “probably”.
I hereby preface my version of the theory with “probably”. In the UK, pedestrians were provided with a raised, paved surface to keep them away from the mud and equine ordure that most streets were in the pre-automobile days. In large parts of North America, where most streets were developed more recently, a paved surface was a luxury provided for the benefit of automobiles—pedestrians either had boardwalks or had to make do with the unpaved edge of the street.
I Think I’ll Table This Article
This is a difference that I found bewildering when I first encountered its North American usage.
In meetings in the UK, to “table a motion” is to initiate a discussion on the motion or to make the motion itself. Figuratively, you are putting the motion on the table.
In meetings in Canada (and presumably in the USA), if you table something, you are postponing discussion of the topic; you are taking the motion off the table. Illogical? It’s an idiom—they don’t care about logic, remember?
The Long and Short
As a technical writer, I consider myself bilingual—I can write in Canadian and British English. If pressed, I could write in American English. Many non-professional writers would not consider variety of English when writing documentation in a global company.
If your organization is writing for audiences in more than one English-speaking country, consider hiring a writer to make sure your audiences fully understand the message.
Please Help Improve Yonder Pedant’s Ramblings
- Did I miss a typo? (I’ll feel bad when you tell me, but I’d rather you did tell me!)
- Did I write something that makes you want to turn green and burst out of your shirt?
- Do you have any better examples that you would share and allow me to use?
If so, please let me know by leaving a comment.