We are a global community, being naked on a beach and giving a friendly smile seems to get us past any need to share the same language in learning to trust each other. Maybe if world leaders met on naturist beaches we would have had a lot less wars. 

This topic though is about language. In particularly the differences in language within English speaking countries. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA and Britain may all share the same language but each country has little twists that sometimes send me searching on the internet in confusion.  

Where do these differences come from? Sometimes the same words have slightly different meanings, sometimes different spellings. Maybe the influence comes from a neighbouring country that  has less of a connection in other parts of the world. Go back before English was spoken across the oceans and our shared language is not just old English but French, Latin , Danish, Norse... 

And let's not forget these other languages. The Spanish certainly have words that have come from French and English. "W" is a foreign letter and all words with "W" in Spain are from other countries. Many hundreds of Spanish words are basically the same as words used in English with maybe subtle spelling or pronunciation changes.

Just have fun and let the words of this topic take us around the world and explore the big and small differences in our languages and possibly help each other get to know each others homelands a little better.

• This Topic has really been kicked off by this conversation and I am sure no one minds me copying it here, we are all members of the Forum.
  Nigel and Janina referred to clearing a tent pitch at Silverwood and stirred some curiosity.
•  SamD50 Exactly what does the term "Tent pitch" mean in the UK? I know what it is to pitch a tent; but when I google the term it only gives me definitions of "pitching a tent". Now, for us in the U.S., we go camping and 'pitch a tent,' which usually takes up about 1/4 the space it appears you are clearing there. So I'm confused.  
• Steve ANW A tent pitch in the UK is the space you are given to place your tent within. So for example a campsite may have 200 available pitches. Similar in meaning to a football pitch. It does come from the same origin as the idea of pitching a tent but it has taken on the new meaning of the place to do it as well as actually doing it.  
• Nigel and Janina To pitch a tent means to set up a tent. Many camp sites have an open field and they point to a spot that you can use. At our naturist club all the allocated spaces are taken so they have allowed us to create a new one; but the spot needed to be cleared of nettles and made flat. So that was our task today. Next week will set up the tent.  
• SamD50 So here we call it a campsite, then designate it either for tents, camper(vehicles) or just fire pits with table but no tents; if I'm understanding correctly. But also these are in established camp areas and we don't have to clear ground. Thank you for the explanation, folks.  
• Anna ANW Fun isn't it! A campsite in the UK is the complete camping area which has many pitches within it. Nigel and Janina it appears are taking a place/pitch in their club which will be theirs long term and are clearing it before use just as someone may do if they took on an allotment space. Rather than just hiring a space for a short holiday.  
• Jonathan Fuzzybare52 Hasn't it been said "separated by a common language"? 
• SamD50 HAHA, yes, Jonathan! Anna, here it's a "campground," with individual "campsites." If you're off on your own in the woods and not an established campground in a state or national park, when you pitch your tent and build a fire you've created a campsite.
• Steve ANW The crazy old English language has three pitch word origins one being a tar like resin hence "pitch black." Another being to throw, so you pitch a ball or use a pitchfork to throw hay. The third meaning to stick a pole or similar object in the ground. Hence pitching a tent you stick in the poles first. The sports pitch comes from sticking the poles in for cricket and then it moved on to football and rugby too. Market stalls also pitched poles for the table and canopy. Which is why temporary sales areas are also known as pitches. So all these areas where poles were pitched became "pitches." Tent pitch, cricket pitch and sales pitch. The latter then lead to the idea of selling something to someone via a sales pitch. Words as Anna said are fun!  
• SamD50 Yes, Steve, words are fun. Equally fun, are people with enough energy and drive to suss out all these definitions for us. Originally, I only wanted to know the difference between "pitching a tent" and whatever was being referred to as "a tent pitch" as related to clearing a large spot of ground. I have to add here though, that I do enjoy comparing British English to American English; and find many times that British terminology makes more sense; eg, 'flashlights' and 'torches.' We don't really flash them, unless we're attempting to draw attention for some specific reason. Normally, they are simply meant to light our way forward in the dark; hence... torch. Just one example.
• Steve ANW Yes like many things the original word has a older meaning. The word torch goes back before battery lights and refers to the twisted bit of material on a stick like those used for chasing Frankenstein's monster through villages. It is based on the French word for twisted and I assume also gave us words like tourniquet and turnstile and turn itself and if we think Gothic dungeons the Torture Chamber. 
   
• Steve ANW Flashlights as you say are to do with flashing for signalling like from ships or lighthouses. I think it's preference in the USA may be an indication of the fact that when hand held lights were invented it wasn't that long in human terms since a lot of Americans had come over by boat. We are maybe straying into territory that would be fun dealt with elsewhere but I think some of the words in American English have got slightly different meanings now or in some cases have stayed in more common use or gone out of fashion because at a certain point they were taken from England and splintered off in a new direction fitting a new country while in the UK they took a slightly different journey.
  Somehow two different head coverings ended up covering car engines. The hood although an old English word on the American car and the French based word Bonnet on the English car.  

One of the things we have had fun with before is food. The first example maybe explains some differences in American English to UK English. That some words in the USA come from other countries who had large migrations to the USA. In this case Italy and the word zucchini (the Italian word for marrow is zucca). In the UK we call it courgette which is from a French word. Probably partly to do with dishes - like ratatouille. Maybe that is why we also call call another ratouille ingredient auberigine. I never understod why it was called egglant until I saw a white one, being very used to them being purple. Apparently we used to call them "vegetable eggs" before aubergine became more popular in the UK. They are still called something like that in Welsh.  

Talking about Wales. The name is derived from an old english word referring to people who spoke Celtic. There are other areas named similarly around Europe. Place like Walton which would be where the surname came from. Another place is Cornwall - our new home. Corn is an old word for horn. Hence unicorn, and corn itself (the cob looks like a horn). If you look at the shape of Cornwall is is shape like a horn. Cornwall does have it's own celtic language and so it was named because it was horn shaped with celtic speakers. Luckily it didn't become Hornwales - I think Cornwall sounds much nicer!

Absolutely freehiker74 read Shakespeare or other writer at the time and the language is very different. Though it is surprising how quickly your mind adjusts when listening to it. Go back further to Chaucer and beyond and the language becomes different again, come closer in time through authors like Defoe, Swift and Dickens and the language may become easier but there are still differences.  Reading a book from the 1960s would still use different language from a book written today.  So as you say it is little wonder that new words, different spellings and different meanings develop when a language moves to another country, especially with the influence of other languages like those you mention above.

When we were learning Spanish it was interesting to see how the Spanish language in some ways had more in common with older English than modern English, particularly in sentence construction. They also don't use -ing words very often and say things like "It pleases me" rather than "I like it" and "I have hunger" rather than "I am hungry" or "I have ten years" rather than "I am ten years old."

A bit late in this conversation but it is something I come across all the time. When I eventually will be allowed to visit the UK again, I am certain I will have another difficult conversation with my parents about the language I am now using! But seriously, it is interesting how the language changes and how cultural changes in society has influence those changes. British English has always been a melting pot influenced by thousands of years of people immigrating into the country (sorry Brexiters, but there never has been an England for the English, especially while you munch upon your Pukka Pie).

Earlier languages which now exists in sometimes rarely used (by the masses that is), dialects or even separate languages (such as those in Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, etc.), got replaced as waves of Romans, Saxons, Vikings and Norman French came through, which is before we even start considering words and expressions we had borrowed from other cultures that have settled in the country. This is what makes British English the thing it is, both easy to pick up in a rudimentary way, yet a hard language to master, especially correctly enough to pass a GCSE. That was one of the arguments I had with my English teachers at school, because whilst I would use language that technically passed rules of grammar as taught, it was deemed incorrect, or too simplistic.

Experiments I performed upon my unwitting teachers went on to prove that actually you had to break all the rules and specifications as set out by the examinations board to achieve a decent grade. For instance, I wrote two pieces of fiction, one was effectively a rewrite of the first attempt, which was technically within the specification of being concise, on a single page and between 450-500 words. The first attempt was scored as an "E", meanwhile the second attempt was typed (that’s how I got the word count), very "wordy" ringing up over 1800 words, on three printed pages, unnecessarily expounding on irrelevant details and so forth. Oh and the early grammar checker also complained it broke all the rules (of course it didn't understand British English because at the time it greatly differed from American English syntax and grammar).

Anyway this attempt scored a "B+", which led to many complaints and refusal to be bothered with subjects such as geography and history because of the high level of marks attributed to "perfect English" than anything to do with the actual subject. Why have another grade telling me what I already knew; that is my written English is/was poor, and not of a good enough standard. Yet I was in top sets for other modern languages initially, simply because I could not cope with rules and laws that must be broken in English (I mean what sort of rule is that), yet adherence made other languages simpler to understand.

This of course is now my problem with services such as Grammarly - Technically maybe brilliant, and probably the way things should be written. Yet it is probably one of the most dangerous things to happen to English, because instead of embracing diversity, is encouraging homogeneity. However creative people can not typically be creative with homogeneity, as we see from Shakespeare.

 

As previously mentioned, his language is not comparable with todays, yet even at the time it was very modern, with words and language being introduced. Of course, Shakespeare did often write like a modern musician or poet with scanning in mind. He also wrote using the regional accents and dialects of the performers in mind too. So, while some of our modern productions don’t seem to make sense, they would make much more sense when read or performed with a regional accent for certain characters.  

Anyway, onto the subject of American English. My understanding is that whilst yes there are differences because of the differing levels of influence from third parties, it was, in reality, a deliberate break in many ways from British English. There were a couple of reasons behind this. Firstly, at the time, it was deemed that America should shrug off its colonial roots, and develop its own culture, language, etc. By the time the ubiquitous Merriam-Webster dictionary of American English was being compiled, new words and phrases were entering into the North American Language. I mean, how many skunks did we have in Britain, as I am sure that Sir Francis Drake or Sir Walter Raleigh might have overlooked bringing one over for Queen Elizabeth to gawk at, a couple of centuries earlier.

Then if we are creating a new dictionary, we could perhaps change the written form of some words from their traditionally French/Latin written form to how they are pronounced in English. This in theory should make spelling easier for those trying to learn the language, because they grew up with a different first language (I don't know, let’s say migrants from all over the world; see kids nothing is new, immigration has been a hot issue since the start of the USA). So we get changes such as colour becoming color, centre becoming center, metre becoming meter. Some of these changes were also getting exported back into the mainline British English too. Yet some are, maybe by urban myth, also accidentally introduced into the language, such as how aluminium became aluminum.

So having been a very frequent visitor, and now living and working in the USA, I am now suitably proficient in both forms of English, but also find myself often being misunderstood in both the UK and here in the US. For instance, just the other day, I was in the cafe, talking with the servers, saying I couldn't understand why the business had slowed down because I had not heard any complaints, "not even a dicky bird". Of course, that led to rapturous amounts of laughter, and requests of "can you please say that again" with an explanation of what I meant! Then a few weeks later, talking to my parents on how we need to change some of our data network because of a cutover to a new router (pronounced the American way), due to fiber being installed, got a response of "huh". Not because my parents don't understand IT (they ran an IT consultancy themselves), but because of the language differences even with modern tech.

Anyway it is always very interesting and sometimes very annoying, especially when I have to get the kids to say something on my behalf because the teenager at the drive through has never heard a real Brit before!????????