Fw: British/American asymmetries

[Bruce Dykes]

This came direct to me...Lynne meant it for the world (at least our part of
it) at large...

-----Original Message-----
From: Lynne Murphy <lynnem at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
To: Bruce Dykes <bkd at graphnet.com>
Date: Monday, May 29, 2000 11:25 AM
Subject: Re: British/American asymmetries


>Sorry, there was apparently room for misinterpretation in my message (since
>some people misinterpreted it).  In all of the cases I cited (except for
>college/university, which is a distinction in both US and UK, but not the
same
>distinction), what I meant was that one culture uses one word for what the
>other culture considers two different things.
>
>So for:
>
>> >British          American
>> >torch            flashlight / torch
>
>I was saying that in America, 'torch' has a different meaning than
>'flashlight', whereas in UK, 'torch' is used for either a flashlight or a
>burning thing (like the Olympic torch).  In the US, a torch is only a
burningn
>thing.
>
>> >jam              jam / jelly  (jelly = Jello in UK)
>>
>Bruce Dykes says:
>> This is actually a triple. Or a triple and a half, as over here we have
>> jam/jelly and preserves, and orange marmalade is still called orange
>> marmalade. Or do they distinguish preserves over there? I've forgotten
the
>> technical difference between jam and jelly, but preserves have intact
fruit,
>> the most common varieties being strawberries and raspberries.
>>
>> And what distinguishes marmalade from preserves?
>
>Yes there are more words than just jam/jelly, but my point was that the UK
>uses 'jam' for both the kind with lumps/seeds and the kind that's clear (US
>grape jelly, UK grape jam).  This is also clear in that in the UK you get
jam
>doughnuts, while in the US you get jelly doughnuts--the same type of
filling
>is in both, but a 'jelly doughnut' sounds quite disgusting to most British
>folk.  I think you do see 'preserves' here (I know they had them in S
Africa,
>which has the same lack of jam/jelly distinction), but the supermarket's
>closed today, so I can't research.  I think marmalade has to be made from
>citrus fruit, but that's just an impression.
>
>> >c.v.             resume / c.v.
>>
>Bruce said:
>> Actually, these are two different beasts...a resume is only a brief,
usually
>> one page, listing of skills, experience, and education, while a c.v. is a
>> much more comprehensive document that covers things with much more depth.
>> Unless I'm wrong, of course. This was something told to me in a job
hunting
>> course that covered both European and American job hunting, some ten
years
>> ago, so my source might have been incorrect, and things might have
changed
>> since then...
>
>They're not different beasts in the UK.  In the US, my experience was (I
used
>to work as a resume editor) that 'resume' is used for any field other than
>education, and 'c.v.' is used almost exclusively in academia.
>
>
>And there are certainly more examples, which will occur to me at
inconvenient
>times.  Now the question is, can we find any effects of linguistic
relativity
>here?  Is a British person more likely to put cheese on a ginger snap
because
>it's called the same thing as a cracker?  Not in my experience...
>
>Lynne
>