I've been to England. The people there were almost incomprehensible.
We may have started out with the same language, but it has evolved considerably since we parted ways. As a result, most dialects of American are comprehensible, while most dialects of British are not. Our pronunciation, spelling, grammar, and word usage are all quite different.
Pardon me if the quote is not exact.
We may have started out with the same language, but it has evolved considerably since we parted ways. As a result, most dialects of American are comprehensible, while most dialects of British are not. Our pronunciation, spelling, grammar, and word usage are all quite different.
I work for a company that is a fully owned subsidiary of a large UK company. It’s a very good company to work for BTW, one of the best in my career. The division I work for is based in the US but we have a sales and shipping office in the UK as well so in addition to my US payroll, I have a small UK payroll to process and manage.
I don’t have too much trouble understanding the folks across the pond in most cases but yes, depending on the regional dialect along with differences in word usage and colloquialisms, it can be very difficult or just plain funny.
I’ve been on several phone calls, conference calls and a few video conferences with our parent group, other UK payroll sites and the pension administrators as we were launching a new pension “scheme”¸ a “scheme” being what we here call a plan or a benefit; the holiday scheme, the bonus scheme, the sick pay scheme….a "scheme" having a bit of a different connotation and often negative here in every day usage.
The new pension administrators are based out of Edinburgh and at times I could barely understand what they were saying at all - a thick Scottish brogue being very difficult for us Yanks to understand. But they were very nice and understanding about it, my constant “can you repeat that please?” I was talking to two of the pension administrators one day and the gal even made a joke at the beginning of one of our phone calls about her co-worker being difficult to understand with his "accent" since he was from Glasgow and not from Edinburgh like her. I told her that being from Maryland (Baltimore), that some of my co-workers here in Pennsylvania have trouble understand me sometimes (they don't really but even with only a 50 some mile difference there is a very big difference in dialect and colloquialisms, the central PA accent and phrases being heavily influenced by the PA Dutch and the Maryland accent especially the southern or eastern shore accent being more “tidewater” and of course the classic Baltimore dialect being something of its own).
I remember shortly after I started working for this company, I received a request from the business manager of our UK location to payout out some holiday (vacation) pay in advance for two of our employees who were also a married couple. “Tom and Jane are taking holiday in two weeks so is it possible to pay their holiday this pay before they “break up" for the Christmas holiday?” I was saddened to hear that Tom and Jane were breaking up especially during the holidays - they’d been married a long time, until my boss explained that in the UK, they use the term “break up” as we would “leaving” as in “can you pay out their vacation pay in advance before they “leave” work for vacation?”
I also have heard the word “brilliant” used quite a lot. Not long ago our internal auditors came over for our annual audit. The young man conducting our audit (who BTW was spectacularly handsome :), ) was reviewing our payroll internal controls, looking a randomly selected new hire, termination, pay increase paperwork for two levels of management signatures, and every time I explained our processes or showed him examples, he’d say “Oh that’s brilliant or "just brilliant”. I thought to myself, “Wow, he’s really impressed and I must be doing a really great job” until one of the other auditors came in and told the younger auditor, “we are breaking up for lunch now, they’ve ordered in pizza” and the young man said, “Brilliant”. It seems to me that the Brits use the word “brilliant” to mean; “good”, “great”, “nice”, “acceptable” or just plain “OK”.
And I’ve had many phone calls and emails from across the pond that end in “Cheers” and "cheerio" which is to me a much nicer way to end a communication than “good bye”.
I’ve also had occasion to call the HMR&C (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs), the equivalent to our IRS and after I start talking, I’ve on a few occasions heard a bit of a snicker on the other end of the phone line, I’m guessing because to them, I have a funny accent. To be fair though, they’ve all been extremely polite and quite helpful and the HMR&C website and tax forms and instructions are much more comprehensible (in plain English) than those of the IRS.
Perhaps incomprehensible to you. I have never found them so. The point was not that differences have evolved. I was responding to your xenephobic rage at the very slight, surely comprehensible differences of our versus or spellings and the use of “ in hospital” as opposed to “in the hospital.”