@@dougsundseth2303 I was getting ready to mention "carry out" then I saw you beat me to it. I think "take out" is more of a big city thing, but I don't know that for sure. I too would like to know the distribution of these words.
CORRECTION: Emphasis on the first syllable of "insurance", while nonetheless a feature of American English (particularly in parts of the Midwest and South) is by no means universal across the land. Most - like in Britain - place the emphasis thus: inSURance. Also, "take-out" is definitely an American equivalent of "take away". Can we blame whiskey?
I never thought about it so i just said insurance 3 times outloud (by myself, like a crazy person) and i put emphasis on SUR everytime. I'm in Kentucky. (also saying insurance 3 times outloud doesn't make the gecko appear.)
I say Prez-en-tay-shun in California. The -ise/-ize divide in Britain is London newspaper editors vs. Oxford. The editors preferred the French affectation of -ise instead of the original greek -ize, and that's therefore what most people in the UK read on a daily basis. However, if you write scholarly, esp. scientific work in Britain, -ize is preferred. It's also the standard for international publications.
Absolutely. If you pronounced "insurance" with the accent on the first syllable in New York, people would say, "I thought you were from England, not Alabama!"
Same here! I'm from Oregon, but I've lived in Idaho, Indiana, Maryland, and North Carolina, and everyone I've heard say those words all say it the way he used to say them!
Suffice it to say there are on the order of 80 different regional accents that change not only the pronunciation but also the word itself in many cases! And on that I will have a drink of my pop, no soda, no coke, . . .😂
Lagib28 I grew up with “takeout” food. And first learned of “takeaway” from a book by US journalist Andy Rooney, in which he wrote of his first stay in England. He was quite fond of the word.
Here in Detroit I’ve always heard, and said it as take out or carry out. But between watching a lot of British TH-camrs, and previously working for a company headquartered in Britain, I got used to hearing take away.
I lived in the UK for at least 9 years . I’m married to a Britt. I’m so used to hearing my husband’s accent that I don’t even notice. Because I grew up in the UK England and Scotland), I picked up a lot of the British language. We’ve been married since 1985. We moved to America that same year. I think my husband has picked up a lot of the American English language. When I first returned to the States, I had made the mistake of asking for a “rubber” instead of an “eraser.” Everyone in the office stared at me.
I believe a lot of the spelling differences are traceable to Noah Webster. Changing "...our" to "...or" for example. So this goes back to the early years of the Republic. However older usages remained into the Civil War.
That's because the term Rubber is another word for Condoms here in the states. They stared because they probably thought you were asking for a condom, and its considered embarrassing to ask for one in anything but a hushed whisper.
@@funnatopia704 hello captain obvious. lol By stating "when I first returned to the States" it makes the assumption that she learned of the error and corrected it, hence funny This explanation ruins the funny of the story
I use both. Haha. It depends on what the sentence is usually. I'll say IN-surance more with the word ensurance than when taking about inSURance as in health or car. Also for carribean I'll say cara-BEE-un talking about the movie pirates of the caribbean. And say Cah-RIB-ean when talking about the place.
Rubbish Refuse Trash Garbage Gar-Baaahge (if it's fancy junk) Junk And the waste bin is sometimes humorously called: The rotary file File 13 As in, "Let me store this valuable thing you just gave me in file 13." DUMP!
"Insurance" is pronounced with the accent on the second syllable in about half the country. Here in New York City, if you accent the first syllable, it's clear that you're from the South or the Midwest.
I've only ever heard hicks say INsurance, so that tracks with my experience. It's jarring every time I hear it. It sounds like they are trying to differentiate from "outsurance" and that's not even a thing.
As a speaker of Canadian English (CanE) (though Vancouver is pretty NAE), we definitely say in-SURE-ence.... We definitely tend to take the American pronunciation of most things, but we spell things in the British way. Colour... Centre...Neighbourhood... Canada is a strange hybrid land.
Except for the Quebecois , most Anglophones in Canada are Americans who stayed loyal to the Crown. This is not a dis to our Canadian cousins,just an observation. Many loyalists either emigrated voluntarily or were compelled to leave.So you are stuck with a semi American accent and a British spelling system.
Yup, something like that. Being a history major in Canada as well as an English major studying linguistics, I know all about how this kind of thing might happen... It's mostly luck, hahah
@@sfinnable I was born in the 1950s and I am glad to see younger people who actually are aware of their past. I don't know the situation in Canada but in the U S people are just ignorant of their history and place in the world.
British Columbians are basically Americans in speech, but the further East you go in Canada the more British the pronunciation is. My pronunciations are much more British sounding. I use long Os rather than Aws, I pronounce -ile at the end of a word like aisle rather than -uhl, I say things like Chewsday and shchew rather than Tuesday and stew, etc... And once you get to Newfoundland some people sound like they just got off a ship from Cork, Ireland.
I personally say presentation the way you said was the “British way” which surprised me because the “PREE-sentation”, while I have heard it before, I usually hear people say it like “PREH-sentation” or like you pronounced it the second time. I guess it just depends where in the US you are, but I would just have to say I don’t hear many people use the PREE (strong E) sound for that word.
Month day year is great because the first piece of information tells you what season it is, and likely what the weather was, giving you faster access to memory details. /two cents
Either go from the specific to the general, day, month, year, or from the general to the specific, YMD, this sticking the month at the front has led the credit bureau to assume that my birthday is the second of August rather than the correct, eighth of February
Years change so infrequently that it makes sense for a date system to place it last - and indeed to leave it off altogether at times. I’d however argue that the day changes so *frequently* that starting with it gives you almost no information. If you told someone an event was happening on the 15th, unless it was the very next 15th to come up, you’ve given them no information at all. Whereas if it’s October and you tell them an event is in March, you’ve given them some sense of how far off it is. Likewise, if someone asks when your birthday is and you don’t care to give specifics, you’re going to tell them the month. MMDDYY first gives you the information you most need to process the information being given. (Void in cases where you’re trying to name computer files that will sort alphabetically, in which case the only proper way is YYYYMMDD.)
That's what I've always argued. The best format is YYYY-MM-DD and Americans are essentially just using that but moving or removing the year if it's not as important in context
@@TheFhqwhgadsLimit It's also just the way we speak dates. It's December 6th, 2019 today. So if somebody is telling me a date I can write it down in the order they say it.
I'd find that easier to adopt than month day year because it's just what I already do backwards. It feels completely wrong to try and write the date MMDDYYYY.
I do this too and I usually shorten it to YYMMDD because Y2K isn't going to happen again for another 80 years. At least not a different Y2K. The real Y2K isn't over yet, because most programmers cheated and used the 49/50 split in the coding to fix it fast. 50 means 1950 and 49 means 2049. So in 29 years, any legacy code will be Y2K crashing all over again, and all the COBOL programmers are dead by then.
I really appreciate this channel for the respectful and optimistic way he interacts with his experiences of facing differences in another culture. When I lived overseas, I would sometimes meet other forigners like me who either had very positive or very negative things to say about the country we were in. I've come to the conclusion that it really comes down to if a person goes into a new country with an attitude that is great ful, open to learn, and respectful of what they experience, or if they go in with a negative attitude to judge and complain.
I am a poor speller and tend to rely on my spell checker. There was a period of time when words were being flagged wrong and the suggestion I was sure was wrong. After a month of this, I found out that my dictionary somehow changed from English_US to English_UK.
Again, as a Canadian, with respect to dates, we've always spoken the date as month, day, year, (September 1st, 2019 as opposed to 1st [of] September, 2019) so we write it numerically in the same order that we say it (09/01/2019). Every Brit I've heard talking about Brexit over that last few years, I've heard say "October 31st" or "March 29th" and only rarely heard 29th of March or even less, 31st of October, yet they write it day/month/year.
I am an American and I have NEVER, EVER, EVER said "IN-surance"!! I have always said "in-SUR-ance". All this linguistic stuff is so interesting to me. After watching so many of these videos, I have noticed my American English is most similar to British proper English (BBC). I wonder why. It is also amusing that you mentioned going back to England and how it would take you a while to revert back to your British ways. This even happened to me when I moved from Michigan to Florida. It was like a culture shock. I always called drinks like Coca-cola, POP. When I got down here, it would drive me crazy when people called it soda. Now, I have been here so long, I can't imagine calling it pop! LOL LOL Likewise, in Michigan we called stores where you buy pop "party stores". Here in Florida, if I asked "Where is the party store?", they would send me to the costume shop or a place to buy birthday candles. LOL LOL
Born and raised in the USA. I always have pronounced it in-SUR-ance. With stress on the second syllable. On the subject of dates. I loved the way the US military writes dates... so simple: day, first three letters of the month, capitalized, then year. Such as today is 03FEB19.
I would still rather it be swapped, i.e. FEB0319. Having the month in front reflects the way I hear the majority of people actually say the date out loud; almost nobody I know says "the third *of* February" (unless they're trying to sound officious), rather they almost universally elect for the more succinct "February 3rd".
I never understand this when people say "look it up in a dictionary" to do this someone needs to have some idea of how a word might be spelt to know where to start.
@@allenmax8995 having cousins who lived in Toronto for years I've spent a lot of time in Canada! But what warms my heart about Ontario is when their disabled were only getting approx 1thous per mth. The community worried that the world would think the disabled in Ontario were mistreated! A collective consciousness, assuring community good! The us is a hellhole, because it lacks such caring! And the disabled , nobody cares about them!I'm recently in a situation where needed meds are denied, I cant afford the outta pocket expense! Thankfully I can still survive without it!
I started watching your videos because it popped up as a suggestion I never would have thought of searching for something like this, but I find it fascinating. I really do enjoy seeing the cultural differences and similarities. You have a unique perspective since you have lived in both countries. Thank you for the videos and the work you put in. As an American I definitely appreciate it 👍
I hear and read "orientate" a lot here in the US. It's a back-formation from "orientation," and I find it an ugly word, especially since there's the word "orientation" came from, namely "orient."
@@gordon4385 i think with the advent of so many British shows available lately and British actors in Hollywood some of these pronunciations are mixing. Now you have people pronouncing words differently.
@@historygeekslive8243 I think it's actually just ignorance. Orient versus orientate used to be used on tests (with orientate obviously being the wrong answer) back when I was in school, and that was a very long time ago and before any British TV shows had any influence here. The fact that the Brits changed orient to orientate and acclimate to acclimatise has always baffled me. It doesn't seem to make any logical sense at all.
Hi, Laurence! I've been an Anglophile since I was 13(51 now), so I'm as comfortable with Brit slang and vocab as well as American vocab and slang. In the US, we actually call it takeOUT, instead of take-away. Now you've learnt a new word, whee! Lol!
That should be fun. I'm a Hoosier living in Texas and you should have heard my family the first time I said "y'all" in front of them! Lordy! You'd have thought I had sworn in church. 😂😂
As an American who went to university in London, my first shocks with language occurred when a friend asked to borrow a rubber but he said he’d return it when he was done with it. Also. Had no idea what a gaol, gaoler, or an aubergine was.
Amazing, you made it through a video on the differences between American and British pronunciations of words without bringing up Aluminum, which couldn't be more different between the two dialects. I have long believed the British make it far more difficult to say than it has to be.
The guy who discovered it first called it Aluminum, then he went to Britain and told them he changed his mind and it was Aluminium, then went back to America and changed his mind again back to Aluminum.
Funny thing. I'm an American but I've always spelled 'endeavour' with the u due to being from Florida and seeing the space shuttle Endeavour lift off from Cape Canaveral. In spite of auto correct telling me it's endeavor.
I live in New England, and it wasn't until I told my friend, visiting me from Pennsylvania, to stop by the package store on the way to the house (and she had no idea what I was talking about), that I realized that "package store" is an exclusively New England way of saying liquor store......
@@shawnn1412 Hm. Maybe there's a migration thing... I remember learning it was a euphemistic adoption back when New England was more puritanical and had all those blue laws on the books. We also have "package store" written out, but can say either one.
Liquor licenses here are absurdly expensive, so you see a lot of combination restaurant/package stores. The stores that only sell liquor are liquor stores. I think laws in Kansas have changed, but I believe the liquor stores were all operated by the state, and they were called package stores.
This reminds me of that Sherlock episode where someone gave away that they spent a long time in America by saying "let me give you my cell number" instead of "mobile number".
When I first came to the eastern hemisphere it was so confusing. "What's your mow-bile?" "My mo-bill?" "Yeah you have a mow-bile right?" "I... _am_ mo-bill, I guess? I don't have a car though" "No your mow-bile phone!" "Ahhhhhh, yeah (here's some numbers)"
The words for fizzy drinks across the US is crazy! Here in Texas we say coke, like Coca Cola, as a general term. Some say soda. My family in Colorado calls it pop. It's extremely varied.
Yup, here in Texas Coke means a Dr pepper, a Pepsi, or whatever you might want. In Missouri, Coke means a Coca Cola. Pop is the more correct term there. And in California, it's all soda.
@@NunYaO North Texas here, it is not uncommon for someone to offer a coke, and then ask "what kind?" Meaning anything including Dr Pepper. However, people in the city often say soda.
That made me chuckle too. Reminds me of my dad, who likes to say they "drive on the wrong side of the road" as a joke... which is funny because we lived in Japan for 10 years where he was always driving on the "wrong" side of the road.
Great video. I love the English language and hearing different applications of it is fun. Your videos are very intelligent and always a little humorous--a combination that can't be beat in my book. Love the haircut too.
Everyone has already commented on take away vs. take out, but did no one else notice he said MEthane instead of MEHthane. I'd never heard it pronounced like that before.
I am American and I work for greyhound. They actually print the tickets with Day/Month/Year so I am used to seeing it both ways on a daily basis. Never put much thought into it till you mentioned it.
This reminds me, I have a British friend who will sometimes, playfully, correct me when I say "color" instead of "colour", so I'll start adding a U after every O. Like "Soon" will be "sououn", etc. It's all in good fun, lol
The poms used to call it Zee but changed it to Zed in the 18th Century. It's the sort of thing that happens when men & women think that they're ladies & gentlemen. I'm an Aussie so I grew up with Zed so l always say it, but mostly because of Sesame Street subsequent generations of kids became more & more likely to think of it a Zee.
In some parts of the US, a real estate or condominium community named “X Harbour” is higher priced than one named “X Harbor.” That’s one very expensive letter!
In her video's "English With Lucy" she pointed out we use both of the pronunciations of the word 'Process" depending on if its a noun or a verb and this also applies to other words that I can't recall at the moment. But we say PROH cess when its a verb, "As you process through the crowd to the front be polite". And we say PRAH cess when its a noun, "Making baklavah is a tedious process"
I say "take-out" rather than "takeaway" for food you bring home from a restaurant that offers that service. By the way, I applaud you for your attempt to assimilate with American culture. One of the greatest things about our country is how so many diverse peoples have come here and assimilated. By trying to be more like each other, we can learn each other's culture, and pick up certain habits or knowledge that we wouldn't have if we just stayed like ourselves. Up until recently, our trend toward similarity in our diversity has made us strong as a people. Being diverse and staying distinct is a large part of why we've had more trouble in the last few decades, as people don't try to agree first, they go straight toward argument. Thank you for being you, but also trying to bridge the gap!
I was born in Germany (on a US Army base) and grew up in the US state of Georgia. Down there, when parting company, we sometimes say "Don't get none on ya." Which is used as a general wishing of well-being. What precisely we're referring to, I don't know, but I conjecture it was from farming times when people had to shovel stalls and such, and well, there you have it.
Regarding writing the date, people who work with international clients and thus multiple date formats often use the month's abbreviation and the full year to avoid any ambiguity. I'll date a contract "3 Feb 2019" so there's no doubt on the order I'm using.
@@josephcote6120Yep, that's the way the military does it. I was stationed in England, where we worked with NATO a lot, and I'm sure it prevented a lot of ambiguity.
I teach my international students that if they're working in a company and they see a date such as 04/08/19 to FIND OUT exactly what is meant. It might save their company a LOT of money.
I'm going to toss a spanner into the works over the whole date issue - I hope you enjoy this one. It's -somewhat- common in programming and database work (as well as on Linux computers) to type the date as YYYY-MM-DD H24:MM:SS. If you have a set of files you need to have sorted by date (and I find I still do this as a holdover from when using command-line "dir" or "ls" and it was always alphabetical no matter what) if you start the filename with YYYY-MM-DD, even in an alphabetical filename sort it will always be in chronological order. So, for files that I have to keep multiple revisions of or, more commonly, folders I want in chronological date (such as for photographs collected by date) I'll still use the YYYY-MM-DD format in the name of the file or folder. It also has the advantage of being impossible to confuse regardless of which side of the pond you are on. :D
Wow! You've managed to nail the mid-west accent! Here's a gem. I was reading a blurb in Reader's Digest & an American man was in England & asked the desk clerk, where's the elevator. The clerk corrects him & say's, you mean the lift. American say's, we say elevator & we invented it. The clerk replied it's a lift & we invented the language.😏
As a Yank (and a Yankee) who spent quite a bit of time in the UK, I spell and pronounce words in the UK way. But I laughed when you talked about liquor stores and off-licenses. In Boston we call them "packies" which is a shortening of the word "package" because they're known here as package stores!
The "t" in "water" is actually pronounced as an alveolar tap in american english (more like a spanish or italian 'r', as opposed to the alveolar or dental plosive "d")
Upstate/Central NY here, and same. The only people I can ever remember saying "PREE-sentation" were a few random old teachers who had some connection to the Midwest, be it MN or IL. Don't know if that's really a thing, but there you go.
On dates, except government forms, i completely switched to yyyy/mm/dd about two years ago. Mostly because of sorting for date named files on computers, but the more i use it, the more i prefer it logically.
The "American" form doesn't bug me when the words for the day and month are written out as "February 3rd,2019" (Familiarity, I guess..) but it does bug me when used with just numbers it IS actually illogical, "February the Third?!?!" There is ONLY one February per year! The "British" way makes more sense.
James Slick - Being from the States, I obviously grew up and was taught to write the date as month/day/year, but after working with people from other parts of the world back in the early 2000s I started writing it as day/month/year. It’s stuck with me, and to this day I will write it that way. However, because i know that it might be confusing to a lot of fellow Yanks, I will write out the month. For example, I would write today’s date as 3-February or 3-Feb.
@@dash4800 In keeping long term records in a database "YYYY/MM/DD" is the best. Businesses need to keep records longer than month to month. You would not want your credit score based only on the last 12 months than start anew each year! For tax purposes alone a 3 to five year record of income and expenses is required at audit. I use "YYYY/MM/DD" for all timed records even Photos and Videos - Makes things easier to find.
I used to use DB2 to create ad hoc reports for my business users. The one thing I got more "can you fix this" requests was the way it printed ISO dates. Today would be 2019-02-03. I ended up making my own set of functions to split the parts of the date apart to keep my users happy.
I've lived in the US my whole life, and I've never heard anyone say "PREE-sentation" or "IN-surance". Those sound very rural / yokel to my ear -- were you living way out in the country when you picked those up?
The British and others pronounce “z”, “zed”, owing to the origin of the letter “z”, the Greek letter “Zeta”. If so, why don't they pronounce "b" as "bed" because of the Greek letter "Beta"?
Just subscribed... You're the only British person I've ever encountered who doesn't despise Americans for no particular reason. And we've never even met!
Fun fact… the official Canadian way is neither month-day-year, nor day-month-year. It’s year-month-day. But YY-MM-DD has the advantage of sorting chronologically without having to tell the programme it’s a list of dates. Any standard number sort will do the job with YY-MM-DD. So there’s some logic and practicality to it.
Surely it's the other way around. He's gaining an American accent. To say he's dropping his English accent would suggest that American is the world's 'default' accent.
@@prappsy3028 Definitely true, although most people would say "dropping." Linguistically incorrect, but since language is as language does, linguistics would say it was correct in a non-technical sense.
@@prappsy3028 American IS the default accent. Those limeys didn't just lose their colonies all those years ago. They also gave up their right to influence language in any meaningful way. In 150 years every English speaking nation will be affecting an approximation of a Texas drawl, by damn!
British words often seem strangely euphemistic. Like "dustcart" for example--it's not a cart, and 'dust' doesn't adequately characterize what it carries.
I'm from Michigan and have been to Britain and have British friends, but I've never heard the word dustcart! Can you enlighten me as to what it is? Is it a dustpan? For transporting filth from the floor to the garbage can?
I was born and raised in Michigan to parents born and raised there also. I grew up saying presentation and insurance the way you said them in Britain. I would have thought it odd if I heard them said the other way round.
I've grown up in Arizona and Utah and I never realized that pree-sentation was the "American" way. I've always said it as pres-entation, and have almost always heard it said that way by Americans.
Not just in the age of computers... Standard practice when stating any measurement with multiple units is to list those units in descending order. To do otherwise would sound ridiculous... - "She's rather tall at 11 inches 5." - "I ran the 5k in 15 seconds and 29 minutes." - "He won the marathon by a photo finish with a time of 14 milliseconds, 42 seconds, 11 minutes and 2 hours."
Growing up chatting online with Brit friends, I noticed I started taking on Brit slang so I wouldn't confuse one Brit friend. For example when he said he got "pissed," I learned he meant he got drunk. I explained to him too that "pissed" means angry in America. But I completely sympathize, and I find myself adapting to British style English when speaking to Brits simply to avoid confusion. I think I sound a tad silly using British slang with an American accent, but at least I'm not understood init?
While you can get away with mixing usages of various word spellings, it would be a disaster to intermittently use different date formats while transitioning. Even though the MM/DD/YYYY format is the norm here in the USA, I can see the elegance of ordering the date in order from smallest to greatest interval. Unfortunately, both the US and the UK are seriously wrongheaded on this point. It became clear to me in the early days of owning a computer that YYYY-MM-DD is by far the superior method of sorting dates, especially in a digital file structure. More unfortunately, I'm so apprehensive about misidentifying the day from the month that I sabotage the whole system by labeling them as 2019-Feb-03 thus totally eliminating the intended benefit of numerical sort order.
"YYYY-MM-DD" is the ISO prefered "international" date form, And Computers are the reason. It's easy for both humans AND machines to "drill" down to a record if it goes from the largest unit to the smallest. We already do it with HRS/MIN/SEC for time smaller than 1 day. The British "DD/MM/YYYY" is more elegant for humans, And the US "MM/DD/YYYY" system is admittedly "bass-akwards" sounding, but for record keeping "YYYY/MM/DD" is best. P.S. Your use of a three letter abreviation for the month is usually recognized. So your good.
@pisswobble Only because it's a holiday. Most people, Brits included, will say the date out loud as Month, Day, Year. As in, "It's June 3rd, 2018." People write mainly as they speak, not like a computer uses binary code.
While DD-MM-YY makes sense in a numerical sense, most Americans say most dates in MM-DDth order, so it makes sense in a linguistic sense to write our dates that way.
@Lost in the Pond I realized listening to you and speaking the sentence "I'd like a glass of water", that I pronounce it much more like you do. I am a Southern American with pronunciation influences from Mid-west, and New England and other places. But was raised in the South. the one time someone did not understand me asking for a glass of water was in Boston, and I had to repeat myself and say it the way you say "we Americans" pronounce the word water. i think I pronounce it more "warder". sometimes 'wahter". Like I said, I have a lot of pronunciation influences.
I would be interested to hear what your family and friends think of your manner of speech when you go to visit your home in May. We still hear a British accent but I wonder if they will hear an American accent in your voice?
I'm American born and raised, but grew up in a British immigrant home. My first trip to the UK was with my grandparents, visiting relatives in Sheffield. They all told my grandmother she had picked up an American accent. And yeah, I think he's picking up a bit of an American accent.
Oh, Laurence--I don't remember when I first found your postings, but it was a wonderful thing! I have enjoyed the earliest and the most recent. I do notice a distinct change in self-presentation/humo(u)r over time. These earlier ones are more "serious", indeed earnest,
Same. I have never in my life heard anyone put the emphasis on the first syllable of insurance. I've heard pree-sentation a couple times in a corporate setting, but other than that it's always been preh-sentation.
I find the pronunciation of presentation kind of interchangeable, I definitely use both, I feel like pree-sentation is more formal while preh-sentation is more casual in my mind
Laurence - I couldn't help but notice that your video was going in and out of focus throughout your presentation. I believe the problem was that you are using a camera that is set for auto-focus. Every time you extended your arms and waved your hands (as Italians often do) the picture would go out of focus as the camera was trying to focus on the nearest thing to it, i. e. your hands. Recommend you remove the autofocus feature (if you can) and have the camera only focus on your face or stop talking with your hands. Just a suggestion.
It’s a “beer run”. In Detroit we say “ I’m making a beer run to the party store” Also, I’ve noticed almost every Brit is incapable of pronouncing “Chicago “ or “Michigan “ correctly. They will always say “Chick-ago” or “Mitchigan”.
Pronouncing "insurance" that way isn't general American, it's Southern, specifically. And maybe the Midwest, too. But it may be half and half, but there's no way to claim that the emphasis on the first syllable is the predominant American pronunciation
@@shawnn1412 That's a common thing in English generally, to distinguish noun and verb by putting emphasis respectively on the first and second syllable. I guess some dialects do it more than others. Would never do it with "display", but it's the exact same construction as reCORDing the REcord: something I DO say
I always enjoy your take on the nuances between American and British English. Growing up in Harrisburg PA, the cities nearby us each had their own slightly different version of American English. In Dauphin County, the word Insurance is pronounced in what you said is the British manner. In Lancaster County, where I lived for a couple of years, it's pronounced as "In/surance". I noticed it but kept that observation to myself. I only had to move 18 miles--from Harrisburg to Elizabethtown PA to discover that their American English was just a little bit different than my own. Your videos help me be more attuned to the unique dialects each city and region has and it gives me a deeper appreciation of how we communicate as a Society. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. :)
Awe, you did this video on my birthday!🎉🎂 I've been wanting to tell you how much better you look with your new haircut. It looks amazing, we've certainly "Americanized" you! I ❤🇺🇸❤
We say “take out” not “take away”
Cast away movie said take away!😀
Totally agree. Or “to go”
I immediately picked up on that!!!
Or carryout (also "carry-out" or "carry out"). Now I'm wondering what the regional distribution of all of these is.
@@dougsundseth2303 I was getting ready to mention "carry out" then I saw you beat me to it. I think "take out" is more of a big city thing, but I don't know that for sure. I too would like to know the distribution of these words.
I'm American and I use "grey" and "gray" interchangeably.
Heegaherger I do the same thing
Same
@@catdogorboth7087 Same. I also use theatre, spectre, etc.
It usually depends on how my phones autocorrect feels that day and how much I care to change to
Same here.
CORRECTION: Emphasis on the first syllable of "insurance", while nonetheless a feature of American English (particularly in parts of the Midwest and South) is by no means universal across the land. Most - like in Britain - place the emphasis thus: inSURance.
Also, "take-out" is definitely an American equivalent of "take away". Can we blame whiskey?
Also ME-thane. Most Americans would say METH-ane, like the drug.
Indeed!
I never thought about it so i just said insurance 3 times outloud (by myself, like a crazy person) and i put emphasis on SUR everytime. I'm in Kentucky.
(also saying insurance 3 times outloud doesn't make the gecko appear.)
I say Prez-en-tay-shun in California.
The -ise/-ize divide in Britain is London newspaper editors vs. Oxford. The editors preferred the French affectation of -ise instead of the original greek -ize, and that's therefore what most people in the UK read on a daily basis. However, if you write scholarly, esp. scientific work in Britain, -ize is preferred. It's also the standard for international publications.
Absolutely. If you pronounced "insurance" with the accent on the first syllable in New York, people would say, "I thought you were from England, not Alabama!"
When he said "water" the American way he sounded like a completely different person. 😲
Come to the north east, we drop our r's
IT WAS SO CRAZY, BUT COOL!!
He also sundered very midwestern.
@@jenniferbates2811 Not in all the northeast though. But your typical person from Syracuse understands him just fine.
I've heard some backwoods Americans say Warter or Worter.
And then we spend the rest of the night mocking them.
A lot of these are regional too.
We say insurance and presentation the way you do where I live.
Same here! I'm from Oregon, but I've lived in Idaho, Indiana, Maryland, and North Carolina, and everyone I've heard say those words all say it the way he used to say them!
Suffice it to say there are on the order of 80 different regional accents that change not only the pronunciation but also the word itself in many cases! And on that I will have a drink of my pop, no soda, no coke, . . .😂
I live in Chicago and ive never heard or used "take-away". Its always been "take-out."
Lagib28 I live in Chicago and yes it’s “take out”
same here in New York state
Lagib28
I grew up with “takeout” food.
And first learned of “takeaway” from a book by US journalist Andy Rooney, in which he wrote of his first stay in England.
He was quite fond of the word.
Here in Detroit I’ve always heard, and said it as take out or carry out. But between watching a lot of British TH-camrs, and previously working for a company headquartered in Britain, I got used to hearing take away.
I grew up in Minnesota and lived in Southern California for a few years. It's take-out in both.
I lived in the UK for at least 9 years . I’m married to a Britt. I’m so used to hearing my husband’s accent that I don’t even notice. Because I grew up in the UK England and Scotland), I picked up a lot of the British language. We’ve been married since 1985. We moved to America that same year. I think my husband has picked up a lot of the American English language. When I first returned to the States, I had made the mistake of asking for a “rubber” instead of an “eraser.”
Everyone in the office stared at me.
I believe a lot of the spelling differences are traceable to Noah Webster. Changing "...our" to "...or" for example. So this goes back to the early years of the Republic. However older usages remained into the Civil War.
That's because the term Rubber is another word for Condoms here in the states.
They stared because they probably thought you were asking for a condom, and its considered embarrassing to ask for one in anything but a hushed whisper.
@@funnatopia704 hello captain obvious. lol
By stating "when I first returned to the States" it makes the assumption that she learned of the error and corrected it, hence funny
This explanation ruins the funny of the story
@@funnatopia704 right thats why they say they made the mistake of doing it.
😂😂😂
In seven decades as an American, I’ve heard and used “in-SUR-ance” much more often than “IN-surance.”
IN-surance is more common in southern states...
How about Cara-BEE-un and Cah-RIBB-ean?
I use both. Haha. It depends on what the sentence is usually. I'll say IN-surance more with the word ensurance than when taking about inSURance as in health or car.
Also for carribean I'll say cara-BEE-un talking about the movie pirates of the caribbean. And say Cah-RIB-ean when talking about the place.
Northern Americans say it as in-SUR-ance, and Southern Americans say it as IN-surance.
in-SUR-ance here too. In fact try to find an insurance commercial that puts the stress on IN.
I like saying "rubbish" when someone says something that I disagree with... And I'm from Texas lol
I say rubbish in terms of ideas
Physical Garbage is just trash
It’s more polite to say rubbish than B.S., after all!
Rubbish
Refuse
Trash
Garbage
Gar-Baaahge (if it's fancy junk)
Junk
And the waste bin is sometimes humorously called:
The rotary file
File 13
As in, "Let me store this valuable thing you just gave me in file 13."
DUMP!
Ha! It does have a certain ring to it!
oddly i sometimes hogwash or garbage
"Insurance" is pronounced with the accent on the second syllable in about half the country. Here in New York City, if you accent the first syllable, it's clear that you're from the South or the Midwest.
I just call it placing a bet.
More than half, population-wise. About half area-wise.
I live in the Midwest. It’s in-SUR-ance here, at least in central Illinois.
I've only ever heard hicks say INsurance, so that tracks with my experience. It's jarring every time I hear it. It sounds like they are trying to differentiate from "outsurance" and that's not even a thing.
So true.
As a speaker of Canadian English (CanE) (though Vancouver is pretty NAE), we definitely say in-SURE-ence.... We definitely tend to take the American pronunciation of most things, but we spell things in the British way. Colour... Centre...Neighbourhood... Canada is a strange hybrid land.
Except for the Quebecois , most Anglophones in Canada are Americans who stayed loyal to the Crown. This is not a dis to our Canadian cousins,just an observation. Many loyalists either emigrated voluntarily or were compelled to leave.So you are stuck with a semi American accent and a British spelling system.
Yup, something like that. Being a history major in Canada as well as an English major studying linguistics, I know all about how this kind of thing might happen... It's mostly luck, hahah
@@sfinnable I was born in the 1950s and I am glad to see younger people who actually are aware of their past. I don't know the situation in Canada but in the U S people are just ignorant of their history and place in the world.
British Columbians are basically Americans in speech, but the further East you go in Canada the more British the pronunciation is. My pronunciations are much more British sounding. I use long Os rather than Aws, I pronounce -ile at the end of a word like aisle rather than -uhl, I say things like Chewsday and shchew rather than Tuesday and stew, etc... And once you get to Newfoundland some people sound like they just got off a ship from Cork, Ireland.
In California we always say "prez-in-tay-shun". Never "pree".
I personally say presentation the way you said was the “British way” which surprised me because the “PREE-sentation”, while I have heard it before, I usually hear people say it like “PREH-sentation” or like you pronounced it the second time. I guess it just depends where in the US you are, but I would just have to say I don’t hear many people use the PREE (strong E) sound for that word.
That's the one that got me too and I only live 4 hours away from Chicago.
I honestly felt like he confused himself and got them backwards.
I switch in between them
That’s one of the words that people use the pronunciations interchangeably
northeast pronounces it the brit way
Month day year is great because the first piece of information tells you what season it is, and likely what the weather was, giving you faster access to memory details. /two cents
I've always thought so, too. Year, month, day works for me, as well.
Either go from the specific to the general, day, month, year, or from the general to the specific, YMD, this sticking the month at the front has led the credit bureau to assume that my birthday is the second of August rather than the correct, eighth of February
Years change so infrequently that it makes sense for a date system to place it last - and indeed to leave it off altogether at times. I’d however argue that the day changes so *frequently* that starting with it gives you almost no information. If you told someone an event was happening on the 15th, unless it was the very next 15th to come up, you’ve given them no information at all. Whereas if it’s October and you tell them an event is in March, you’ve given them some sense of how far off it is. Likewise, if someone asks when your birthday is and you don’t care to give specifics, you’re going to tell them the month. MMDDYY first gives you the information you most need to process the information being given. (Void in cases where you’re trying to name computer files that will sort alphabetically, in which case the only proper way is YYYYMMDD.)
That's what I've always argued. The best format is YYYY-MM-DD and Americans are essentially just using that but moving or removing the year if it's not as important in context
@@TheFhqwhgadsLimit It's also just the way we speak dates. It's December 6th, 2019 today. So if somebody is telling me a date I can write it down in the order they say it.
I work in the computer programming field, and I've adopted YYYYMMDD for dates as it makes it easier to sort by the date.
I'd find that easier to adopt than month day year because it's just what I already do backwards. It feels completely wrong to try and write the date MMDDYYYY.
I do this too and I usually shorten it to YYMMDD because Y2K isn't going to happen again for another 80 years.
At least not a different Y2K.
The real Y2K isn't over yet, because most programmers cheated and used the 49/50 split in the coding to fix it fast. 50 means 1950 and 49 means 2049. So in 29 years, any legacy code will be Y2K crashing all over again, and all the COBOL programmers are dead by then.
@@protorhinocerator142 Isn’t the 32-bit Unix time gonna get wonky sometime in the 2030s?
Edit: Just checked: January 19, 2038 at 3:14:08 UTC
From central NY state here - I would pronounce 'presentation' the same way you learned it in England.
I really appreciate this channel for the respectful and optimistic way he interacts with his experiences of facing differences in another culture. When I lived overseas, I would sometimes meet other forigners like me who either had very positive or very negative things to say about the country we were in. I've come to the conclusion that it really comes down to if a person goes into a new country with an attitude that is great ful, open to learn, and respectful of what they experience, or if they go in with a negative attitude to judge and complain.
I am a poor speller and tend to rely on my spell checker. There was a period of time when words were being flagged wrong and the suggestion I was sure was wrong. After a month of this, I found out that my dictionary somehow changed from English_US to English_UK.
They weren't _wrong_, of course - just different.
This has happened to me especially if im looking up British things. The system will think im British and move to English UK LOL
Switching around r's and e's. Center. Centre. Theater theatre.
it's all Greek to me.
Water is probably the best word in determining someones region in the US.
Ember Rodriguez worter
Do what ya otta, mix acid with water. Otta, and water ryme. South east Tennessee, southern interior Appalachian English dialect.
"Milk" and "bag" as well.
in Californiastan it's "agua"
Wah-dur
(SE Michigan)
Again, as a Canadian, with respect to dates, we've always spoken the date as month, day, year, (September 1st, 2019 as opposed to 1st [of] September, 2019) so we write it numerically in the same order that we say it (09/01/2019). Every Brit I've heard talking about Brexit over that last few years, I've heard say "October 31st" or "March 29th" and only rarely heard 29th of March or even less, 31st of October, yet they write it day/month/year.
I also like to explain it to Britts as "what order do you look at things in a calendar?"
I am an American and I have NEVER, EVER, EVER said "IN-surance"!! I have always said "in-SUR-ance". All this linguistic stuff is so interesting to me. After watching so many of these videos, I have noticed my American English is most similar to British proper English (BBC). I wonder why. It is also amusing that you mentioned going back to England and how it would take you a while to revert back to your British ways. This even happened to me when I moved from Michigan to Florida. It was like a culture shock. I always called drinks like Coca-cola, POP. When I got down here, it would drive me crazy when people called it soda. Now, I have been here so long, I can't imagine calling it pop! LOL LOL Likewise, in Michigan we called stores where you buy pop "party stores". Here in Florida, if I asked "Where is the party store?", they would send me to the costume shop or a place to buy birthday candles. LOL LOL
It's INsurance in the south and southwest; inSUREance in the northeast. Don't forget your UMbrella when it rains on THANKSgiving.
Born and raised in the USA. I always have pronounced it in-SUR-ance. With stress on the second syllable. On the subject of dates. I loved the way the US military writes dates... so simple: day, first three letters of the month, capitalized, then year. Such as today is 03FEB19.
Yeah same, really the only logical and clear way to do it.
agreed. because with using ONLY numbers (written or spoken) you can get mixed up all the way to 12.
I would still rather it be swapped, i.e. FEB0319. Having the month in front reflects the way I hear the majority of people actually say the date out loud; almost nobody I know says "the third *of* February" (unless they're trying to sound officious), rather they almost universally elect for the more succinct "February 3rd".
Cory Johnson ditto, Navy brat.
I didn't handle much paperwork on the Corps but on the few forms I did, always used the Julian date. Like today would be 19365 (Dec 31st.)
Kid: Mom, how do I spell pneumonia?
Mom: Look it up in the dictionary.
Kid: [Cries in frustration.]
You wonder why I can not spell?
Now we just tell kids to ask Alexa!
That is what my Dad said: look it up in the dictionary!
Now the mom just says “Ask Alexa!”
I never understand this when people say "look it up in a dictionary" to do this someone needs to have some idea of how a word might be spelt to know where to start.
You're bilingual. American and English ;-)
I would argue Americans speak English, and the English speak British.
You'll truly be American once somebody takes you snipe hunting.
That’s a regional thing too. You have mountain snipe and beach snipe and desert snipe, and they all have different mating calls...
White blotters what is sniper hunting? Never heard of it! Is it just regional?
Ann Miller, you need to find an expert to take you. Snipes are tricky buggers
we got just 'snipe' in Ontario..we just shoot em...eat em for lunch then go catch a pike for supper
@@allenmax8995 having cousins who lived in Toronto for years I've spent a lot of time in Canada! But what warms my heart about Ontario is when their disabled were only getting approx 1thous per mth. The community worried that the world would think the disabled in Ontario were mistreated! A collective consciousness, assuring community good! The us is a hellhole, because it lacks such caring! And the disabled , nobody cares about them!I'm recently in a situation where needed meds are denied, I cant afford the outta pocket expense! Thankfully I can still survive without it!
I started watching your videos because it popped up as a suggestion I never would have thought of searching for something like this, but I find it fascinating. I really do enjoy seeing the cultural differences and similarities. You have a unique perspective since you have lived in both countries. Thank you for the videos and the work you put in. As an American I definitely appreciate it 👍
The British also say "orienTAted" versus the American "oriented".
A LOT of Americans are starting to say that too, unfortunately.
I hear and read "orientate" a lot here in the US. It's a back-formation from "orientation," and I find it an ugly word, especially since there's the word "orientation" came from, namely "orient."
Here is a bit more info to add to your comment: "late Middle English: via Old French from Latin orient- ‘rising or east’, from oriri ‘to rise’."
@@gordon4385 i think with the advent of so many British shows available lately and British actors in Hollywood some of these pronunciations are mixing. Now you have people pronouncing words differently.
@@historygeekslive8243
I think it's actually just ignorance. Orient versus orientate used to be used on tests (with orientate obviously being the wrong answer) back when I was in school, and that was a very long time ago and before any British TV shows had any influence here. The fact that the Brits changed orient to orientate and acclimate to acclimatise has always baffled me. It doesn't seem to make any logical sense at all.
Hi, Laurence! I've been an Anglophile since I was 13(51 now), so I'm as comfortable with Brit slang and vocab as well as American vocab and slang. In the US, we actually call it takeOUT, instead of take-away. Now you've learnt a new word, whee! Lol!
Exactly. Take-away is more reserved for sports or for learning a lesson.
Noticed that as well!
Although at Outback they call it curb(kerb?) side take-away.
When I first heard the term "take away", I had to stop myself from asking "where are you going with it?"
@@jwb52z9 Sometimes (more often on the restaurants end) it's "take home".
I know you are going back home soon(!!). Hope you do a video on how your family,friends,and people think about the way you speak now.
That should be fun. I'm a Hoosier living in Texas and you should have heard my family the first time I said "y'all" in front of them! Lordy! You'd have thought I had sworn in church. 😂😂
@@loriar1027 Thanks for the like. I live in Cincinnati(from there too). I live in Ind. as a kid.
As an American who went to university in London, my first shocks with language occurred when a friend asked to borrow a rubber but he said he’d return it when he was done with it. Also. Had no idea what a gaol, gaoler, or an aubergine was.
That’s largely because the names for produce in England came from the French but in the USA came with the Italian immigrants.
Classic!
I learnt gaol and gaoler reading Shakespeare in high school.
@@jeepstergal4043 I learned gaol from Elden Ring.
Amazing, you made it through a video on the differences between American and British pronunciations of words without bringing up Aluminum, which couldn't be more different between the two dialects. I have long believed the British make it far more difficult to say than it has to be.
The guy who discovered it first called it Aluminum, then he went to Britain and told them he changed his mind and it was Aluminium, then went back to America and changed his mind again back to Aluminum.
Thames, Derby and lessor known Beaulieu, "buel-lee".
Funny thing. I'm an American but I've always spelled 'endeavour' with the u due to being from Florida and seeing the space shuttle Endeavour lift off from Cape Canaveral. In spite of auto correct telling me it's endeavor.
And the only reason the space shuttle used that spelling is because it was named after Captain Cook's ship, which of course used the British spelling.
Are you sure you aren't from Flourida?
I'm from the Northeast and spell it endeavour too!
I didn’t know there was another way
I live in New England, and it wasn't until I told my friend, visiting me from Pennsylvania, to stop by the package store on the way to the house (and she had no idea what I was talking about), that I realized that "package store" is an exclusively New England way of saying liquor store......
Here in Wyoming, we say "liquor store", but the signs often say "package store"
@@shawnn1412 Hm. Maybe there's a migration thing... I remember learning it was a euphemistic adoption back when New England was more puritanical and had all those blue laws on the books.
We also have "package store" written out, but can say either one.
Liquor licenses here are absurdly expensive, so you see a lot of combination restaurant/package stores. The stores that only sell liquor are liquor stores. I think laws in Kansas have changed, but I believe the liquor stores were all operated by the state, and they were called package stores.
I grew up in Mississippi, and there, at least 25 years ago, they were all Package Stores. Had something to do with the law.
My husband is from the Detroit area and they say party store.
This reminds me of that Sherlock episode where someone gave away that they spent a long time in America by saying "let me give you my cell number" instead of "mobile number".
When I first came to the eastern hemisphere it was so confusing. "What's your mow-bile?" "My mo-bill?" "Yeah you have a mow-bile right?" "I... _am_ mo-bill, I guess? I don't have a car though" "No your mow-bile phone!" "Ahhhhhh, yeah (here's some numbers)"
The words for fizzy drinks across the US is crazy! Here in Texas we say coke, like Coca Cola, as a general term. Some say soda. My family in Colorado calls it pop. It's extremely varied.
Skadoosher 77 soda, for me, pop-is archaic. Pardon typo. Do not get me started about filet and fillet. When speaking of food I defer to the French.
Yup, here in Texas Coke means a Dr pepper, a Pepsi, or whatever you might want.
In Missouri, Coke means a Coca Cola. Pop is the more correct term there.
And in California, it's all soda.
I'm from southeast Texas & say coke for any dark cola, soda-pop for any not-dark soda, & Dr. Pepper for, well, Dr. Pepper! 😆
In New England some call it tonic.
@@NunYaO North Texas here, it is not uncommon for someone to offer a coke, and then ask "what kind?" Meaning anything including Dr Pepper. However, people in the city often say soda.
13:44
'Writing the date the right way'
*laughs in American*
That made me chuckle too. Reminds me of my dad, who likes to say they "drive on the wrong side of the road" as a joke... which is funny because we lived in Japan for 10 years where he was always driving on the "wrong" side of the road.
I was born in Detroit and always pronounced it inSURance. When I met a couple who were from Texas, they pronounced it INsurance.
Linda Ferrington I was born in Detroit too I live in Texas right now.
I know people who call McDonalds MACdonalds emphasis on the MAC.
Live in the south and I say INsurance
Averagestoner bet you swim in SEE-ment ponds too.
In California I say InSURrance. Not INsurance.
Great video. I love the English language and hearing different applications of it is fun. Your videos are very intelligent and always a little humorous--a combination that can't be beat in my book. Love the haircut too.
When it comes to schedule, Patrick Stewart is to blame... Love the video!
John Hammond
8:30 It's amazing how different you sound when comparing "water" in a British accent and in an American accent.
"The British spellings of colour and centre..."
*France would like to know your location*
I use both Theater and Theatre.
A Theater is where you watch a movie.
A Theatre is where you watch a play.
A Centre is a building = youth Centre
Center is in the middle
At least to me ( western Canada 🇨🇦
Has your wife picked up any British dialect from you?
I'd like to know this too
No is still no. I have a headache is exactly the same
I find your videos interesting and fun! I see "take away" has still stuck with you whereas we say Chinese "take out" .
Everyone has already commented on take away vs. take out, but did no one else notice he said MEthane instead of MEHthane. I'd never heard it pronounced like that before.
Or MAY-lay vs. ME-lee for melee.
And “zed” instead of “zee” - so many times
I noticed immediately. I just happen to be a year late. 😂
I am American and I work for greyhound. They actually print the tickets with Day/Month/Year so I am used to seeing it both ways on a daily basis. Never put much thought into it till you mentioned it.
John Cleese said he realized Ranch was coming out "Raunch," so he took to flattening his A's.
Funny!
This reminds me, I have a British friend who will sometimes, playfully, correct me when I say "color" instead of "colour", so I'll start adding a U after every O. Like "Soon" will be "sououn", etc. It's all in good fun, lol
I've NEVER been able to figure out Zed.
@@christelheadington1136 Yeah that's one I don't get either, but eh
@@Brainhorn it's derived from the Greek letter zeta.
The poms used to call it Zee but changed it to Zed in the 18th Century. It's the sort of thing that happens when men & women think that they're ladies & gentlemen. I'm an Aussie so I grew up with Zed so l always say it, but mostly because of Sesame Street subsequent generations of kids became more & more likely to think of it a Zee.
In some parts of the US, a real estate or condominium community named “X Harbour” is higher priced than one named “X Harbor.” That’s one very expensive letter!
Interesting. I pronounce “insurance” and “presentation” the way you did in England, and I grew up in southern California.
Mark Voelker same here!
In her video's "English With Lucy" she pointed out we use both of the pronunciations of the word 'Process" depending on if its a noun or a verb and this also applies to other words that I can't recall at the moment. But we say PROH cess when its a verb, "As you process through the crowd to the front be polite". And we say PRAH cess when its a noun, "Making baklavah is a tedious process"
prohCESS is the way one pronounces the verb.
PRAHcess is how the noun is pronounced.
@@jeepstergal4043 Oh yeah! Thank you, I was hung up on the first syllable of the words and missed that!
I say "take-out" rather than "takeaway" for food you bring home from a restaurant that offers that service.
By the way, I applaud you for your attempt to assimilate with American culture. One of the greatest things about our country is how so many diverse peoples have come here and assimilated. By trying to be more like each other, we can learn each other's culture, and pick up certain habits or knowledge that we wouldn't have if we just stayed like ourselves. Up until recently, our trend toward similarity in our diversity has made us strong as a people. Being diverse and staying distinct is a large part of why we've had more trouble in the last few decades, as people don't try to agree first, they go straight toward argument. Thank you for being you, but also trying to bridge the gap!
I was born in Germany (on a US Army base) and grew up in the US state of Georgia. Down there, when parting company, we sometimes say "Don't get none on ya." Which is used as a general wishing of well-being. What precisely we're referring to, I don't know, but I conjecture it was from farming times when people had to shovel stalls and such, and well, there you have it.
Regarding writing the date, people who work with international clients and thus multiple date formats often use the month's abbreviation and the full year to avoid any ambiguity. I'll date a contract "3 Feb 2019" so there's no doubt on the order I'm using.
Even "Feb 3rd, 2019" works as long as there is no ambiguity.
But the way you show it is the way I picked up from my dad (21 years Army)
@@josephcote6120Yep, that's the way the military does it. I was stationed in England, where we worked with NATO a lot, and I'm sure it prevented a lot of ambiguity.
I teach my international students that if they're working in a company and they see a date such as 04/08/19 to FIND OUT exactly what is meant. It might save their company a LOT of money.
In the Delaware Valley we pronounce “water” as “wood-er”.
Francisco d’Anconia In Appalachia you’ll hear WAR-ter
I'm going to toss a spanner into the works over the whole date issue - I hope you enjoy this one. It's -somewhat- common in programming and database work (as well as on Linux computers) to type the date as YYYY-MM-DD H24:MM:SS. If you have a set of files you need to have sorted by date (and I find I still do this as a holdover from when using command-line "dir" or "ls" and it was always alphabetical no matter what) if you start the filename with YYYY-MM-DD, even in an alphabetical filename sort it will always be in chronological order. So, for files that I have to keep multiple revisions of or, more commonly, folders I want in chronological date (such as for photographs collected by date) I'll still use the YYYY-MM-DD format in the name of the file or folder. It also has the advantage of being impossible to confuse regardless of which side of the pond you are on. :D
You are so good at making boring topics so damn fun to watch! IMO. Cheers!
Wow! You've managed to nail the mid-west accent! Here's a gem. I was reading a blurb in Reader's Digest & an American man was in England & asked the desk clerk, where's the elevator. The clerk corrects him & say's, you mean the lift. American say's, we say elevator & we invented it. The clerk replied it's a lift & we invented the language.😏
After your visit to see family, do a video on how they see your changes.
You didn't insert an R into four, it was already there.
Tehn Fowuh, good buddy.
Don't worry, in Missouri and Illinois they say *warter* for some reason
It's "wooder" in Philly.
It’s something in the drinking warter. ;)
Whorsh: to cleanse with warter.
As a Yank (and a Yankee) who spent quite a bit of time in the UK, I spell and pronounce words in the UK way. But I laughed when you talked about liquor stores and off-licenses. In Boston we call them "packies" which is a shortening of the word "package" because they're known here as package stores!
Yep! The packie!
glad to hear you are living well in America. Much love from Texas !
PS. 13:07 "but yeah," sounded very American.
The "t" in "water" is actually pronounced as an alveolar tap in american english (more like a spanish or italian 'r', as opposed to the alveolar or dental plosive "d")
I love phonology.
@@kohakuaiko
It's not as cool as phrenology
@@bentleyr00d only to say.
Unless you’re from Jersey and say “wudder”
Nah it's definitely nothing like a Spanish r.
Wàdür is my approximate pronunciation
“Pree”-sentation must be a Midwest thing. I only hear “preh”-sentation in California.
Upstate/Central NY here, and same. The only people I can ever remember saying "PREE-sentation" were a few random old teachers who had some connection to the Midwest, be it MN or IL. Don't know if that's really a thing, but there you go.
@@sluttymctits4496 It is I've never heard it pronounced the way he did I'm from Illinois.
Illinois native here. It’s definitely preh-sensation here.
I'm so used to hearing you in a Brit accent that when you said "water" in an American accent it was a bit odd at first haha
At first? This is my second time watching the video and I'm still not over it
Fascinating Laurence! Jolly good !
Well done - Enjoy hearing your observations about America and England!
On dates, except government forms, i completely switched to yyyy/mm/dd about two years ago. Mostly because of sorting for date named files on computers, but the more i use it, the more i prefer it logically.
The "American" form doesn't bug me when the words for the day and month are written out as "February 3rd,2019" (Familiarity, I guess..) but it does bug me when used with just numbers it IS actually illogical, "February the Third?!?!" There is ONLY one February per year! The "British" way makes more sense.
James Slick - Being from the States, I obviously grew up and was taught to write the date as month/day/year, but after working with people from other parts of the world back in the early 2000s I started writing it as day/month/year. It’s stuck with me, and to this day I will write it that way. However, because i know that it might be confusing to a lot of fellow Yanks, I will write out the month. For example, I would write today’s date as 3-February or 3-Feb.
why the most pertinent info isnt the year its the month. Especially since bills are monthly. The year is the least important piece of info.
@@dash4800 In keeping long term records in a database "YYYY/MM/DD" is the best. Businesses need to keep records longer than month to month. You would not want your credit score based only on the last 12 months than start anew each year! For tax purposes alone a 3 to five year record of income and expenses is required at audit. I use "YYYY/MM/DD" for all timed records even Photos and Videos - Makes things easier to find.
I used to use DB2 to create ad hoc reports for my business users. The one thing I got more "can you fix this" requests was the way it printed ISO dates. Today would be 2019-02-03. I ended up making my own set of functions to split the parts of the date apart to keep my users happy.
I've lived in the US my whole life, and I've never heard anyone say "PREE-sentation" or "IN-surance". Those sound very rural / yokel to my ear -- were you living way out in the country when you picked those up?
I save INsurance but not PREEsentation,
In my part of the South, one buys INsurance from an inSURance company. It seems schizophrenic now that I think about it.
i never realized that british people pronounce "Z" as Zed. whereas we say Zee.
So do Canadians.
The British and others pronounce “z”, “zed”, owing to the origin of the letter “z”, the Greek letter “Zeta”. If so, why don't they pronounce "b" as "bed" because of the Greek letter "Beta"?
@@haroldwilkes6608 One of those mysteries...not really worth getting worked up about.
Just subscribed... You're the only British person I've ever encountered who doesn't despise Americans for no particular reason. And we've never even met!
Fun fact… the official Canadian way is neither month-day-year, nor day-month-year. It’s year-month-day. But YY-MM-DD has the advantage of sorting chronologically without having to tell the programme it’s a list of dates. Any standard number sort will do the job with YY-MM-DD. So there’s some logic and practicality to it.
it was funny listening you to saying "TH-cam" like 12 times in a row... and saying it the exact same every time when you thought you weren't.
It's funny that you couldn't hear the difference! For American he was saying "you-tube" and for British he was saying "you-chewb"
@@kaldo_kaldo ahhhh, thanks ... i didn't hear it either. now i can lol
Your heavy Brit accent is dropping, believe it or not. Lol
Surely it's the other way around. He's gaining an American accent. To say he's dropping his English accent would suggest that American is the world's 'default' accent.
His accent is the same.
@@prappsy3028 Definitely true, although most people would say "dropping." Linguistically incorrect, but since language is as language does, linguistics would say it was correct in a non-technical sense.
@@prappsy3028 American IS the default accent. Those limeys didn't just lose their colonies all those years ago. They also gave up their right to influence language in any meaningful way. In 150 years every English speaking nation will be affecting an approximation of a Texas drawl, by damn!
@@regularfather4708 😂😂
British words often seem strangely euphemistic. Like "dustcart" for example--it's not a cart, and 'dust' doesn't adequately characterize what it carries.
I'm from Michigan and have been to Britain and have British friends, but I've never heard the word dustcart! Can you enlighten me as to what it is? Is it a dustpan? For transporting filth from the floor to the garbage can?
@@juliestockmeyer5871 A dustcart is a garbage truck.
@@rfmerrill still better than Honey Wagon, you really never want what is those to get out on the open road.
We call it the bin lorry
Yeah I'm British and I never hear anyone use the term dustcart
In Boston we call liquor store runs a booze run and it's usually conducted just before the liquor store closes at 11PM.
I was born and raised in Michigan to parents born and raised there also. I grew up saying presentation and insurance the way you said them in Britain. I would have thought it odd if I heard them said the other way round.
Oddly, growing up in Utah, and spending my married years in Nevada, we say insurance and presentation the British way.
I'm in eastern Southern California and it's the same out here. Strange how that works out.
Same with WA state
@@MsJennabird That's because the other is peculiar to the mid-West.
I've grown up in Arizona and Utah and I never realized that pree-sentation was the "American" way. I've always said it as pres-entation, and have almost always heard it said that way by Americans.
@@Markle2k where in the Midwest? We say pre-sen-tay-shun in Misery.
In the age of computers, correct date format should be YYYYMMDD.
Not just in the age of computers... Standard practice when stating any measurement with multiple units is to list those units in descending order. To do otherwise would sound ridiculous...
- "She's rather tall at 11 inches 5."
- "I ran the 5k in 15 seconds and 29 minutes."
- "He won the marathon by a photo finish with a time of 14 milliseconds, 42 seconds, 11 minutes and 2 hours."
@@StoneE4 or my favorite I walked for 30 minutes 15 seconds and an hour.
Be wary of YYMMDD because in 80 years it will make a mess.
"Take away" as in 'Chinese take away' in America is called 'take out'
Very good analytical insight on how someone can acquire 2nd language words
by virtue of living somewhere else in one s youth thanks for that
Another great video! I’d love to see what Britishisms Tara picked up from 10+ years with you. 🙂
Growing up chatting online with Brit friends, I noticed I started taking on Brit slang so I wouldn't confuse one Brit friend. For example when he said he got "pissed," I learned he meant he got drunk. I explained to him too that "pissed" means angry in America. But I completely sympathize, and I find myself adapting to British style English when speaking to Brits simply to avoid confusion. I think I sound a tad silly using British slang with an American accent, but at least I'm not understood init?
I can't confirm it, but I always thought of "TH-cam" as being a play on words of the old slang term for television "Boob tube"
While you can get away with mixing usages of various word spellings, it would be a disaster to intermittently use different date formats while transitioning. Even though the MM/DD/YYYY format is the norm here in the USA, I can see the elegance of ordering the date in order from smallest to greatest interval.
Unfortunately, both the US and the UK are seriously wrongheaded on this point. It became clear to me in the early days of owning a computer that YYYY-MM-DD is by far the superior method of sorting dates, especially in a digital file structure. More unfortunately, I'm so apprehensive about misidentifying the day from the month that I sabotage the whole system by labeling them as 2019-Feb-03 thus totally eliminating the intended benefit of numerical sort order.
"YYYY-MM-DD" is the ISO prefered "international" date form, And Computers are the reason. It's easy for both humans AND machines to "drill" down to a record if it goes from the largest unit to the smallest. We already do it with HRS/MIN/SEC for time smaller than 1 day. The British "DD/MM/YYYY" is more elegant for humans, And the US "MM/DD/YYYY" system is admittedly "bass-akwards" sounding, but for record keeping "YYYY/MM/DD" is best. P.S. Your use of a three letter abreviation for the month is usually recognized. So your good.
@pisswobble Only because it's a holiday. Most people, Brits included, will say the date out loud as Month, Day, Year. As in, "It's June 3rd, 2018." People write mainly as they speak, not like a computer uses binary code.
I think it's because the year is typically implicit if you're referring to current day events
While DD-MM-YY makes sense in a numerical sense, most Americans say most dates in MM-DDth order, so it makes sense in a linguistic sense to write our dates that way.
When I live in South Carolina people took great delight in getting me to count to 10. They got a kick out of the way I say 5 and 9 in my Texas accent.
paige harrison I lived in Charleston for years and they had a good time laughing at this northern Georgia girl.
@Lost in the Pond I realized listening to you and speaking the sentence "I'd like a glass of water", that I pronounce it much more like you do. I am a Southern American with pronunciation influences from Mid-west, and New England and other places. But was raised in the South. the one time someone did not understand me asking for a glass of water was in Boston, and I had to repeat myself and say it the way you say "we Americans" pronounce the word water.
i think I pronounce it more "warder". sometimes 'wahter". Like I said, I have a lot of pronunciation influences.
A lot of us also say "Thee" instead of "The" if it precedes a vowel or word that starts with a vowel. It just sounds better.
I thought that was true all across the English-speaking regions of the world.
In Chgo.
We say "Da".😆 Well, not all of us...
Never thought about it but in Virginia was "thuh", of course it was "Vuginya" too.
C
@@haroldwilkes6608 But would you say “thuh apple?”
I would be interested to hear what your family and friends think of your manner of speech when you go to visit your home in May. We still hear a British accent but I wonder if they will hear an American accent in your voice?
I'm American born and raised, but grew up in a British immigrant home. My first trip to the UK was with my grandparents, visiting relatives in Sheffield. They all told my grandmother she had picked up an American accent. And yeah, I think he's picking up a bit of an American accent.
The words he uses tend to be Americanised but he doesn't sound like he has an American accent to me.
I like how when you say British water, you sound normal, but when you say American water, you sound like a weird American guy
My wife and I have been watching Brit Box for the last 6 years, so we have come understand many Brit words/usage.
Oh, Laurence--I don't remember when I first found your postings, but it was a wonderful thing! I have enjoyed the earliest and the most recent. I do notice a distinct change in self-presentation/humo(u)r over time. These earlier ones are more "serious", indeed earnest,
I guess I pronounce “presentation” and “insurance” the British way. Huh.
I'm a native Californian and I've never heard anyone say "presentation" in what he calls the American way.
@@schreiberwoods I can't remember hearing it that way either, except oddly maybe by someone British or European.
In pa we say pres entation
Same. I have never in my life heard anyone put the emphasis on the first syllable of insurance. I've heard pree-sentation a couple times in a corporate setting, but other than that it's always been preh-sentation.
I find the pronunciation of presentation kind of interchangeable, I definitely use both, I feel like pree-sentation is more formal while preh-sentation is more casual in my mind
Laurence - I couldn't help but notice that your video was going in and out of focus throughout your presentation. I believe the problem was that you are using a camera that is set for auto-focus. Every time you extended your arms and waved your hands (as Italians often do) the picture would go out of focus as the camera was trying to focus on the nearest thing to it, i. e. your hands. Recommend you remove the autofocus feature (if you can) and have the camera only focus on your face or stop talking with your hands. Just a suggestion.
Is that what it was? I kept noticing something funny too, particularly with the audio lining up with the video.
well, aren't you just a clever little kitten?
And his lips aren't moving with the words he's saying, there's a half second delay to the audio or something
That auto-focus issue drove me bonkers. I had to stop watching.
It’s a “beer run”.
In Detroit we say “ I’m making a beer run to the party store”
Also, I’ve noticed almost every Brit is incapable of pronouncing “Chicago “ or “Michigan “ correctly. They will always say “Chick-ago” or “Mitchigan”.
"Shy - town" wasn't something I understood until recent years
Nicky L
Every British actor on tv, including Jeremy Brett, the man who portrayed Sherlock Holmes. Also, all of my English relations say it that way.
Definitely a party store. Bay citian here!
Your adapting well to your new country like learning its language.
More quizzes !! I love doing them with you !!!
Take out, not take away.
TAKEAWAY.
In the south we say "Let's go to the ABC store" to get liquor
Pronouncing "insurance" that way isn't general American, it's Southern, specifically. And maybe the Midwest, too. But it may be half and half, but there's no way to claim that the emphasis on the first syllable is the predominant American pronunciation
When I lived in Virginia it was usually something like "IN shawnce".
I grew up in the South. You also disPLAY stuff on your DISplay.
@@shawnn1412 That's a common thing in English generally, to distinguish noun and verb by putting emphasis respectively on the first and second syllable. I guess some dialects do it more than others. Would never do it with "display", but it's the exact same construction as reCORDing the REcord: something I DO say
I always enjoy your take on the nuances between American and British English. Growing up in Harrisburg PA, the cities nearby us each had their own slightly different version of American English. In Dauphin County, the word Insurance is pronounced in what you said is the British manner. In Lancaster County, where I lived for a couple of years, it's pronounced as "In/surance". I noticed it but kept that observation to myself.
I only had to move 18 miles--from Harrisburg to Elizabethtown PA to discover that their American English was just a little bit different than my own. Your videos help me be more attuned to the unique dialects each city and region has and it gives me a deeper appreciation of how we communicate as a Society. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. :)
Awe, you did this video on my birthday!🎉🎂 I've been wanting to tell you how much better you look with your new haircut. It looks amazing, we've certainly "Americanized" you! I ❤🇺🇸❤
Thank you!