TWO KINDS OF ENGLISH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19625, 2 May 1927, Page 12

TWO KINDS OF ENGLISH.

DIFFERENCES OF MEANING. HOW AMERICANS ARE MISLED. The thousands of Americans who go to Europe each year try to learn French before visiting France; but they fail to realise that it is just as essential to learn English before visiting England, says an American in the Daily Express. "The American in England—and I know from personal experience—finds it just as hard to make himself understood as if he were trying to tjdk French in Paris," says the writer. "If, for instance, an American railway worker .came to England and talked to a similar 'worker here he would assert that he was a railroad, not a railway employee. He would speak of a mineral waggon as a coal gondola—for a mineral waggon means to him a waggon drawn by horses, which transports bottles of mineral water. He would call a permanent way a roadbed; a point, a switch; a goods van, a freight car; a guard, a brakeman; a signalman, a switchman; an enginedriver, an engineer l . Level crossings to him would be grade crossings, and luggage would be baggage. "If the visiting American chanced to be in the motor-car business he would be obliged to learn to say hood instead of the top of a motor-car, the bonnet instead of the hood, petrol instead of gasoline, the windscreen instead of the windshield, sparking-plug instead of a spark plug, a lorry instead of truck, and a spanner instead of a mopkey-wrench." . This applies to women, too, for the American housewife in London thinks she buys from a dry goods store, but it is really a draper's, a shoemaker instead of a bootmaker, a fruit merchant instead of a fruiterer, a vegetable dealer instead of a greengrocer, a hardware store instead of an ironmonger, a poultry dealer instead of a poulterer. She would ask for a sample instead of a pattern, crackers instead of biscuits, candy instead of sweets, and a baby buggy instead of a perambulator. The writer adds-"Every trade has its own terminology, different on both sides of the Atlantic. When one adds to these thousands of different words,-the equally different spellings, and the yet more dissimilar pronunciations, one can readily see that American-English is almost as different from British-English as Italian is from French."