English language outside UK

Daily life

 

Terms common in Canada, Britain, and Ireland but less frequent or nonexistent in the U.S. are:

Tin (as in tin of tuna), for can, especially among older speakers. Among younger speakers, can is more common, with tin referring to a can which is wider than it is tall.

Cutlery, for silverware or flatware.

Serviette, especially in Eastern Canada, for a paper table napkin. This usage is fading.

Tap, conspicuously more common than faucet in everyday usage.

 

The following are more or less distinctively Canadian:

ABM, bank machine: synonymous with ATM (which is also used).

BFI bin: Dumpster, after a prominent Canadian waste management company, in provinces where that company does business; compare Kleenex, Xerox.

chesterfield: originally British and internationally used (as in classic furnishing terminology) to refer to a sofa whose arms are the same height as the back, it is a term for any couch or sofa in Canada (and, to some extent, Northern California). Once a hallmark of CanE, chesterfield as with settee and davenport, is now largely in decline among younger generations in the western and central regions. Couch is now the most common term; sofa is also used.

converter: a television remote control. Used synonymously with "remote control" or "remote.".

eavestroughs: rain gutters. Also used, especially in the past, in the Northern and Western U.S.; the first recorded usage is in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick: "The tails tapering down that way, serve to carry off the water, d'ye see. Same with cocked hats; the cocks form gable-end eave-troughs [sic], Flask."

garburator: (rhymes with carburetor) a garbage disposal.

homogenized milk or homo milk: Milk containing 3.25% milk fat, typically called "whole milk" in the US.

hydro: a common synonym for electrical service, used primarily in New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia. Most of the power in these provinces is hydroelectricity, and incorporate the term "Hydro". Usage: "I didn't pay my hydro bill so they shut off my lights." Hence hydrofield, a line of electricity transmission towers, usually in groups cutting across a city, and hydro lines/poles, electrical transmission lines/poles. These usages of hydro are also standard in the Australian state of Tasmania.

loonie: the Canadian one-dollar coin; derived from the use of the common loon on the reverse. The toonie (less commonly spelled tooney, twooney, twoonie) is the two-dollar coin. Loonie is also used to refer to the Canadian currency, particularly when discussing the exchange rate with the U.S. dollar; neither loonie nor toonie can describe amounts of money beyond a very small amount. (e.g. I have thirty dollars versus "got a loonie/toonie?").

pencil crayon: coloured pencil.

pogie or pogey: term referring to unemployment insurance, which is now officially called Employment Insurance in Canada. Derived from the use of pogey as a term for a poorhouse. Not used for welfare, in which case the term is "the dole", as in "he's on the dole, eh?".

Apparel

 

The following are common in Canada, but not in the U.S. or the U.K.

runners: running shoes, especially in Western Canada. Also used in Australian English and Irish English. Atlantic Canada prefers sneakers while central Canada (including Quebec and Ontario) prefer "running shoes".

tuque (also spelled toque or touque): a knitted winter hat, often with a pompon on the crown. A similar hat would be called a beanie in the western U.S. and a watch cap in the eastern U.S, though these forms are generally closer-fitting, and may lack a brim as well as a pompom. There seems to be no exact equivalent outside Canada, since the tuque is of French Canadian origin.

bunny hug: a hooded sweater (hoodie). This term is uncommon outside of Saskatchewan. Also known as a Kangaroo Jacket.

packsack: a backpack; more commonly heard in Northern Ontario.

kitbag: a backpack; heard in the Maritimes.

dressing gown: this is used in the UK, but in the US this would be called a robe. It is an item of clothing worn over pyjamas, when out of bed, for warmth or modesty.

Food and beverage

Most Canadians as well as Americans in the Northwest, North Central, Prairie and Inland North prefer pop over soda to refer to a carbonated beverage (but neither term is dominant in British English; see further at Soft drink naming conventions). "Soft drink" is also extremely common throughout Canada.

What Americans call Canadian bacon is named back bacon or, if it is coated in cornmeal or ground peas, peameal bacon in Canada.

What most Americans call a candy bar is usually known as a chocolate bar (as in the UK, however, some in the US, especially older Americans in northern states, occasionally call it a chocolate bar).

Even though the word French fries is used by Canadians, some older speakers use the word chips (which is always used in fish and chips, as elsewhere).

Whole-wheat bread is sometimes referred to as brown bread, as in "Would you like white or brown bread for your toast?"

 

The following are Canadianisms:

double-double: a cup of coffee with two creams and two sugars, most commonly associated with the Tim Hortons chain of coffee shops. By the same token, triple-triple.[66]

mickey: a 375 mL (12.7 US fl oz; 13.2 imp fl oz) bottle of hard liquor (informally called a pint in the Maritimes and the US).

two-six, twenty-sixer, twixer: a 750 mL (25 US fl oz; 26 imp fl oz) bottle of hard liquor (called a fifth in the Maritimes and the US or a quart in areas of Nova Scotia).

forty pounder, forty: 1,183 mL (40.0 US fl oz; 41.6 imp fl oz) bottle of hard liquor. (A reference used primarily in southern Ontario.)

Texas mickey: a 3 L (101 US fl oz; 106 imp fl oz) bottle of hard liquor. (Despite the name, Texas mickeys are generally unavailable outside of Canada.)

two-four: a case of 24 beers, also known as a "flat" in Western Canada

poutine: a snack of french fries topped with cheese curds and hot gravy.

Cheezies: Cheese puffs. The name is a genericized trademark based on a brand of crunchy cheese snack sold in Canada.

Freezies: A Frozen flavoured sugar water snack common worldwide, but known by this name exclusively in Canada.

Dainty, dainties: Fancy cookies, pastries, or squares served at a social event (usually plural). Used in western Canada.

Informal speech

 

A rubber in the U.S. and Canada is slang for a condom; however, in Canada it is sometimes another term for eraser (as it is in the United Kingdom).

 

The word bum can refer either to the buttocks (as in Britain), or, derogatorily, to a homeless person (as in the U.S.). However, the "buttocks" sense does not have the indecent character it retains in British and Australian use, as it and "butt" are commonly used as a polite or childish euphemism for ruder words such as arse (commonly used in Atlantic Canada and among older people in Ontario and to the west) or ass, or mitiss (used in the Prairie Provinces, especially in northern and central Saskatchewan; probably originally a Cree loanword). Older Canadians may see "bum" as more polite than "butt", which before roughly the 1970s was considered rude.

 

Similarly the word pissed can refer either to being drunk (as in Britain), or being mad or angry (as in the U.S.), though anger is often said as pissed off, while piss drunk or pissed up is said to describe inebriation (though piss drunk is sometimes also used in the US, especially in the northern states).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

English language is widely spread all over the world and due to some historical reasons tends to be spoken in some countries as native language. But because of historical differences of these countries it was greatly influenced and faced visible changes. Changes in pronunciation, spelling, and usage of some words made English language in other countries unique. Sometimes people make a great mistake thinking that if they know English they’ll have no problems with communication going to some English speaking country like Australia or Canada. But differences existing in these languages may occur more problems than if one wouldn’t know English at all. Knowing of these differences will help to understand the culture of the language spoken in another country although this language has a common name “English”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Used sources

 

 

 

1. http://the_english_dept.tripod.com/esc.html

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_English

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_English

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_English

5. http://revolution.allbest.ru/languages/00054857_0.html