Saturday, June 30, 2007

Amerenglish trivia

This, via my brother-in-law.

Apparently, he heard a dinner speaker point out that Americans and Aussies use the word "momentarily" to mean different things.

In Australia, it means "for a moment." In the US, it means "in a moment."

This led to some moments of fear for some Aussies when an American airline pilot announced "We will be taking off momentarily."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOL, that WOULD be disconcerting ... funny that we use "momentary" for the British meaning

Anonymous said...

That is great!

One wonders if UK English and US English are two different languages.

Even though I am born and raised in the US, I consider that the Brits speak "real" English.

Anonymous said...

I just came across Separated by a Common Language -- http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/ -- dedicated to observations on British and American English by an American linguist in the UK (via the Lord Celery blog -- http://tinyurl.com/jtowt).

I'm enjoying it as a Canadian married to an American who spent his early childhood in England; I thought you and your readers, might get a kick out of it, too.

Quite the translation tool!