Direct: 
This one will be a quickie, but most definitely addressing what you’ll frequently hear and perhaps say yourself. I’ve repeated the old saying before that English and Americans are divided by a common language, and this certainly brings that point home–it is not merely a matter of having alternative words/phrases meaning the same thing between the two languages, but in some cases using the same words that sound slightly differently beyond the expected softening of the vowels (and finishing words that end in ‘R’s with ‘ah’ sounds). Below is just a sample:
In these first two cases, there is actually an extra vowel in each word that affects its pronunciation—
aluminium (AL-OO-MIN-EE-UM) = aluminum
speciality (SPESH-EE-AL-IT-EE) = specialty
vitamin - has a short sounding ‘I’ (as in the the word ‘it’) rather than a long sound (as in the word ‘bite’).
shire – pronounced SHER, not SHYER.
Gloucester – pronounced GLAWSTER, not GLOWCHESTER as a lot of Americans tend to say for some reason.
Leicester – pronounced LESTER, not LYE-CHESTER.
filet – in this case, Americans are true to the original French pronunciation with the silent ‘T’ (FILL-AY), whereas the English who live right next door to France say it as FILL-ET. They also place stress on the 1st syllable rather than the 2nd.
advertisement – again, we hear a short ‘I’ sound (as in ‘it’), and stress is placed on the 2nd syllable (ad-VER-tisement) rather than the 3rd (ad-ver-TISE-ment). Related to this word, I may as well mention the common usage of the abbreviation ‘advert’ instead of ‘ad’.
Pantene – okay, this is a brand name that may not figure into your daily language, but you will hear on the ads (pardon me, adverts) how the English do use the French pronunciation in this case: PAN-TEN, as opposed to PAN-TEEN.
Hyundai – again to roll with a brand name, in the States we’d say something like HUN-DYE, whereas here they add an extra syllable: HY-UN-DYE.
respite – RES-pit rather than res-PITE (see the pattern of shortened versus lengthened ‘I’ sounds? You can apply this to many other cases).
weekend – stress is on the second syllable (week-END), not the first.
Z- ZED instead of ZEE
These are just a selection off the top of my head…as I think of others, I’ll add them here, but hopefully this is enough to get the idea across. Meanwhile, London Relocation Ltd. speaks your language, so never hesitate to ask our guidance when needing to ‘translate’ the language of the property market to find your ideal home.
Related posts:
- Speaking the Queen’s English (Getting Around London)
- Speaking the Queen’s English (Food–Part 1)
- Speaking the Queen’s English (Conversational Lingo)
- Speaking the Queen’s English (Food–Part 2)
- Speaking the Queen’s English (Food–Part 4)
Thanks for this!!! The ZEE and ZEd thing has always confused me, as we say ZED in Canada, too.
Glad it helps! I’m still having difficulty converting to ZED…it’s the only letter to have two consonant sounds, like a word unto itself, which is hard for me to grasp
[...] the past, I’ve touched on topics like pronunciation, conversational lingo, getting around (transport and signage), food, etc., but today I’ll [...]
[...] been getting you started on an easy one: British English. I’ve blogged before in my “Speaking the Queen’s English” posts about how this vocabulary differs from American English, and while yesterday I [...]