I remember some non-American being amused at our term “fanny pack”.
American: sports, math
UK: sport, maths
You probably aren’t thinking of me, but I was born in Australia, spent a lot of my childhood in England, then lived in Australia until about 7 years ago, when I moved to the US. So I’m the person here who talks about Australia when most Australians are asleep – and I also know a fair bit about Britain.
If those are the school subjects, I’ve not heard “sport” before but PE and Games.
But the last section of a British newspaper or news broadcast is entitled “Sport”.
Certain verbs in Irish English lose their infinitive form when preceded by a verb. E.g. “I was allowed go out…” whereas other countries’ English would say “I was allowed to go out…”
Another one is occasional omission of “set” constructions - most Irish people would talk about “a scissors”. And I once saw in a book on architecture: “a stairs”.
In Northern Ireland, the continuous “whenever” is often used in place of the singular “when”. This can be very confusing: “Whenever I was born…” “Whenever I die…”
I could write a whole book on the differences, and nearly did once, but most of them are venacular, and in written English it’s more difficult to distinguish.
Americans don’t refer to their mothers as “mum”.
Americans don’t have “mates”, they have friends. And they go to bars, not pubs.
Use of “uni” for university also pegs a poster as British or Irish.
“uni” has a distinctly British or Australian sound to me.
I’d say college/university are pretty much 50/50 here with maybe more people referring to it as college.
New Zealanders and Australians steal from or commit fraud only on each other?
If a person use “rips off” to mean “insults”, that’s a giveaway that they are from the UK.
Not so. Well, not where I am, anyway. I’ve never heard it in that context. “Rips off” means “steals from” to me. You sure you’re not thinking of Antipodean English?
ETA: I see it’s MrDibble who said that, and he’s South African, so maybe it’s an exclusively SA term?
In that sense, that’s a dead giveaway that someone is from the antipodes.
Right: it might be South African. I don’t think it’s Australian, but I’ve been out of the country too long to be really sure.
RE: ripping off. I’m American and I use “ripping on” to mean insulting. “Ripping off” means not quite stealing…more like a scam. You go to buy a used car and pay more than it’s worth: “What a rip-off!”
Also, if you ever put the punctuation outside quotes, and don’t consider it a mistake, you’re not from the USA. Punctuation geeks, please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it would go something like this:
USA: Thus, beanpod wrote “this is my example,” and lo, it was good.
Elsewhere: Thus, beanpod wrote “this is my example”, and lo, it was good.
Funny story about that:
My brother-in-law has a friend from Canada, who he teases constantly about using “eh.” Of course, the guy never actually uses it, but why pass up the opportunity to harass a friend, right? (I always assumed it was a regionalism?) Once, his friend went so far as to say that no Canadian ever really uses “eh.” Eyes were rolled and more teasing ensued.
A few months later, brother-in-law was at his job, as a retail cashier, and a customer came in. Brother-in-law strikes up a friendly conversation, asks for his zip-code so the company can send out the right concentration of junk mail, and this exchange happens:
customer: “Oh, I don’t have one, I’m not from the States.”
brother-in-law: “Oh, really, where are you from?”
customer: “Canada, eh?”
And he really was! (My brother-in-law had to check his ID for some other reason.) This was the first point in the conversation that “eh” had come out of his mouth, so we’re not sure if it was subconscious or deliberate, but the timing was perfect.
Not quite. If it’s directly quoted speech, as in a novel, it goes:
“This is my example,” said beanpod, “and I mean to use it.”
But if it’s reported speech, the quotes go outside:
beanpod said “this is my example”. [S]He also went on to say that [s]he meant to use it.
I covered this in Post #48, and provided a link to this page. Entering estadunidense in the search box yields this result.
As I learned Spanish, by the way, the rule is that although country names are capitalized, nationalities are not. A person from los Estados Unidos (the first letter of los is also not capitalized unless beginning a sentence) is un estadounidense, not un Estadounidense.
I don’t know what word in the UK will cause a woman to smack you upside the head. Around here, though, calling a woman a cunt to her face will make you wish you had a rewind button on your mouth. :eek:
Calling her a face to her cunt is much less dangerous, 
Not really. I’m English and I would happily have used “twit” in the presence of my mother as a kid but I still wouldn’t dream of sayiing “twat”. There again, maybe things have changed in the last 30 or 40 years.
West Australians also refer to Aussie rules when they mention football
I got into trouble once at school for using the word “twat”. I innocently took it to be merely a variant of “twit”. And I think that for many British English speakers the distinction is indeed blurred, hence "twat"s relative lack of offensiveness over here.
I had missed it the first time. I did check the DRAE and it says that “estadunidense” is acceptable in Honduras and Mexico.
The capitalization bit has gotten me in trouble a couple of times. I wasn’t used to capitalizing nationalities, and it is the norm in English, or so it seems. Some people get royally ticked by no seeing their nationalities in illuminated capitals.