Here’s the basic chart from Wikipedia:
Note that the alternative to using the symbols is a precise description of the sound. For example, the vowel in the American pronunciation of “dog” is an unrounded open back vowel (if you’re in the cot-caught merger) and a rounded, open-mid back vowel (if you’re not), while Received Pronunciation British uses a rounded open back vowel. Or, you can simply use IPA: /dɑɡ/, /dɔɡ/, and /dɒɡ/, respectively.
There used to be a one-stop-shop website that showed IPA symbols for both British (probably RP) and American (“newscaster speak”) English … and that had listening samples. I believe a link to it was even posted to this board a time or three 20+ years ago.
For now, these three links cover about the same ground, if less conveniently. The first two links go through the (very) general sounds of British English and American English. IPA symbols are given and you can click the symbols to hear the sounds.
The third link is a fifteen-minute video where an accent coach walks viewers through both British English and American English IPA charts, pronouncing the sounds as she goes.
None of this digs deeply into regional dialects and such, but perusing these links can get an interested person started in using IPA symbols to aid discussion about English pronunciation.
Thank you, Bordelond! This is a great help!
I think it’s closer to “excuse my ignorance - I’ll defer to your knowledge.”
I just came across the word “Picayune” in the Do you have an inner voice? thread (OP). I had to look it up, and not for the first time - AFAIK it’s completely absent in British English. I think “Piffling” is a near equivalent in British English, but there’s a certain dismissiveness about that word that I’m not sure that picayune connotes.
j
“picayune” has a dismissive connotation for me. “Piffling,” to me, is the “insignificant, not worth the bother” kind of dismissive, while “picayune” is the same plus an element of disdain, as well.
Disclaimer: I don’t think I’ve ever used “picayune,” and rarely “piffling.”
I didn’t realize that. Thanks!
j
The picayune was an old Spanish coin, worth half a real, or one-sixteenth of a dollar - in other words, worth very little. An equivalent British term would perhaps be “tuppence” or “halfpenny” (I’m not sure about the exchange rate).
Maybe ‘trifling’ - I don’t suppose the equivalent idiom needs to be monetary.
Though we do have “tupenny ha’penny”, which is a rough equivalent
I recall my [British] mother mentioning “farthings” (quarter pennies). Heck, you’d need a wheelbarrows’ full of those just to feel poor. Talk about a trifling amount!
Until this week, I’d never heard of a “shell suit.” I guessed maybe it was like an unstructured jacket. No, it is a brightly colored polyester track suit.
According to the Daily Mail, a 2012 poll found that the shell suit was considered “the worst fashion item of the past 50 years.”
Farthings were still in use in the 1950s, but they wouldn’t buy very much even then. There were some sweets that were four for a penny, but that’s it as far as I recall.
Of course, just like tiny fractions of a Dollar are used for pricing things like fuel, some things might have included farthings in their price (Nineteen shillings, eleven-pence and three farthings - 19/11¾ - a farthing short of a Pound)
Quarter farthings (1/16 of a penny) were minted from 1839 to 1853. Also minted around the same time were half farthings and one-third farthings.
A more common US version would probably be “two bit” ?
We don’t use specific monetary values here, the closest equivalent
might be cheapo.
or that, although that’s less common these days.
To get a sense of triviality and disdain, an older generation (i.e.,me) would actually use “tuppeny-ha’penny”. More up-to-date folk might say “Poundland” (i e, cheap knock-off version)
Do people still say “penny-ante”?
Not here (i’m from the UK). I was guessing about the two bit thing !
Yeah, barely. There’s also “penny candy,” but that isn’t been an actual thing since I was a kid.
What’s the British version of our “dime store” meaning cheap, and “nickel and dime” meaning to charge extra for every little thing?
Good guess, @pjd. Yeah, two-bit means cheap and chintzy (another word that’s drifted over the years).
I’ve used picayune, but not a lot.