Sometimes the US words Flummox me

Lavinia said:
There we go...someone with a bit of education. Many words in English originate in French, which explains the spellings....such as theatre, centre, etc.
It is important for British people to keep using the British version of English. One of the negative effects of the internet is the confusion of American and British English.
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That, I am sure, will happen, but with modern communication, together with easy travel, English will not morph into English based languages the way that Latin became Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Catalan and others, after the decline of The Roman Empire.
 

Repondering said:
There's nothing new here for me. I grew up as a Yank in a Brit colony and some vocabulary, some spellings and many, many pronunciations differed between USA English and UK English. I used to translate the odd ways of the Americans to my British friends and the odd ways of the British to my American friends.
I mentioned this before on a similar thread: Winston Churchill once observed with his own brand of wit that Yanks and Brits were two people divided by a common language.
And come on now.......it isn't that difficult to grasp what people are saying!
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I've always been fascinated(infatuated? Intrigued?) by regional differences in accents / dialects of English speakers. Lately, my focus is with the speeches of the Welsh, Irish and Scottish, as I've traced my ancestors in my long genealogy quest. In many cases it's not hard to detect the meaning of unfamiliar words and phrases, if you can hear the speech and see the interaction.
 
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