The differences between the way the English language is spoken on each side of the Atlantic are a common source of humor. Americans who visit England can expect to receive plenty of comments about the way they talk, and most of the time this will be intended, and taken, in a friendly spirit. But every once in a while, the English will express indignation at the way in which “their” language has been “changed” in America. Should that situation arise, the American tourist might want to produce some of the following examples of supposed “Americanisms,” pointing out that they all come from the British Isles.

Soccer vs. football
Let’s start with perhaps the most emotionally charged topic: the national pastime that the English call football. Tempers run high when they hear Americans call the game soccer, to distinguish it from American football. And yet soccer, a nickname derived from association football, is a term that was coined in England in the 19th century to differentiate the game from rugby (or rugger). In the posher circles in England, you can still sometimes hear the terms used for that purpose.

Fall vs. autumn
We spend a quarter of our lives in it, so naturally the name of the season between summer and winter is something about which people have strong feelings. Referring to it as fall, because of what the leaves are doing at that time of year, is a custom that started in England in the 16th century, around about the same time as the word autumn entered the language. The colonists brought both words to the New World. For whatever reason, back in the old country autumn became the more popular, while Americans more commonly say fall.

Trash vs. rubbish
Why on earth would the English use a coarse word like trash to describe the things they throw away? It’s obviously an American coinage, contrasting with the altogether daintier rubbish found in England. Right? Not quite. “Who steals my purse steals trash,” wrote William Shakespeare in his play Othello.

Vacation vs. holiday
Supposedly, the Brits always use the word holiday to refer to time spent away from home for relaxation, while Americans came up with the word vacation to mean the same thing, and reserve holiday for specific festivals or public occasions. The truth is that vacation is an old English word that originally denoted a break taken in the summer by law courts and universities – a time when the upper classes would vacate their regular homes to stay in their summer residences. In Oxford, academics still use vacation or vac to describe their breaks, particularly the one in the summer which they call the long vac.

Realize vs. realise
… and all those other words ending in “ize” which are supposedly spelt with an “s” in British English. Whatever your spell-check may tell you, Brits have been using a “z” in those words since the 16th century, and it is still the method of spelling preferred by the Oxford English Dictionary. But realize has been coexisting with realise for a long time, and in recent decades the “s” spelling has become more common in England. All the major newspapers use an “s” today, although The Times only switched over from a “z” in the nineteen-nineties.

Ain’t vs. isn’t
“You ain’t heard nothing yet,” Al Jolson said in The Jazz Singer in 1927, and at least since that time, the word has sounded like an Americanism to many English folks. It’s one of those words that English rock stars pepper their lyrics with whenever they are trying to sound American. Of course, it’s actually a long-standing staple of speech in the British Isles, found in the works of Victorian writers such as Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll.

Gotten vs. got
As in… I’ve gotten better with practice. In England, people would say I’ve got, and consider gotten to be a foreign word – maybe yet another one of those that the Americans made up. Wrong again. It’s an old British word that has simply fallen out of usage in the old country since the colonization of America, but has survived in the New World.

Diaper vs. nappy
“Another bear the ewer, the third a diaper,” Shakespeare wrote in The Taming of the Shrew. Yes, diaper is another word the English brought over to America, and then forgot all about at home. Today, English babies crawl around in nappies.

Candy vs. sweets
The English go to the sweet shop to buy sweets. Extending a pack of mints toward you, someone might ask: “Would you like a sweet?” Referring to those things as candy seems alien in England. But candy has been in the English language for more than 600 years. It’s merely dropped out of common usage in the British Isles.

All these examples seem to suggest that America is the more linguistically conservative country. Could it be that the people who have changed the English language the most are the English themselves?