Also, Americans (and Canadians) say “watershed” when they mean “drainage basin” (“The Mississippi River watershed has an area of more than a million and a half square miles”), while the rest of the English-speaking world uses the word only in its original sense, that of a drainage divide.
Oddly, Americans do use “watershed” metaphorically to mean a divide (“a watershed moment”).
In the UK this [comes/came] with a hefty dose of codeine. I discovered this when, the morning of the first class I was teaching after having moved there, I had a massive headache and went down to the chemists. I told the person behind the counter I had a “huge, really bad” headache, that I had just moved to the UK and that I wasn’t sure what to ask for. She cheerily gave me Paracetamol. I popped 3 of them and headed off for class. An hour later the room was wavy and after dismissing the onset of food poisoning as a cause I realized that I was very high. Like “sit down in place and not move for a bit” high.
That had Paracetamol in it, but what you got was Co-codamol. It’s usually sold here as a migraine treatment, and will do that to you if you’re not expecting it.
paracetamol
Yeah - this makes me question this list a bit.
I doubt that many Americans know the word paracetamol - at least more than know the word judder.
You do know that Great Britain was the dominant colonial power in India for centuries, right? A huge amount of cultural exchange was an inevitable result.
We’ve got plenty of Indian restaurants around my town though. They’re probably more common here than decent Mexican restaurants are in England. (“Tex-Mex” doesn’t count.)
It is also time-dependent. Both QUANGO (which is an initialism, not a proper word) and gazump were little-known in the UK when I first moved there. The former became popular in the late 80s with increasing scrutiny of the way UK governmental responsibilities were divvied up, and the latter during the disgusting active housing market of the 80s/90s. (As an American who bought property in England in those days, I was horrified at the practice.)
These lists are pretty silly, as they usually reflect the experiences of a single person in a particular social circle in a particular region and time.
No, none of the UK words are medications. The two you mention are paracetamol and ventolin around these parts.
That’s been my experience with Indian restaurants in the U.S. as well (which are not as common as Indian restaurants in the UK, at least outside of major centers of immigration such as Seattle, but still not that hard to find). Good South Indian cuisine is much harder to come by. When I do find it, it’s often about as authentic as someone from Chicago serving gumbo or grits.
Acetaminophen is the US ‘adopted name’ which is also used in Canada, Japan and some parts of South America. Paracetamol is the international name for the generic drug which has been adopted by WHO.
Both are contractions from the compound’s chemical name para-acetylaminophenol as is the brandname Tylenol.
In the US it is sometimes prescribed as APAP which is a contraction of an alternative chemical name - [N-]acetyl-para-aminophenol.
Oh for sure, and I understand (at a very basic level) that there are many ways which cultures and their outputs spread around the globe… I guess what surprises me is that the cuisine isn’t more popular internationally by now. Because colonialism or not, it’s absolutely incredible food.
Yoga has somehow travelled succesfully all over the place. Why not the wonders of a biryani?
Thanks for the link. It seems I may have chosen a bad analogy, though grew up not that far outside Chicago and certainly didn’t get a lot of authentic southern cooking where I ate.
Us Radio 4 listeners would demand any British newsreader so blatantly mispronouncing aluminium is taken out and shot immediately after ‘The Pips’.
But then, we’re just bleeding liberals.
‘watershed’
The only time I hear watershed in everyday UK speech is talking about the 9pm broadcasting watershed when the main terrestrial channels switch to more mature television (usually involving middle-aged female cops staring at a mangled body against a washed out backdrop and a pounding soundtrack).
Yeah. Pretty sure it’s used at least a dozen times in every Ben Aaronovitch book
There’s an infamous children’s book that was published in both British and American English. Apparently the americanized version had to translate “Skip” and “Jumper”.
I mean, I’ve never been in a country that didn’t have Indian restaurants. And that includes places like the Faroes
A river of filth overspilling the dykes.
In addition to that metaphorical divide, there’s also the literal divide of the Scottish Watershed (though I can picture that not coming up so often for most people).
