Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

“American” or “US”?

In this household the distaff side is American, or US Citizen if you will; I am Scottish. Arguments over English usage occur several times daily, for her indoors is an editor. The DMZ is mutual agreement that sentences should begin with a capital letter, but beyond that most upright of letters the War of Independence is grammatically re-enacted, and though spelling has been declared neutral territory, punctuations marks are fired across the pages like grapeshot.

“Stet!”

“Shan't!”

In the spoken language, my lady wife tends only to use the adjective, “American”, while I vary the description, sometimes becoming long winded: saying “… cars made in the United States” instead of “American cars”. I think my reluctance to use the word “American” is caused by my having numerous Canadian relations, and I'm separating the United States from the North American Continent. After considering how “Varieties of English” related to me, I realised I have been speaking and writing three different forms of English for many years, dependant on whom I am addressing.

Further reflection revealed that I am multilingual in other ways: speaking Imperial, Metric or US when conversing about gallons, distance, paper measurement or the size of the steak – and all this while doing some pretty nifty mental arithmetic.

Separated by a common language?

Maybe, but it certainly keeps the mind exercised.