The Word Olympics: UK vs. Canada

Colum McAndrew is a Senior Technical Author for IDBS, a global supplier of innovative data management and analytics solutions for R&D organisations worldwide. Based in Surrey, England he has more than ten years of front line authoring experience and many more producing training documentation.  He also writes the RoboColum(n) technical authoring blog. Follow him on Twitter and please visit his blog. 

Language. I end up convulsed in laughter over seamlessly inane word misuse or a subtle idiosyncrasy. What does an occasional table do the rest of the time? How come abbreviation is such a long word? Yet language, together with all of its glorious absurdities, is essential for effective communication. Badly communicated and the result is confusion. Good communication makes the world a better, richer and more enjoyable place.

So why is it so difficult to communicate effectively? It should be such a simple concept. You write or speak whilst someone else reads or listens. Simple! Except of course we all know that the omnipotent human brain has better ideas. Such is its feeling of majesty and ore that it likes to distract us by processing lots of additional information whilst we are trying to concentrate. We read text whilst also thinking of what we are going to cook for dinner. We write whilst making a mental note to remember to ring the garage to get the car serviced. To add to the difficulty, most people read by scanning text whilst looking for patterns. In other words, the eyes do not look at every word. Instead they work with the brain to interpret what they see to fit a previously known pattern. Is it any wonder we get things wrong?

If this wasn’t bad enough, people keep moving the goal posts. There was a day when the rules surrounding language were reasonably clear. Rules were rules and breaking them was the territory of the uneducated prole. Being a Technical Writer must have been a whizz back in days of the cave man. Nowadays it’s a little more complicated. For a start is “whizz” spelt with one “z” or two? The sheer number of words available to use these days is so much bigger. According to Wikipedia the Oxford English Dictionary has grown from a two volume set in 1928 to a 59 million word tome in its last edition. It all started when our forefathers started invading other countries. All of a sudden language evolved and words, pronunciations and spellings from other languages and dialects became part of the host language.  

Never is this truer than the age old argument of UK versus US spellings. Writers from North America, beware! When dealing with writers in the UK, just accept that we all know who invented the English language and therefore who is right. You WILL pronounce “Leicester Square” as “Less-ster Square” and “Gloucester Road” as “Gloss-ter Road”. Come on. It’s obvious isn’t it? You will spell words like “specialise” with an “s” and don’t even get me started on “aeroplane”, “moustache”, “favourite” and “colour”. Are you guys trying to cheat at Scrabble or something?  

Then there are the different words for the same object. “Pavement” or “sidewalk”? “Lift” or “elevator”? “Rubbish” or “garbage” and how do you pronounce “Tomatoe”? Or should that be “Tomato”? As if this isn’t bad enough, my wife’s mother tongue isn’t English. When I ask her to translate an English word, I get three alternatives depending on whether I want the formal, informal or colloquial version. I even occasionally get asked, “Do you want the colloquial term from the north, south or centre?” Arrrrhh!

The east end of London has cockney rhyming slang. No one is 100% sure of its origins but one thing is for sure, is that it has constantly evolving to the extent that different neighbourhoods, streets or even families communicate with their own rhymes. Take “Nurembergs”. Want to know what they are? Think back to the 1945 Nuremberg trials. Still haven’t got it? “Nuremberg Trials” equals “Piles” or haemorrhoids to you and me. Things aren’t much better elsewhere in the country. Ask for a sausage roll in Manchester expecting to get a bread roll with a sausage inside and you’ll be bitterly disappointed. As you tuck into your hot puff pastry filled with sausage meat consider that the word “cob” equals sandwich. Ask for a “cheese and ham toastie” in London and you’d be looked at very strangely until you explain that you want two slices of bread filled with cheese and ham and toasted between a double sided grill. Such reinvention of language demonstrates the complexities we communicators face.

If this is enough to get you in a right two and eight, consider the brass tacks before going down the rub a dub dub. After a couple of ships in full sail, take a sherbet dab to the Pope in Rome where the trouble and strife and dustbins (lids) will be ready for uncle ted and little bo peep!

Translation:

If this is enough to get you in a state, consider the facts before going down the pub. After a couple of a pints (of ale), take a cab (taxi) home where the wife and children (kids) will be ready for bed and sleep!