USA terms vs UK terms.

[Pfraser]

Solder and sodder. I worked with an American transmitter engineer and I never heard him say 'sodder'. shango066 is the first one I've heard using 'sodder'.

I found that the challenges presented by certain TX design features really brought out our common language!

[ms660]

From a British publication dated 1810.

Lawrence.

[Craig Sawyers]

Humphrey Davey first isolated the metal, and named it alumium in 1808. By 1812 it has been changed to aluminum (IOW the American current spelling). But there was a bit of a naming battle at around that time between aluminum and aluminium, with the latter winning out on our side of the pond.

So current naming conventions date back in the UK to the very early part of the 1800's.

Craig

[Craig Sawyers]

Originally Posted by rambo1152

There's a Laurel and Hardy film where the hapless duo are on a roof erecting an...
...aerial.

Oh my word. I'm almost in tears laughing. Thanks for pointing that out. 20 minutes of pure genius.

Craig

[kalee20]

Originally Posted by wireman

Terms in other fields that are pronounced differently (despite what some websites will tell you in the case of the first one):

router (computing)
Buoy (noun)

And lieutenant. (I'm English, but I've always used the American pronunciation!)

Originally Posted by Welsh Anorak

Maybe someone can explain why solder is pronounced 'sodder' across the pond?

Originally Posted by ms660

From a British publication dated 1810.

Lawrence.

Interesting!

So the Americans recognise the original English pronunciation, whereas us lot here have changed...

It's a bit like the Americans still using 'gotten.'

[Dave Moll]

Originally Posted by kalee20

And lieutenant. (I'm English, but I've always used the American pronunciation!)

In my book the American military have lootenants, but the British have leftenants.

[G6Tanuki]

Some US expressions make sense to me; talking about A B and C rails, or plate rather than anode for example.

[I remember spending some time explaining to a US ham-radio-type who was looking at a 1930s RSGB book why the mixer in a superhet radio was called the 'first detector']

Some US colloquialisms can be intriguing though, like calling a PC's motherboard a "Moby", as in "My PC failed, but I got it working again by swapping-out the moby".

Swapping in/out being another USAnian term. As a long-term IBMer, I would often refer to a 'motherboard' on a PC - or the backplane-board in a piece of equipment into which individual cards were plugged - as the "Planar board".

Other colloquialisms, such as "Frobbing", meaning 'idly messing about with something' I learned when working with transatlantic ISPs in the early-90s. For example "Our link to MAE-East went down; has Richie been frobbing with the router again?"

The big issue I had when working transatlantic was where my US colleagues would make reference to something/someone in a currently-popular US TV program which was unknown to us Brits. We got our own back by referencing the likes of Monty Python, Fawlty Towers or Corrie in _our_ discussions.

Then there was units-of-measurement: even in technical things the US still adheres to feet/inches/yards/miles, and measure oil in Barrels not Litres. I could never get my head round cubic-inches as a measure of engine capacity, and they have some truly strange ones: I still don't really know what exactly is a "Cord" of firewood?

"Two nations separeted by a common language"....

[Andrew2]

'Swapping out' is becoming commonplace in the UK these days and I have to say it rather rubs me up the wrong way. Changing or replacing is the British way! Same for 'grounding out' rather than just grounding or earthing.

[bluepilot]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

I still don't really know what exactly is a "Cord" of firewood?

"Two nations separeted by a common language"....

Well no, you won't because it's not an exact measure. It's the amount of cut wood which fits in a box of a certain size. That includes the air gaps which are variable depending on the size and shape of the logs.

Why are people obsessed by the differences between English and American but don't look closer to home? I understand American English much better than Geordie. As for Glaswegian ...

[Graham G3ZVT]

I hadn't realised that Americans stress the third syllable "submariner" [sub ma REEN er] until I heard Destin Sandlin say it.
Destin's Youtube is essential viewing IMHO

"Touch base", I first heard that from a new boss around 1990.

Ham Radio/ Radio Ham, please don't get me started When I was licenced in 1970 apart from acknowledging the hilarious Tony Hancock episode, we were Amateurs not Hams on this side of the Atlantic, and to this day I try to avoid the term

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by bluepilot

Why are people obsessed by the differences between English and American but don't look closer to home? I understand American English much better than Geordie. As for Glaswegian ...

True: I recall reading a paper back in the late-1980s which was aimed at businesses wanting to establish call-centres; it ranked the various UK regional-accents according to their customer-acceptability in selling financial services.

The Aberdonian/Edinburgh-Morningside accent was most associated with a sense of trustworthiness.

Though having worked internationally with an IT team based out of Rotterdam, I must admit that the accent of people-from-the-Netherlands, speaking English, has a smoothly-persuasive character.

[G6Tanuki]

It can get odd sometimes: in the 1980s I was involved in supporting X.25 PADs [Packet-Assemblers/Disassemblers] on an academic network spreading across most of Europe and even into Switzerland,...

More than once we confused the French "Pas de probleme" [no problem] as "PAD Problem" and assumed there was something wrong with the infrastructure.

[ms660]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

I still don't really know what exactly is a "Cord" of firewood?

A well stacked pile of split logs 4ft x 4ft x 8ft wide, as opposed to a stack measure which is a "solid" measure for stacked roundwood timber in the forest such as fencing bars, stake material etc. It's the average height of the width of the stack x the width x the depth x a multiplier, the multiplier accounts for the air gaps between the logs, the multiplier varies with species.

Lawrence.

[wave solder]

My partner is American through and through and barely a day goes past without either her or me teaching each other a new word.

[emeritus]

The 4th edition of the ITT (STC) Reference Data for Radio Engineers book has a page of the various wire and sheet metal gauges then in use. As well as AWG and the British SWG, from memory, others include the the BWG (Birmingham Wire Guide), Stubbs Iron Wire Gauge, and Moen & Washburn. Wire was also measured in terms of its area as so many circular mils (CM, not cm), or for larger sizes, thousand circular mils (MCM).

In publications, CRTs were sometimes called kinescopes.

In integrated circuit fabrication documentation, the metal interconnection that was referred to as "metallisation" on this side of the pond, was generally known as the "metallurgy".

[joebog1]

So, if its soder, them guys in green must be sodiers ?.

Ham operators = Butchers slicing up a port cut.

Amateur = Somebody doing morse at a rediculous speed ( in my case about as quick as paint dries underwater, and in one friends case, he is always being asked to slow down ).

Gas= something in a pressure cylinder that connects to the BBQ.

Ardo-moebeel= a contraption for transporting passengers. Usually containing a LARGE aircraft engine.

Just thinking.

JOe

[The Philpott]

-Stan Laurel (English) wrote most if not all of the L&H sketches- this may have biased the terminology.

Steve Coogan must have been a fan of Laurel & Hardy since childhood; i can't imagine him being Stan so accurately in the filum (on BBC last night) otherwise.

Dave

[Craig Sawyers]

Stan Laurel came from Ulverston in the Southern Lake District. There is a bronze statue of Laurel there. Went to America aged 20. If you know where he came from and listen carefully you can just about pick out a soft Lancashire accent.

Craig

[Craig Sawyers]

Chaplin was of course also from the UK - London. Also went to the USA aged 19. But if you listen to him in talkies, he maintained his very English accent.

Craig

[TonyDuell]

Originally Posted by emeritus

In publications, CRTs were sometimes called kinescopes.

I think that one was mostly RCA. The service manual for the original TRS-80 computer monitor (which was a modified RCA portable TV) uses the shortened form 'kine' a couple of times.

Since 'kine' is an archaic English plural of 'cow' said manual could be taken to imply that the monitor contains cattle...