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I grew up "waiting in line" for things, but a lot of people around me now say they are "waiting on line" and frankly, I don't like it. The first time I heard it, I thought they meant they were waiting in an online queue for tickets or something. It doesn't REALLY matter, I suppose, but it does kind of fill me with unbridled rage.

I'm reminded of something once said by someone probably much wiser than myself... "The U.S. and Britain are two countries separated by the same language."

Only British readers will find this interesting... back in 1995 I had a roommate from the UK for a few months. As it happened, I had a sports car that was missing a piece of plastic from the fan- switch assembly which looked bad in an otherwise pristine car. So I stopped by the Nissan dealer to see if I could get the part. I left my number as the parts guy promised to look for it. Later on, finding a blinking light on the answering machine I pressed the play button with my roommate in the area. "This is Bob from Nissan calling for Brian about his knob." My roommate rolled on the floor and must have played that message a dozen times.

5:52 - Saw a license plate recently that read “JZZ LUVR” and yes my mind went there. How could it not. 😬

FUN FACT: The words crayfish and crawfish came from French! In Standard French, the word for crayfish is écrevisse and is pronounced Eh-CRAY-veese, thus we get CRAY-fish in English. However, in the Deep South in Louisiana the French Speaking Cajuns spoke a different dialect of French that had a Southern Drawl and pronounced it more like eh-CRAW-veese thus we got CRAW-fish in Southern American English.

The r in the pronunciation of colonel comes from the fact the word was originally spelled coronelle. We just didn’t change the pronunciation when the French did.

Just discovered this channel, and as an American who moved to the UK as a kid, I absolutely love it. It's so cathartic seeing a British person give American English its own space to exist and acknowledging that British English falls into a lot of the same behaviours. For my entire childhood, I was insulted by practically everyone around me, as none of them respected that American English is a different dialect- instead just viewing it as "they can't admit that they speak the language wrong". I was regularly called r*tarded (usually several times a week for my entire adolescence), simply because I would sometimes write "color" instead of "colour". People didn't understand that the United States has had more influences than JUST the UK- most noticeably, influences from Hispanic cultures where "color" is the correct spelling. I tried explaining it to people and they would just call me r*tarded again. I had people who I considered friends berate me and my entire nationality by saying that Americans are mentally disabled because instead of using fancy Latin-derived words like biscuit/autumn/film (amusing because the last is not Latin in origin), "Americans use stupid simplified words like cookie/fall/movie. Hurr durr you cook it so it cookie, leaf fall so it fall, it move so it movie". I had one teacher who would give me 0 on any essay I turned in that had even a *single* American English phrase or spelling, even though SPAG was only meant to account for a small portion of marks and she wouldn't give the same treatment to British students who wrote things like "would of". That's not even getting into the fact that everyone used to call me obese, or insult me over politicians that I didn't elect and couldn't even vote on because I was a minor. And then people are confused when I say I hate the UK and British people.

One that gets me is when someone says, “needs replaced” instead of, “needs to be replaced” or, “needs replacing”.

As an American, I think "I could care less" was supposed to be used sarcastically, but then a lot of people forgot/missed that particular memo.

Old episode of “I Love Lucy”. Lucy and Ethel are in London and need directions to see the queen. They ask a stately looking gentleman with and umbrella and a bowler hat for directions. He rattles off something so fast, it’s unintelligible. They ask again and he replies in same. Finally Ethel says, “I’m sorry, we’re American….we don’t understand English.”

I am an American. I was in London England several years ago. A woman approached me and a friend from Nottingham. I could only make out a word or two of what she was saying. I whispered to my friends, "What language is that?". He responds, "English, but she's Scottish.". Fortunately, he begins to whisper translations to me. It turns out she was offering sex for money, and asking for a cigarette. I blushed, handed her a cigarette, and walked away. So even within the confines of a relatively small nation, such as the UK, English is a complicated language.

As someone who uses "I could care less," I've always said it sarcastically. It's like "we should all be so lucky," "may you live in interesting times," or "bless your heart." The meanings of which are different from their literal intention.

The teacher explained that while 2 negatives (“I ain’t never been there”) makes a positive, no case exists where 2 positives make a negative. A Scotsman in the back said, “Aye, right.”

I love how there are like 500 different names for rolly pollies, and they're all adorable.

"What's onomatopoeic?" "It's exactly what it sounds like."

This is a great video. My B.A. major was in linguistics, so this fascinates me. I appreciate that you present your videos in a nonjudgemental, explorative, rational manner. It nurtures harmony and understanding rather than discord and intolerance. That is very important.

Suddenly remembered the Beverly Hillbillies episode where hippies descend upon the Clampett mansion upon hearing that Granny is smoking crawdads.

"The most common mistake is thinking English is a language. It's actually three languages in a trenchcoat, sneaking about and pocketing any loose vocabulary that looks unattended."

The US military apparently uses missles while the UK uses missiles.

One thing I noticed being from the south (Texas), there are some accents where the word “forwarded” sounds exactly like “farted”.

1:59 Actually, in many states, the owner of a piece of real property is public information and can be found online; in summary, if you own a house, your address is online.

This was fun. Here in Boston I grew up with 'r's inserted where they didn't belong and dropped where they did. "I have an idear. Afta I pahk my cah let's eat a tuner fish sandwich while we use the warshing machine."

Fun fact: The word for a place that sells pizza is spelled "pizzeria". (Switching to French, a person in charge at a restaurant is a restaurateur.)

As an American married to a South African, don't even get me started about: 1. the meaning of 'now' (as in just now/nownow to mean some time in the future or maybe never) 2. the meaning of 'robots' (as in the thing that turns green and tells you to start driving again) 3. 'howzit' vs 'how's it goin'' (as in I don't actually care about your well being--I'm just making pleasantries) 4. 'sweet' vs 'lekker' (which mean the same thing, both in the denotative and connotative)

“American humans, and children.” Ouch. Glad I’m not a kid anymore.

Dissimilation is when a phoneme changes into something else because it sounds too similar to a neighboring sound. The r-dropping you talk about at 5:08 linguists would call elision, not dissimilation. You also said that Americans add an 'r' to some words like colonel. Ironically, this actually comes from dissimilation, and not from intrusive-r. Sometime during the evolution of Spanish, if there were multiple Ls or multiple Rs in a word, one would change so they weren't making the same sound over and over. Latin arbor > Spanish árbol. Where Italian has colonello, Spanish has coronelo. We actually borrowed this pronunciation, but spell it like the French word. The pronunciation with L is a spelling pronunciation that happened later.

Ohhh Lawrence / Laurence (I don't know) did you know that in the south of the US, people say "on today" and "on tomorrow" as in, "I have an appointment on Monday", then when Monday comes, they say "I have an appointment on today." I'd never heard that usage before I moved to the south.

4:40 A good example of this that goes very unnoticed is the word photographer. I hear a lot of people pronounce it like "fertographer".

Library is the one that gets me. "Li-bary" is so common it hurts. They pronounce it "lie berry". Definitely a pet peeve of mine.

"I'm always sometimes right." Words to live by.

“On accident” drives me bonkers. That and people who confuse breath and breathe.

I grew up in the Anglo section of Louisiana, where "woodlice" was an old-folks work for termites. We called the terrestrial crustaceans that your depicted by the name "pill bugs."

English is three languages in a trench coat.

A doodle bug is actually usually referring to an antlion. Antlions capture ants in a sandy concave trap, which slides the ant right towards the antlion hidden in the center. I call the isopods roly-polies.

idk why the algorithm brought me here but this may be my new favorite channel

I appreciate the fact that the beans hummus is made from are called garbanzo beans, cici beans, and chickpeas. Its a quandry when making a shopping list.

These little linguistics videos are kinda my favorite.

6:02 interestingly enough, in the original Star Wars: A New Hope, the music that they are playing in the Cantina is called “jizz“. Just going to show that like most writers, George Lucas should’ve asked a 14-year-old to read his script and check for giggles and snickers.

A lot of people pronounce “sherbet” as “sherbert.” I used to work at an ice cream shop and it drove me crazy!

“I couldn’t care less” says that you are at the bottom of caring. “I could care less” is a threat to giving up current care levels to a lower care level. This phrases is most commonly used as a threat to giving up on something like an idea, news, or people.

Another regional synonym: hoagies, submarines, grinders all refer to a type of sandwich.

My kids drove me nuts with "on accident". It makes me insane! Things happen BY accident, but are done ON purpose.

Two things I’ve been noticing in British English - One, people, instead of saying, (as they would in America) “my house,” they invariably just call it, “mine.” And just recently, on BBC shows like, say, “Vera,” (one of my favorites) people have been referring to themselves in plural tense, such as “We,” and “Our,” when there’s only one of them! The next is actually done on both sides of the pond, and that is the vowel shift from the short “e” to the short “a.” This drives me crazy! (Short trip, I know.) I just want to know where this abberation started - in the UK or the US!

"I could care less" annoyed me so much that I started saying "I could NOT care less" by default

ZZ Top is from 'zig zag top quality rolling papers.' They spun one, and that's what it read on the side. Now you know.

So my grandfather was born in 1909 and he got extremely upset at me one day in the late 1990's. I kept saying something was annoying. He didn't understand me. Then said I wasn't speaking an actual word. I argued back and he said that he had never heard annoying. But only was aware of something being an annoyance! This came to mind when you said you never heard of addicting before.

So, potato bugs, to my mind, are actually Stenopelmatus fuscus, aka the Jerusalem Cricket. Some other words that you could explore are creek, coyote, root beer. Regional differences on what carbonated soft drinks are called, or the difference between a valley and a holler, are also potential topics. The big one that I can't adapt to, here in the midwest, is dropping the infinitive phrase "to be." So, instead of saying that lightbulb needs to be replaced," they say "needs replaced." Same with "needs fixed." It's such a small thing, and yet, drives me crazy. Maybe I needs therapy. Cheers.

And in Newfoundland, Canada, more specifically in St John’s and the surrounding area since that is where my experience lies, we call those little black armadillo type bugs “carpenters”.

A really strange term I have heard here in the Philadelphia area was "plugged up" for something being plugged in to the wall for power. Not having grown up in the area to me plugged up is something a drain does, usually at the worst time.

I love that you said catamount. I've lived in many places in America, places where those cats are called pumas, cougars, and mountain lions but until today I only ever saw catamount in dictionaries. Thank you.

“Like I could care less, that means you do care, at least a little! Don’t be a moron!” The one and only Weird Al!

We just laid one of my favorite coworkers. I am from Texas and he is from London literally two blocks from the O2 arena. I miss him very much and watching your videos is very awesome.

and then there are the ones who are so rhotic they pronounce Rs in words that don't even have them. like people from "warshington"

6:00 it actually 100% is what we're thinking about. That's why it was called jazz music, it's music you jazz to. 'vitality or essence' is a euphemism. And amusingly, we know this from old homemade comics depicting characters doing sex and referring to it as 'jazzing'

Did you know that it's possible to live with huge portions of the brain missing. People who say "on accident" are testament to this.

A recent pet peeve of mine is KZfaqrs saying foe-ward. I'm from the SE US and say FOR-ward (with emphasis on FORE). I'm glad I'm not the only one who has noticed this.

"Familiar" is a word that gets an **extra** R. I typically hear it pronounced 'firmiliar/furmiliar'. Someone recently told me that "could care less" is now an acceptable form of that phrase because something something something blah blah blah . . . I can't remember his argument because I briefly blacked out on white-hot rage. "I couldn't care less" is non-negotiable based on WORDS HAVING MEANINGS. What one is saying when they use it is, "I already care so little about this topic that it would be impossible for me to care any less." And don't even get me started on irregardless.

Drink driving is a bizarre way to say drunk driving.

So glad you brought up ‘forward’. Drives me a little nutty when I hear someone say ‘foward’

I think that I have learned more about English, and American English, by watching your channel than I ever did in school. And it was a favorite subject!

I’m from Indy and your wife’s accent is a very good example how we talk here.

Laurence has mentioned this before as if it were an American thing but I have yet to find an example of a Brit saying "colonel" without an R unless they're specifically using the pronunciation for a French officer. Sometimes the R is softer than how an American would say it but it's still there. Even the Cambridge Dictionary shows an R sound in both the American and UK phonetic codes.

3:11 So, I feel obligated to mention, Generally "Woodlouse" (Plur. "Woodlice") can refer to any of the Onisceida (Land-Dwelling Isopods), Whereas "Rolly Polly" is usually used _only_ for those that can roll into a ball (The Armadillids and Armadillidiids, And perhaps some others I'm not quite certain). "Pillbug", The name for them I'm most familiar with, I believe is usually used only for the rolling varieties as well, But I tend to use it for all of them. (One of my favourite animals was mentioned so I had to say something.)

Actually people in Louisiana and Texas also call the crayfish “crawdads” and growing up in the Midwest and Great Plains I think it’s also called both “crawdad” and “crawfish”.

From California, it's weird that potato bug gets referred to the same insect as rolly pollies, pill bugs, etc. I've always grown up using potato bug to refer to the Jerusalem Cricket, a completely different insect.

Sometimes, after a long day, we all just need to watch Lawrence freak out about the mind breaking number of “Zeds” in the US.

I distinctly recall my kindergarten teacher (I'm currently 49) very SPECIFICALLY pronouncing the second month of the modern calendar, FebRUary. The emphasis on the RU was pointedly said that way -- now that you mention dissimulation -- to try to correct the dropping of it being commonly being pronounced Febuary. This mostly stuck out to me because it's my birth month. :)

I only came here to say: once upon a time ago I wrote work instructions. Some of those work instructions I inherited and needed to rewrite, were a tad bit... overzealous. They had a foreword (for some reason), but my predecessors weren't exactly English wizards and titled them "Forward" instead of "Foreword". When I first started rewriting those instructions, I would retitle that section foreword. It took me a couple years experience to realize, it's a work instruction, if it needs a foreword, you probably don't need to read it, and just deleted the section.

Lawrence, your house sale is a matter of public record. Anyone can look up your address if they know your general location and last name. Your address and name are recorded in the local tax records usually along with the sale history of your house, the tax assessment, tax value, Sq footage, acreage, any mortgages, # of rooms and # of bathrooms.

Fun story with the R: i work at a library and we have a group of adults come in for crafts and movies and popcorns, and for TWO YEARS i thought they were called the R group but its OUR group. So... the ou was just dropped

From what I understand, you guys sounded more like us until recently and that it is your accents that changed

4:36 Those pockets of the US don't "remain" non-rhotic like most of England. When the US was first settled, most of Britain was rhotic, at least somewhat (the R sound had been weakening for some time, but was still much more prominent than it is today). Those are the pockets that have evolved their own non-rhoticity.

9:37 My father used to say, "I may not be right, but I'm never wrong" 😅

I am German, but I learned to spell "addictive"

The one phrase (or whatever) I hate is when people write something like, "I should of gone..." rather than, "I should have gone..."! Americans are really bad about it but I did recently see a Brit type it that way and was very surprised! Also, a lot of Americans (mostly) will type loose rather than lose which is what they meant. Speaking of 'a lot', a lot of them will also create the word alot, which also drives me crazy! Heh, Grammarly made this comment hard to write! ;-)

I've intermittently watched you for a while now, and I'm impressed with how far your production chops have come. The videos feel so snappy now. Really impressive.

Got to admit, it's your sardonic delivery that keeps me watching. Well done! As a US military linguist who spent three years in Scotland but even made it as far South as Avebury and back successfully (in my own American car by the by) and lived to tell about it, I've found English, in all its forms is just about the richest language there is...

I use both addictive and addicting, and I'm realizing watching this video that I use both in a pretty consistent manner. I say something is addictive when the physical nature of something develops a chemical dependency (i.e. cigarettes are addictive), but if I say something is addicting I am referring to something that encourages someone to repeat the behavior without external chemical intervention (i.e. this video game is addicting).

PittsburgH has entered the chat. Did yinz know we go dahn er an at by the crick? Yinz ever drive a Jagwar dahn to the gumband shop?

The few that get me is that in parts of the US words like Coke (which is a brand of soft drink) means any type of soft drink and in other areas Soda or Pop are used. Another one is Vacuum discribing a machine used to clean your carpets and in some parts of the UK, Hoover (which is a brand of Vacuum) is used to describe Vacuuming your crapets.!

You'd be surprised just how many times a day I think to myself, 'ohhh Lawrence'.

0:30 "completely and utterly a little bit..."? That must be British English. 😄

I didn't know about "zed" until graduate school! While I was working in the audio center one day, a student asked for a record whose call number -- she said -- was "LP-zed." I had no idea what she meant until she wrote it as "LPZ!"

One that gets me, seems common in the Northeast and Midwest - dropped infinitives. Instead of "the car needs to be washed" someone might just say "the car needs washed"

There is definitely something to be said about how a word looks in text. A million years ago, when a computer was prone to making funny noises prior to having an internet connection, there was some discussion about the validity of "lol". I grew to embrace it because it looks funny and has the ability to convey more information than "haha".

We call them Rolly Pollie bugs in Michigan. But once we got a lizard as a pet and wanted a self sustaining enclosure, I found out there are tons of different kinds of those little f'ers and they are called isopods. They are super important at breaking down everything from decaying plant material to poop.

At 6:40, most places spell the location where you buy a pizza as 'pizzeria', not 'pizzaria'.

I've got one. On NYPD Blue, when a character intends to overindulge in alcohol they say "I'm going to get my load on". I had never heard that phrasing before. Here in the Midwest we say "I'm going to get loaded". In other words "filled up with alcohol". Its dumb, but makes descriptive sense. I've also heard "get a load on". That makes sense -- like filling a gas tank, except your stomach is the tank and alcohol is the fuel (btw, "tanked" also means "drunk") but until that show I never heard it phrased as "my load" which kind of doesn't make sense. It implies the alcohol was somehow earmarked for that person "Next load of whisky belongs to Detective Sipowicz"

"Tank ewe 4 da humor" 🤣....ok, seriously, thank you for the humorous explanation of English and it's variants

I'm American and I thought I pronounced the first R in forward but I definitely do not pronounce the first R in "governor" or "berserk" and I've never noticed or thought about how weird this is until now.

"Drizzle, which emerged in England, and hasn't stopped emerging since." *slow clap* That joke right there broke me, the delivery was perfect and completely unexpected. Well played. Also well played on getting me to say for the outro with that clever subversion of expectations. I'm not a regular viewer (not really my niche), but I do keep coming back to your channel occasionally and every time your content finds a new way to impress me.

Also growing up I heard “peek-ed” (with specific stress on the two separate syllables) to describe looking pale, tired or ill. I had to look it up to find that it did, in fact have similar historical usage. I never heard anyone outside of family use it. This was in OH.

7:43 After much consideration and many laughs, giggles, snorts and, yes, even chortles later, this beautiful tidbit has finally hooked me. Due to sheer perfection and refusal to slack pff, even a little, i shall now and ever after subscribe. Thank you, Sir.

The purpose of “I could care less “is correct it is implying you could care less more than it already “appears” you don’t. It’s a “salt in the wound” saying if you would. It’s the equivalent of asking someone to repeat themselves and after they start you go “HUH?” real loud…

Ooh, Laurence, this is one of your best! Your new studio with some vintage bits thrown in. And I always enjoy when you showcase the differences within the same language.

Your house ownership is public record. If someone knows the county you live in, they can just go to the county clercs office and request the names of who owns each parcel of land in the county (or any particular one). Not always easy, and some less populated places might need you to go in person, but it's all 100% on public record via your local US government 😅

It is a bit interesting that Britons have names for woodlice that includes references to pigs. In Swedish, a language whose superordinate words for pigs are the unrelated gris, and the more related svin (swine), woodlice are called gråsuggor: grey sows.

In the southern Appalachians I have heard a Mountain Lion / Cougar referred to as a "Painter". No kidding! It's a dialectical corruption of "Panther". You would be amazed to listen to them speak in that region.

Lol the "roley poley" one got me. Especially that I knew them also as "pill bugs" being from California. My son gets mad at me now if I call then anything but their "order" name, which is "isopods." Lol😊