Just noticed another of these transatlantic differences whilst reading some posts on a different thread.

What Americans call their yard would usually be called a garden in an English home. For us a yard is usually a paved area, and not a scenic one. Trucks park in yards, but no flowers bloom.

Another way of asking for the nearest 'restroom' would be to ask for the "ladies" or "mens" room.

"Loo" - that's another one that you foreigners (speaking of Sue here!) use. You would probably get a blank stare if you asked for that here.

Not in Atlanta you wouldn't LInda, I went into one restaurant and felt pretty stupid asking for the restroom, the waiter smiled and said "You mean the loo!" - he had obviously been to the UK.

Loo, toilet, lavatory, but normally the first two. One could also ask to "Spend a penny" or if you are a member of the Royal family you might ask "to tidy", me, when with friends I might well say "I need a wee".

I'd always say loo, toilet or a posher (lol) version would be ladies.

What about summer camp? Does everyone go to summer camp in the US and is the just the saddo's that stay at home like the tv would have me believe?

We go to the ladies too Jillian, you must have copied us. The doors of public toilets often have 'Ladies' and 'Gents' written on them, or these days it might be a symbol but the meaning is the same. Signs in places like airports will give directions to the "Toilets".

Isn't it funny? In a casual setting I'd ask for a loo, restaurant I'd ask where the toilets are and somewhere where I'm expected to be a little more, ummm, refined, i'd ask for the ladies.

Thi last one doesn't happen very often.

I learned it (back in the US) that a college was something you did after high school (whether you graduated* or not) that offered classes but didn't offer degrees beyond a bachelor's. You could get your associate degree or a BBA/BS/BA etc. but to get an MBA/MA/PhD etc. you need to go to a university. Despite that, most people who go to a university (notice it's not "go to university" for me) get the four year degree. Not an elegant explanation, sorry.

Trade schools can be called colleges, too, as has be pointed out. There's such things as barber colleges and clown colleges.

Australians are picky about what they call their learning institutions. As has been mentioned, Americans call everything from Harvard to Mavis' Beauty College "school". A couple times when I first asked my step-son how school went, I got a blank look. "Oh, you mean pre-school." It's only now that he's in grade one (not first grade as back in US) that he's "going to school". This will continue and then he'll go to college I guess (the local equivilent of high school or maybe a more expensive version?) and then maybe a university. I must say that it sounds elitist to me and not just like people are being specific or clear. When presented with a 5 year old and told he's going to school, I'm not going to guess he's writing a thesis.

One thing I've noticed while watching TV is that brand names are often pronounced differently. Here you wear A dih dahs and PEE you mahs on your feet instead of ah DEE dahs or POO mahs. Or maybe you drive a sell LEEK ah insteads of a SELL uh kah. Minor differences, I know, but it seems odd because there are frequent brand name pronunciation differences and I'd think they'd be more likely to be standard, not less.

*The rule that you graduated from high school and didn't just graduate didn't hold fast. Not in Michigan at least.

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One thing I've noticed while watching TV is that brand names are often pronounced differently

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There is an American announcer on our local radio and Nissan is another differance - he says ne-SAN, where I'd say NIS-en.

When I first moved to America, I got a job in a doctor's surgery. On the first day, I asked the girl who was training me where the toilet was. She looked at me like I just crawled out from under a rock. Being a very direct sort of person, I asked her if I had offended her by using the word "toilet" and she looked embarassed and said that I had, that it was called the bathroom and that toilet was vulgar. I told her that in Australia, "toilet" IS the polite version.

I also told her that in Australia, to ask for the bathroom would be confusing because, back in those days, very few people actually had a toilet within their bathroom. In most houses, the toilet was in a separate room of the house - one can ask for it politely by asking for the smallest room of the house. Even today, it is usually only en-suite bathrooms that have a toilet in them. The main bathroom and toilet are amost always separate rooms.

In casual company, I usually ask for the loo. In a more formal situation, I would ask for the ladies.

I found lots of differences in language when I moved to America. One of the funniest was referring to the plants on my balcony as "pot plants". My husband said I had to learn to call them "potted plants" because "pot" plants implied they were marijuana.

For those who are interested in the differences between British and American versions of the English language, Bill Bryson's books are great. Many people think he only writes travel books but he writes about linguistics as well. I recommend "Mother Tongue" and "Made in America".

You inspired me to a quick search. Here is some history on lavatorial euphemisms.
And you're right about toilet being considered polite. Here, the upper classes disagree as well, preferring lavatory, but otherwise it would be preferred to the more down-to-earth bog, carsey or worse which some may not be familiar with over the Atlantic. And of course, M.G., you have your national word 'dunny', actually from the old English 'danna ken', to translate for the modern version ending in 'house' and starting with an 's'. Gordano near Bristol is a leftover example of it in a place name, meaning 'dung field' in Old English. You've got me on one of my pet subjects (is that word origins or toilets, I'll have to leave that to conjecture) .

In addition to all the items listed above I think "Bangs' (US) for 'Fringe' (UK) - hair which falls over the forehead down to about eyebrow level, and 'Cookie' (US) vs 'Biscuit' (UK) should be included. These two in particular were brought home to me on reading the Harry Potter series of books, as the first two I read were the UK versions and the next one was the US version, and I found it strange that an English 'crumpet' became a generic 'cookie' in the US version, and likewise Harry acquired some 'bangs' in the US books which didn't appear anywhere in the UK versions.

Another term used in the US is 'allowance', which I was brought up calling my 'pocket money', I had some 'jobs' to do rather than 'chores', and my kitchen is populated with 'presses' rather than 'cupboards' (though this seems to be an Irish expression, as none of my English friends understood what I was talking about, and had visions of me storing food and dishes inside some contraption which normally is used for ironing clothes).

I think 'Vacuum' deserves a mention too, as it's a word which is accurate, but which in Ireland has remained fixed at 'Hoover'. We do not vacuum our living room, but 'run the hoover around' it.

Another mystery to us is the general use of the word 'freeway'. We have lanes, roads, avenues and streets, and even some bits of road which we aspire to calling dual carriageways, or (wonder of wonders) a couple of fully-fledged motorways in Ireland, but sadly not a single 'freeway'.

I, too, visit the 'loo' when I need to, and this is perfectly acceptable in Ireland. I find the term 'restroom' amusing, as I don't know who ever dreamed of 'resting' there. However, if I wanted to be discreet I would probably ask for the 'Ladies'. I always studied 'maths' in the plural, and usually have a hundred and one other things that I aught to be doing rather than posting here

We in the US also have roads, lanes, streets, etc. The term "freeway" came about when multi-lane roads opened up that were "free" to traverse upon rather than costing money as on a "tollway". The northeastern side of the US is still practically littered with tollways while most highways elsewhere in the US have freeways. There are a few highways and bridges that charge a toll to cross, but most highways are free to travel upon. It's a word that has become to mean any multi-lane highway.
Similar to our general use of the word Kleenex to denote any tissue, Q-tip for a cotton swab, and Vaseline for petroluem jelly just to name a few.

Let me assure all of you that a crumpet is nothing like an American cookie. America does not have anything that even vaguely resembles a crumpet! It was one of the things I missed when I lived in California for five years. When my mother came to visit, she asked me what she could bring me from home. I said "a packet of crumpets, if Customs will let you bring them in". She brought nine packets of them. They are very perishable and can't be frozen. I ate nothing but crumpets for days so they wouldn't go to waste!

It always amuses me when my English friends say they are going to "hoover" the lounge, particularly when their vacuum cleaner is not a Hoover, but an Electrolux or a Vax or some other brand. (Hoover is a brand name, like Kleenex).

Re: "I find the term 'restroom' amusing, as I don't know who ever dreamed of 'resting' there".

I've often wondered if the term "rest room" derives from the fact that people DO go there to rest a while when they are working. When I was at university, I worked as a sales clerk in a department store. One of the girls I used to work with would disappear into the staff loo for quite long periods of time, ostensibly using the facilities, but in reality just sitting and resting her feet, while the rest of us did all the work.

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They are very perishable and can't be frozen

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umm, I have, bottoms are a bit soggy when they defrost but you don't notice when you toast them.

I notice no one mentioned lavatories. My mum who was actually very snobbish and over-refined, referred to it as the lavatory until her dying day. I find it extremely odd when my pupils ask if they may go to the bathroom... I usually ask them if they are going to have a bath.

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I find it extremely odd when my pupils ask if they may go to the bathroom... I usually ask them if they are going to have a bath

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I thought they were toilets. Otherwise, very fair point raised by Ren.

In India, the educated class would prefer say Mathematics. It is like this in India, the more formal and 'english' you are, the wiser you look. Teachers would always use Biology instead of 'Bio' etc.

I don't think in school, we even say "toilet". Previously, when we were young, we would ask the teacher "May I go to the toilet ? " Now when we have to go to the toilet, we say " May I be excused ? "

Getting back to the College/University thing. I went to the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). For the first 2 years, however, I lived on-campus at the University of Queensland (UQ). QUT does not have much on-campus accommodation and those rooms they do are called the Student Res (short for residence) and are similar to dorms in US Colleges.

At the older uni's, though, such as UQ and U Sydney or UNSW, the places offering accommodation on campus are called colleges. Thus I lived in Emmanuel College. This is a similar setup, I think, to the places like King's College, Oxford or Emmanuel College, Cambridge. You live, eat, socialise, etc at the College and also do tutoring sessions on your subjects but there is no delineation between the various faculties that people are involved in. Everyone lives in together.

Of course, the socialising is the best bit. I always laugh when I hear people talk about a "college education". For me, with college meaning what it does, a college education is learning to hold your liquor.

As I sit here at the computer I have the television on in the background, QVC so that I don't have to follow the storyline (!). They have an American guest on at the moment (Stacey from Models Prefer in case you also watch QVC), she has just spoken to a customer who called in and at the end of the conversation she said "It has been nice talking with you", we would say talking to you.

I don't know that that one's, necessarily, a difference, Sue. I think we'd say either one.

"With" implies, I suppose, that the other person had a part in the conversation as well. But, we'd use "to" also.

And, what did we buy on QVC today?

There are probably quite a lot of differences in the use of prepositions between Britain and the US.

In Britain we usually say that a boy is named after his father. In the US, I think, they say that he’s named for his father.

I would say that I hadn’t seen Joe Bloggs for years. I think Americans would be more likely to say that they hadn’t seen him in years.

A striking difference used to be that Americans said that they lived on Main Street or on Sunset Boulevard whereas we Brits lived in High Street or in Acacia Avenue. Nowadays Brits often say on Oxford Street and so on.