Chaucery Blog

The Wikipedia is a good source of unusual lists. I accidentally came across the List of self-contradicting words in English. It's interesting to speculate on how these meanings came about.

Bolt As a transitive verb, it means "to secure something in place (with a bolt)". But as an intransitive verb, it means "to leave or run away from (quickly)".

Buckle As a verb construction of the noun buckle, which is a device for clasping a belt together, it means "to secure, tighten, hold"; otherwise, it means "to weaken, collapse".

Posted by James at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Following the interesting results I found in Prevalence of Americanisms I wrote a short Perl script to query Google using their web API.

For the previous results I used Google with the site: operator to restrict the results to particular countries based on the server's domain. Using their web API I was able to target these results more specifically, using an option which determines site locations based on the "top level domain name of the server and the geographic location of the server IP address". This would now correctly identify those numerous sites in the .com space but which reside in other countries, presumably giving more accurate results for my survey. In addition, I could now include US sites, which are impossible to distinguish based on domain name alone.

* fortnight / two weeks isn't a strict pairing, because two weeks can often be used in UK english where fortnight is not applicable. However, it's still useful as a comparison between countries.

The Australian and UK results (the languages with which I am more familiar) look to be more accurate than the previous table.

I wanted to put up an online tool to enable anyone to determine the ratios for any words, but I don't have the web server facilities at the moment.

I didn't know that cell phone was so popular in the UK, though I have been noticing its increasing use on the BBC's international services.

Note that I had to use "write us as" rather than "write us" so as to exclude some other common usages such as "write us a letter". For example, "write me a letter soon" is normal UK english, but "write me soon" is not.

Updated 20 June: Fixed tv aerial / tv antenna results. Added write to us at / write us at, mobile phone / cell phone pairs.

Updated 30 June: Added aeroplane / airplane, father christmas / santa claus, gaol / jail, infant school / kindergarten, liquorice / licorice, maths / math pairs.

Updated 10 July: Added many more pairs, and tried (unsuccessfully) to make the table layout more readable. I should really colour-code each entry, with shades indicating how great the ratio is.

Posted by James at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

(aka Prevalence of Briticisms)

There are many differences between US and UK english. To quantify some of the differences, and the situation in other english-speaking countries, I used Google to determine the ratios of the frequencies of various synonyms which distinguish the languages.

The burgled / burglarized pair is the most polarised result, with the former used 65 times more often in UK websites than the latter. In Canada, on the other hand, burgled is used only just about half as often as burglarized.

The aluminium / aluminum result is odd. The large amount of aluminium mining occurring in Australia leads to both forms being most common there in terms of total usage. However, the UK version is almost 10 times more popular in Australia than the US version, whereas in the UK it's less than twice as popular. I don't know a good reason for that.

Another odd result is that color is more popular than colour in Australia. Children are taught colour at school, and I know of nobody who uses color. However, for foreign companies it seems to be a word that they just don't bother adjusting to the native spelling.

The biggest disparities in the UK are where it's a different word, rather than just an alternative spelling. You'd expect culture to preserve these with more vigour.

I'm also struck by how in Australia the US term tv antenna is 21 times more popular than its UK equivalent tv aerial, for which I have no explanation.

Addendum: I am contemplating writing a tool to automatically query Google for these statistics. Stay tuned.

Posted by James at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After viewing digital television for some months, it is interesting to find that the seemingly minor side-benefit of receiving program information with the broadcast is actually very useful. Even though only one channel in Perth provides more than just "now and next" information, the limited data given by all helps when flicking through channels looking for something to watch, and when recording, because the recorded programme automatically gets tagged with the broadcast name and description.

However, it's an all too common occurrence that, for hours, days or even weeks at a time, the information stops coming. At the moment, only 2 of the 5 channels are providing data. The three commercial networks have coincidentally broken down at the same time, leaving the viewer to only know what's on the government stations. Channel 7 has been broken for a week, Channel 9 often dies on the weekends, and Channel 10 breaks randomly.

Perhaps this is not a coincidence. The networks jealously guard their schedules, making it virtually impossible to legally obtain them through the internet for use on devices such as PVRs. They license the schedules out to other companies who add onerous conditions of use. The reasons the networks do these things would be the same as their reasons for not providing reliable multi-day, or at least "now and next", information. That is, to try to halt the progress of personal video recorders.

Despite the fact that people who purchase PVRs will, on average, watch more television than they did before, they will also see less commercials. This is seen as a big problem for the networks' main source of revenue, so they try to restrict PVRs. The alternative, which they have no choice but to reach eventually, is to give up trying to stem the increased use of PVRs, but to find alternative methods of earning money. Full-screen advertisements interrupting programs don't work for PVRs, so they must look elsewhere.

Posted by James at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)