Wm Trevor, I find it worse than that. I want to know how one can "win" third place or win bronze. To win is to win & surely that is to come first.

Then one which may or may not be from the yanks, but is most annoying, is when some twit, often the birds, [like that old one], on the ABC tell us "the car lost control". I raced cars for many years, & although I lost control of the car a couple of times, I have never been in a car that was in control.

Today I contribute to an international forum dedicated to the maintenance & restoration of one sports car model of a no longer existent British car manufacturer. The knowledge of some of the contributors, & the help they offer is outstanding, but made up as it is by about 35% UK, 30% US, 20% Oz/NZ, with the remainder from Europe & the rest of the world, one often has to look to the contributors nationality to be sure what they are talking about.

Add in the odd occasion when some younger folk start to use "text" talk, & you can have many people separated by a common language.

When an Ozzie recently suggested that he "must have killed a China man" one pommy bloke, [not chap fellow or guy], wanted to know what the Chinese had to do with a blown head gasket.

Yes Cossomby, I can remember my mother taking some time to realise what out pommy baker, [bred van man], was talking about when he told her he was working on his "weir doer" on the week end.

It was only when he told her it was to keep the flies out of the house, she got the picture.

Banjo, I used to be very sensitive to Americanisms, especially after my wife ran off with some Yank and killed our marriage after only 8 months!

But I became less and less concerned about it and now more than 20 years later, Americanisms and American ‘pollution’ of our Australian dialect doesn’t worry me at all.

There is a continuum from blatant Americanisms that are not at all Australian right through to words and phrases that are now thoroughly Australian but are of American origin.

It is just part of our constantly evolving language. And it’s not unidirectional – the USA has adopted Australian words and phrases, and there is this sort of exchange happening all over the world.

david f, in Scotland, England and Ireland, pies have meat in them.
Are they wrong too?
Also in those countries, cars are saloons and estates, not sedans and wagons (Americanism = Australianism in this case).
There's also the tattie pie (potato pie). When I first saw a pizza, it was called a pizza pie.
And a drunk man can be pie-eyed.
Don't forget that if you divide 22 by 7 the answer is pi.

Dear Austin Powerless,

Scotland, England, Australia and Ireland are all foreign countries.

If you divide 22 by 7 the answer is not pi. 22/7 is an approximation to pi.

Pi is a transcendental number. A rational number can be expressed by the quotient of two integers. An irrational number is a number that cannot be expressed as the quotient of two integers. Algebraic irrational numbers such as the square root of 2 are roots of algebraic equations with rational coefficients. Irrational numbers which are not roots of algebraic equations with rational coefficients are called transcendental.

Pi is an irrational transcendental number.

22/7 is a meat pie, an approximation to a real pie. Pi includes lemon pies. I find them transcendental.

The following few are ones that come to mind:

1) Close, but no cigar.

2) Bigger bang for your buck.

3) No-brainer.

4) SOB. - Very popular descriptive adjective in Los Angeles.

I'm sure though that we've got quite a few that other people
would find difficult to understand. Take the word "shout."
As in "my shout," (or treat) of drinks. Many outsiders would
find that a bit confusing. The same as "lets catch the lift,"
"lift," here meaning elevator, and so on.