A non-U.S. colleague recently asked me about “EZ Access” and similar uses of “EZ”.

They had been trying to sound it out, saying, “Ee-Zed…” and had made no progress. I reminded them that U.S. speakers pronounce the letter “Z” as “Zee”, and hence “EZ” would be interpreted as “Easy”.

“Ohhhh…!” was their response. They commented that all of the other English-speaking countries wouldn’t necessarily have that interpretation!

International English is certainly not EZ (and Bob is not your uncle)!

On one level, we have simple spelling differences, such as “Harbor Tour vs Harbour Tour”.

A bit more challenging are different names for things, such as “trunk vs boot” and “hood vs bonnet”.

And at an even higher level of confusion, ask someone in the U.S. and someone in the UK what it means to “table” something!

Any others to add?