General Chat

When did a flat become an apartment?

I met my friend in town today she was accompanied by her grandaughter Masie who has recently moved into her first home.

Me " how are you enjoying life in your new flat"?

Masie rolling her eyes said

"Oh how I wish people would stop saying FLAT we are living in an APARTMENT, it's so annoying"

I just wasn't aware!

What's the difference?




Hello everyone by ge way!
:-S :-S :-S

Basically, none

http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-flat-and-vs-apartment/

:-D :-D :-D

it's always been called an apartment over here.

Americans and many Canadians (other than Brits) have no idea what is meant when you say "flat" ............ they think it is a flat tire.

I wonder if the use of "apartment" is creeping in to the UK as a term for an upper class flat :-D

If it is in Belgravia it is an apartment and costs £ 3M but in nearby Paddington it is a flat and costs £ 400 K. Simples.

No Rollo Its Sutton Coldfield (West Midlands) My Aunt lived in the same flats they have always been called flats. Suddenly they seem to have taken on delusions of grandeur.

Sylvia, I think perhaps you are correct.









;-) ;-)

.....and then there's the Duplex ;-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplex_(building)

American visitors had no idea what a bed-sit was.

Flat...Apartment...it's a Marketting ploy and creeping Americanisation.

ah but ............ a duplex is different!!


A duplex is either a semi-detached house, or what I think is/was called a maisonette in the UK

In other words, it's a house built either side by side with both having one side, back and front gardens, like a semi-detached. Or there is a lower and an upper duplex.

We have another variant of duplex here ............ it's back and front units. The front unit has its door on the front (doh!) and a front garden, and entry to the back unit is via a path along the side of the front one. The back unit projects out sideways so the "front" door can be seen. It has a back garden only.

Duplexes tend to always be larger than apartments ................ they almost always have at least 3 bedrooms, while it is much harder to find apartments larger than 2 bedrooms


Then there is what we call townhouses or row houses, which are the modern version of row housing or terraced houses in Britain.

DET

bedsits are completely unknown over here.

I think the closest you would come to "bedsit" over here would be a room in a house with shared bathroom and or kitchen. That leads to the connotation of "rooming house", which tends to be extremely low income. Not that all such accommodations are in scruffy areas ................. think the brownstones in NY were Holly Golightly lived in breakfast at Tiffany's

The next closest would be bachelor or studio apartment if you had your own bathroom and kitchen and it was completely yours, with no snooping landlady

I have some rellies who live in Sutton Coldfield. It is a dormitory suburb of Brum mostly semi detached. Flats sure, apartments no way. Nearby Henley in Arden may have apartments. I once had a flat in the Hagley Rd quite big but never thought of it as anything but a flat. It was half of a big old house.
A lot of things in Canada are much more USA than UK. Apartments are surprisingly small given the size of the place.
A lot of UK southerners think S. C. is S. Coalfield inhabited by gnarly miners. It is after all well North of Watford Gap.

I think the tour guide described it to them as a studio apartment which they seemed to understand.

Duplexes in Oz are semi-detached houses.

We also have units which are several houses, but built on a single title of land. They are then strata-titled; each 'unit' is the responsibility of the individual owner, but all the common areas e.g. roads, open spaces are the responsibility of a Strata Company which usually consists of the owners, but is governed by Legislation

I think it might have been about the same time as the train station opened near that place where airplanes land.

Sharron :-D

Well, I live in a end of terrace which is what it is known as.
Down the road, they turned an old warehouse into 'Duplex' flats,
If 'Duplex' equates to the ground floor having outside metal blinds, I understand that.
Otherwise, they're just flats.

Rollo ...........

it really is not very surprising that "A lot of things in Canada are much more USA than UK. Apartments are surprisingly small given the size of the place."

We are, for better or worse, much closer to the US in all ways than to the UK and England.

As for apartments being small ..... not too sure how many apartments you have seen, but I think a 3,000 sq ft apartment is exactly small, nor is a 6,000 sq ft one.

Also please consider how much of Canada is actually unliveable for most people when saying how big it is. Most people will not live further north than the 100 km band along the US border ............ and I'm sure you agree with them if you had ever ventured north.

It's left to the First Nations people ......... Brits are too weak and feeble to handle the harshness.

and yes, I prefer living in the south of Canada. I don't like -40C in winter or +20C in the summer with loads of mossies and black flies :-D

Allan ..........

in 1975/76, we rented a unit in a small apartment block of about 16 units that had been built in a residential area ......

..... the developer built the 2 storey block lengthwise down the garden. The building was to one side, with a gravel driveway and parking area down the other.

Turned out the neighbours were very much anti- the development, and he could not rent any of the "units".

So he rented to whole building to LaTrobe University, and they in turn rented to older married students, staff, faculty and "visiting faculty". It was an interesting mix of people ........... but the locals completely ignored us!

Bedsits had up-scaled to studios by the time I bought one in 1980s.

I thought bedsits were rented?

Bedsits, when I lived in one consisted of a room with a bed, and a cooker.
'Upmarket' bedsits had a 'kitchen area' , the size of a wardrobe, behind a curtain.
Toilet and bathing areas were shared between all tenants.

maggie .........

that's what I thought was a bedsit .......... and why I said the closest over here would be a room in a rooming house.