General Chat

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.









;-) ;-)

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.

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

Basically, none

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

:-D :-D :-D

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