Anglo-American communications studies

[Craig McKie]

Americans do not have electric kettles within the intended British
meaning. They tend not to know what you are talking about. The product
is absent from the shelves at Target and Walmart.

Most Canadian households would have electric kettles where gas cooking
is not involved. Something about tea-making perhaps?








On Thu, 4 Jan 2001 12:10:14 -0500, you wrote:

>
>
>On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, Steve Mynott wrote:
>
>>Ken Brown <k.brown at ccs.bbk.ac.uk> writes:
>>
>>On a tangent a friend claimed Americans didn't have electric kettles
>>for boiling water.
>>
>>Can anyone confirm whether this is true?
>
>
>sigh.  Americans tend not to call something a "kettle" unless it's 
>large, at least a 6-qt capacity.  We don't have non-specialized 
>electric cooking vessels in that size on the market.  
>
>However, we have electric coffeepots that size and larger, and 
>electric "hotpots" of a smaller size (around 2qt) suitable for 
>heating water to brew tea, and electric "rice cookers" of 
>approx. 3-4qt capacity that are entirely suitable for boiling 
>water if you don't want to cook rice.
>
>
>I'd be inclined to think that this is just a terminology issue. 
>
>>I think "furnace" is "boiler" in English.
>
>Hm.  Not all furnaces are boilers.  Basically we use the word 
>"furnace" here to mean the heating unit for a house.  One kind 
>of furnace is a boiler, which heats liquid that then gets 
>circulated through radiators.  
>
>Other types of furnaces are electrical, or fired by gas, coal, 
>oil, or wood.  Sometimes they heat a gigantic rock that then 
>radiates heat for days (this arrangement is popular in arid 
>northern and northwestern states).  More often they heat air, 
>channeled through a heat-exchanger by a fan and then circulated 
>directly through the rest of the house via ductwork.
>
>Actual boiler-type furnaces are quite rare in the US, and 
>I haven't seen a coal-fired furnace since I was a child. 
>They're still out there, though; although they are now illegal 
>for pollution reasons here in CA, there are places in the 
>midwest where once in a while you still find them in use.
>
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>				Bear
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