Anglo-American communications studies

[Ray Dillinger]

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.


				Bear