Ok, we’re claiming we want to highlight what’s important & finally moved the information back to the top of the question instead of burying it at the bottom. Good start.

Step out of your own cultural context for a minute. You do not own English, and there is no reason that the way it is used elsewhere should be understandable to you, or vice versa. If anyone had rights to the language, for that matter, it sort of makes sense that it would be English people, right?

But that doesn’t really matter. English is the first language of millions of people around the globe, and the second language of maybe billions. Not only each disparate group out there using it, but actually each person within each group uses it differently. This is the nature of language–it is dynamic. It grows, evolves, regionalizes, incorporates words from other languages, and changes to meet unique cultural context.

It is not the role of English people to account to you for their use and understanding of their own language.

We DO have arguments….mostly of a regional nature. I`ve heard bread rolls called both baps and barmcakes, for instance. But never, ever, a `pudding`. You are misinformed.

Or perhaps you are confusing the term with something else…dessert, afters, or whatever you call the sweet course in the US.

I have many times had a nice scone for pudding. `Pudding `being a common ( if now dated) term used for the second course. It is not the name of the confectionary itself, though, but an indication that it follows the main, usually savoury, course.

As far as I know no Briton calls a bread roll a pudding, though we do call them lots of other things in different parts of the country, e.g. Baps, Stotties, Buns, Rolls, Bin Lids, Cobs, Batches, Bulkies, Barms, Teacakes, Butties, Nudgers and Blaas (not a complete list).

Now, to the British people who insists our naming is incorrect, they need to understand that our language is not the same. Please don’t try to tell me that we speak the same language, because in all honesty we don’t. However, our languages are incredibly similar.

In Britain, the word ‘biscuit’ means a hard baked cookie, like a graham cracker. Since this is the normal use of this word in the UK, we don’t automatically think of the plain scone-type baked goods for which Americans use the word ‘biscuit’. US English is a different dialect of English, and there are many words which have different meanings from U.K. English (jumper, braces, suspenders, tap etc.)

What on earth makes you think we call bread rolls ‘puddings’? In the U.K., pudding is any dessert, not just the blancmange-stuff which Americans use that word for. It is correct in the U.K. to say “I’m having apple pie for pudding.”.

I can also usually tell within the first few moments of talking to somebody on the internet whether they are from a native English-speaking country or not. They’ll use slightly different phrasing. Use of idioms is also a dead giveaway.

I dunno. It’s usually patently obvious. This doesn’t make a non-native English speaker’s English bad by any stretch; just different.

I can also generally tell where native English speakers are from as well, at least in a general sense. Canadians tend to sound like Americans (even in writing) but spell more like the Brits. British persons obviously use British English and will use British colloquiums and the word ‘whilst’ often will pop up. Australians lean heavy on the word ‘mate’ a lot of the time. Americans use American spellings and sound like Americans.

And so on.