Get involved in anything transatlantic and differences in language, or more specifically semantics, come up so often they're almost a cliché. Indeed, I'll resist the temptation to quote George Bernard Shaw for this very reason.
Living in New York for a year I found the disruptions that word differences can cause to discourse to be one of the most enduring cultural revelations. Even today, despite having American relations and being part of a US company, transatlantic conversations still throw things up that either make no sense at all, or are just dissimilar enough in meaning for them to cause real confusion. Head the other way and I think the problem is even more pronounced. US culture and media is part of British life, so many semantic differences are well understood throughout the UK. This situation is not reversed, so the linguistic exchange can be somewhat one sided.
As this site is intended to help those involved in transatlantic business, however which way, in due course there will be a section devoted to understanding and managing cross-cultural communications. Undoubtedly, US/UK semantics will be in there somewhere. In the meantime, here's a couple of examples of how misunderstandings have entered my own experience...
When I first met Golda, a characterful middle-aged Jewish lady who's a good friend of my family in New York, she entered the house announcing that she'd sat on the sand at the beach during a particularly hot day and burned her fanny. Clearly this woman felt relaxed among friends, but not so much as I took her to be. In Britain, fanny is slang for the female genitalia. It's not a desperately rude word, but considerably less appropriate in conversation than bum or bottom, which is what fanny means in the US. Golda thought this was hilarious!
My teenaged American cousin almost fell out of his seat when he heard his British aunt complain that she wished her husband, his uncle, would give up his twenty-a-day fag habit. He was utterly dumbfounded as to why she would put up with this, until someone explained to him that in Britain a fag is a cigarette. Even so, he still seemed a little unsure of his uncle for a few days!
Do let me know if you have any examples of your own.
