Hacker News Reader

Comment by sundarurfriend | Hacker News Reader

This thread is where I'm learning that American English uses tariff mainly for import tariffs. Here in India, the most common usage of it is to talk about telecom tariffs - mainly mobile, sometimes broadband. So it didn't even occur to me when reading the question that it might have anything to do with import tariffs, until I read some comments that misunderstood it that way.

View on HN

Not just mainly, but exclusively in my experience. (Import/export tariffs.)

Until this thread, I have never encountered the term "bar tariff" for a list of drink prices, or "energy tariff" instead of rate. Those uses are simply not American English, and you would be misunderstood.

Hetzner is a German company so I find myself wondering if this is a British usage, or a mistranslation of the German word "tarif" that should be "rate"? (A common mistranslation category known as "false friends".)

TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_(disambiguation)

One of the most frustrating things about Duolingo is that they refuse to have an International English setting for the language you are learning from. I’m trying to learn french but WTF is a ‘stroller’ or an ‘eggplant’ or even more frustrating are the ones where the word is almost the same in the UK as in France e.g ‘athlétique’ in French is ‘athletics’ in UK English but ‘track’ in US English.

It's perfectly acceptable British English.

21 occurrences of "tariff" on one of British Gas' pages: https://www.britishgas.co.uk/energy/guides/off-peak-electric... ("Your energy provider may offer time of use tariffs and cheaper night-time electricity rates.")

Good to know, so it's an American vs. British thing. Thanks!

Is there any further distinction between a "tariff" and a "rate" in British English? The example sentence you provide uses both, which makes me wonder if there's even more to the picture here.

Without checking, my feeling is a "tariff" is the whole contracted agreement, and a "rate" is a part of it.

An EV electricity tariff might have a cheap night rate, and a more expensive day rate. Another tariff might be entirely variable rate (price changes every hour).

Wiktionary defines a tariff as "A schedule of rates, fees or prices." so I think my feeling is correct.

It's not really that. On PG&E's website it also uses the word tariff to refer to prices for electricity and gas. https://www.pge.com/tariffs/en.html

Unclear to me why you're being downvoted. I previously knew non-US people refer to rates as "tariffs", but I never heard it in a US context. It's not rare, it's just not a meaning of the word Americans typically know.

hotels in India also use the word tariff for room rates, as in, see the tariff chart on the wall behind the reception desk.

I vaguely remember the word tariff being used to refer to fees or duties in a history class growing up, but as you've noted, it's not used this way in American English anymore. When I got the email from Hetzner this morning, I thought they were taking preemptive action against some tariff/sanction that Trump must have announced against EU data companies.

Ah, at first I wondered if this had something to do with Trump getting elected and his claims that he will implement massive (import) tariffs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com