One of our British posters says elsewhere, "The airlines took the decision to cancel domestic and short-haul flights."

We in the US would say "made" a decision. Do you British use "take" exclusively, or would you also sometimes use "make" -- and if so, is there any difference of meaing in your usage?

We use both and I don't think there is any difference in meaning. On the whole I'd say we use "take" more than "make" but that's just a gut feeling based on nothing at all in the way of real evidence.

It is interesting which verbs different languages use for the same action. A German boy learning English once told me "German makes everything; English does everything."

I think there is a slight distinction. We'd not usually say, "The airlines made the decision...". We would tend to use "make" when it's instructive, "The airlines must make a decision...". Then, once they had decided, we would then speak about the fact using the verb "take".

quote:

A German boy learning English once told me "German makes everything; English does everything."

So far as I can recall from my German classes back in antedeluvian times, German has no special word for "do". It uses "machen" which means either "do" or "make".

It is one of the great strengths of English that our language has a huge number of words and can thus be very precise. I read somewhere that German has fewer than a million words whereas English has maybe five times that number. Of course, all such estimates are very subjective, but I think the underlying truth is there.

German has no special word for "do"

Das tut mir leid aber ... German has tun which is cognate with English to do. I used it in the stock phrase above, which means I'm sorry, but, and literally that does to me sorry but.