"Overseas" vs. "abroad"

I'm a native speaker of Inland Northern American English. My intuition tells me that the word "abroad" is unremarkable, especially in collocations like "study abroad".

However, I've been correcting English entries on Lang-8 lately, and I noticed that a Canadian English speaker made a correction I wouldn't have. She changed the following clause:

she told me that she was going study abroad next month

to this:

she told me that she was going to study overseas next month

Her explanation was the following:

Hardly anyone ever says “abroad” in real life, it’s a bit of an awkward word. We say overseas, in another country, outside the country, etc.

This is quite a different impression than I get when I see the word "abroad". That said, I know I can't always trust my intuition on matters of usage.

Is she correct?

Solution 1:

I'd be interested if your correspondent in Canada would say that a period of study in the United States was overseas or abroad.

Google Ngrams shows that study abroad is far more common, even when including "overseas study" in the comparison:

Ngrams are a blunt instrument, but the difference is so marked here that your intuition is undoubtedly correct.

Solution 2:

Your critic is being far too prescriptive. The word abroad is used more often than overseas and has been for centuries. Since the question is one of relative frequency, we can go to Google's NGram viewer for the answer.

It shows that for the past 60 years abroad has been top dog, and despite a narrowing in the latter part of the former century and the early part of this century the gap is widening again in its favor.

Even if the numbers were reversed you would still be entitled to use abroad wherever you saw fit, immune to the censure of schoolmarmish critics who think language may only be used in ways they prescribe.

Solution 3:

As already covered, Abroad is used much more often. However I would also add that there is a subtlety in how far the place is that you are talking about. This also doesn't always correlate with whether the destination is actually over sea or not.

Clearly anywhere which is a different country can be though of as abroad.

However, even though from the UK, France is over a sea, it would not usually be referred to as overseas, simply because it is too close. It is however still definitely abroad.

On the other hand from France to China, is technically not over a sea, but it would still be refereed to as overseas, (although abroad also still applies).

As a rule of thumb, I (as a UK English speaker) would only use overseas what talking about another continent.

Solution 4:

Both Royal Mail in the UK and US Postal Service use "overseas" stamped packaging and envelopes for sending postage to another country. The mail services of all other European countries including the Russian Post use "abroad" stamped packaging and envelopes.