No, mail would never mean email in England.
Mail = e-mail, noun or verb.
I'm astonished that anyone can be categorical about this, and right confused as to where this is heading.
A couple of telephone calls to my
in situ contacts (all native BE speakers, living in England) confirmed that they, at least, either do use 'mail' to mean 'email', or they know of that usage, so that puts paid to the "never in England" side of things, as far as I'm concerned. What is clear is that 'mail=email'
is used, enough that cuchu and panj (AE and BE, yes?) are aware of it or even use it themselves, but not enough for NLI to believe it has any currency in England.
Elroy's earlier post seems like good sense, to me:
I only hear non-native speakers use "mail" that way. I don't think it's common among native speakers.
in that I know the usage is more widespread among non-native speakers (for example, in the Swiss variants of French and German, "mail" to mean email is fairly standard, though I don't know if this extends to French French and German German). Having said that, NLI is suggesting it is an Americanism, and elroy is begging to differ. Is it all the foreigners' fault?
GEm