What's the difference between parliament and congress?

Look up your country's legislative body on wikipedia in your language, then switch to the language to English.

It depends on the country but usually a parliamentary system will have their head of government elected by the majority party in parliament (see the prime minister of the UK) while a presidential system has a Congress and president elected independently.

>different terminology used depending on the country It's exactly that. "Parliament" usually refers to the UK system, or a similar system elsewhere. "Congress" for the American-style system. >I don't know which term I should use to refer to my country's legislative branch Maybe look at some English newspaper reports about your elections.

Here's a list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legislatures_by_country?wprov=sfla1 I don't think there's a semantic difference. The Americas prefer congress (probably because of the influence of the US using that name first). French speaking countries prefer Assembly (though France splits the assembly into parliament and senate, so technically uses two terms here). The rest of the world seems to mostly prefer parliament, assembly in second place, congress being rare outside the Americas and words like council and diet also occasionally showing up.