americans when they see things that aren't american:
:rage-cry:
The colonizers are fighting over their words! :farquaad-point:
American slang is pretty bad too. Chips/fries, calling a bakkie/pick up truck just a truck, big rigs, wtf is a hood or trunk on a car, saying you're going Dutch when you split the bill, etc. Then there's the whole primary - middle - highschool stuff, as well as terms like freshman and senior. Also 401k, giving paracetamol a different name, bangs instead of fringe, drywall instead of plaster, Saran wrap, gasoline, faucet, pantyhose instead of tights or stockings. Cilantro and coriander being different.
I could go on and on.
I'm not from the UK but I had no idea what people were talking about when I first started using the internet. Sometimes I still don't understand
It's drywall because it's literally different from the old "wetwall" aka plaster lol.
Ok drywall instead of plasterboard or pre fabrication walls. Or gypsum panels even.
A good portion of those were brand names that became genericized, including gasoline
:amerikkka: really is less of a country and more like a bunch of corporations with a military
Acetaminophen is basically fine despite being weird, it's the common use of 'Tylenol' or other brands that gets my goat.
It is annoying but the alternative is like hey mom I really need some guaifenesin dextromethorphan
In defense of 401k that's the name of the financial account type not exactly slang
Half of the things you listed Im just like :jesse-wtf:
Freshman and Senior I can understand (new and last year). But the etymology for sophmore is such a stretch, and even if you know it it doesn't make much sense.
I fucking live here and I don’t think I fully grasped what sophomore meant until I was one
It’s the weird word that means not a freshman anymore duh throws penny at a passing freshman
he's talking to Oliver Cromwell I don't think that's the revolution he meant
Rather than writing this post you could have been reflecting on and being ashamed of your American-ness as all "good" Americans (no such thing) should be doing at all times
A few BBC shows were popular in the States for a minute and it really skewed their idea of their remaining cultural relevance
American idioms don't tend to involve rhyming substitution wordplay, I'll give 'em that much
yes, when Americans do use rhyming substitution wordplay it is in the service of hilarious jokes (see also: Arrested Development), not making regular vernacular speech impenetrable to people who didn't grow up on the same block as you
well cockney rhyming slang was developed in order to be hard to understand so when read in court it just sounds like gibberish
Idk Ive never had anyone not explain slang to me if Im confused unless they are deliberately fucking with me.
But I guess that isnt specifically British slang so maybe brits are just assholes.
Is the average american capable of working out rhyming wordplay for themselves without an instruction manual?
Fucking redditors popularised indicators for sarcasm because they can't work out or commit to obvious jokes. It's noticably different on the British subs where people hate that shit and will commit to a bit properly.
Is the average american capable of working out rhyming wordplay for themselves without an instruction manual?
Absolutely not. This is one of the ways we work out who to look down on culturally in the absence of a hereditary aristocracy
You should see the look on American's faces when I use the phrase " to fuck the dog "
Yankee: So what are you up to?
Me: Oh, no much, just fucking the dog
Yankee: (visibly horrified) I'm sorry what?
"Fuck the dog, for its part, goes back to at least 1935 with an earlier, more polite version, feed the dog, dating to the 1910s and meaning “loaf around.”
https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/screw-the-pooch/#:~:text=Fuck%20the%20dog%2C%20for%20its,as%20World%20War%20II%20slang.
don't americans say they fucked the dog when they balls something up?
the context matters though. in the American version it refers to a disastrous fuck up. the Commonwealth version is just like a Saturday afternoon
Sure but at least the American one implies that fucking a dog is a bad thing that one should not do
In the fuck up usage it comes from a very old joke. Man comes home from the bar and he's blind drunk. How drunk was he? He was so drunk he shot his wife and screwed the pooch. ba dum tsh
The other one... honestly no idea and I think it speaks unfavorably of the culture that produced it (although let's be real, all of the anglo nations infighting in this thread belong at the bottom of the sea)
I wonder how is it was first used. No judgement from me, phrases can be weird in Hindi and Marathi as well.
the only people i've heard say that are americans
is it the aussies?
apparently the "doin' nothin' in particular" version is the canucks :kkkanada:
I'm ESL and whenver I read reddit I'm like immensely surprised when people don't understand very common bog standard $subdiscipline_of_english slang
Like I know this shit, how do you not?
I had a dream last night where a person running a British-style pub/restaurant here kept saying I should order "two splats on a flat" and I kept asking what they meant but they never would explain until someone with me said "it's two fried eggs alone on a plate."
Listen, the various British vernaculars need this stuff as a shibboleth so that they can avoid interacting with people from [neighbouring town they hate].
This is off-topic but I want to share it anyway. I live in the US and I wanted to buy some malt vinegar at my local supermarket. There was only one brand in one size. The brand was London Pub.
The marketing didn't even use the "u"...
Traditional British Flavor
It's sold in the US, so it probably does contain inordinate amounts of lead.
Moving from India to the US or the reverse also leads to some confusion as certain phrases or words are used differently.
Some English phrases in India sound very old and formal compared with modern American speech
India is another world so they never had to pay much attention to anyone else
Britain is tiny but they had enough money and weird old pop culture customs to not to pay attention to anyone else
Everyone else got culturally colonized by US english
Literally no one speaks like that. Slang exists everywhere I'm sorry you exist in a bubble of american culture. Bad Take. :downbear:
A very annoying thing the English do is abbreviate "well-known sayings" to like three words so they make absolutely no sense unless you know phrases that were popular in 1850
Also they say spag bol and creme pat
abbreviate “well-known sayings”
What are some examples? Do you mean like "swings and roundabouts"?
yeah i'm struggling to think of one, usually because i don't know the saying or what it means. but an example would be like if someone replied to someone else and by saying "two in the bush" and left it there, referring to saying "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"
Daedric prince of domination and enslavement of pasta with meat sauce
