# AMERICA/UK & OTHERS



## Kymiie (Oct 28, 2009)

On the forum & the 9/11 I have just realised that americans write their dates different to us

America - month/day/year
UK - day/month/year

Also with spain and france, they say a jumper green, as we say a green jumper!

Does anybody else know any different things in different places, if you get what i mean?

xxxx


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## stells (Oct 28, 2009)

Jelly and jam... biscuits and cookies.... American dropping U's out of words such as colour... chips and crisps... fries and chips lol there are loads and i always have a good giggle with Danny about them... I did however find myself using words such as neat on his latest visit to the UK.... SCAREY


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## t_mclellan (Oct 28, 2009)

Don't you guys drive on the wrong side of the road?


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## stells (Oct 28, 2009)

The left side is the right side... the right side is the wrong side lol


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## Stephanie Logan (Oct 28, 2009)

I am embarking on a personal crusade to replace "awesome" with "brilliant" in my own vocabulary, as a better casual-to-moderate compliment for my students. Also, I am converting masses of American schoolchildren to the real "football" and Liverpool! 

There are so many words that differ in English vs American: "queue" for "line", "nick" for "steal", "half seven" for "seven-thirty", "toilets" instead of "bathrooms", "lifts" instead of "elevators", "flats" instead of "apartments", "bedsitters" for "houses", getting things "sorted" instead of "figured out", "Way Out" instead of "Exit". Mostly I prefer the Queen's English to our American dialect because in general English people have a better, more specific vocabulary. Americans make every item or issue a "thing", which is just plain lazy.

However, I hate to say this, but English people, at least those on the ShelledWarrior forums, have become very careless with their spelling. I was shocked at how many common words I've seen misspelled there. I admit I'm a stickler for spelling, probably because I'm a teacher. I know that in today's texting, twittering world spelling has become unimportant to many teenagers and young adults, but I am not complaining about the occasional missing last letter or homonym, but a high frequency of misspelled common words. Tsk, tsk, I have to say. I expected better from the country where our language originated.


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## dmmj (Oct 28, 2009)

What's a jumper green? and don't you eat blood pudding?


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## Yvonne G (Oct 28, 2009)

Bangers?

Yvonne


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## mctlong (Oct 28, 2009)

dmmj said:


> What's a jumper green? and don't you eat blood pudding?



What is blood pudding?


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## Stephanie Logan (Oct 28, 2009)

Bangers are sausages, jumper is, I thought, a onesie that babies wear, or maybe a pullover sweater for an adult.

Jumper green merely reflects that the adjective comes after the noun in the Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian).

No idea about blood pudding!


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## Shelly (Oct 28, 2009)

I heard of this thing called "The Metric System' that the Brits use. It will never catch on, I'm sure.


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## Stazz (Oct 28, 2009)

Well, in South Africa , we call jumpers and sweater's - jerseys  Nick's mom is British, and his dad grew up in the British Colonial area of SA, so they say "sweater", so Icall a fleecy thing a sweater, and a jersey as a wooly thing haha. South Africa works on the Metric system I think. The thing is Shelly, its not that it would "catch on"., The metric system has been used for hundreds of years in quite a few places other than Britain. Its funny though, most people look at Americans and think your systems are strange etc....which they're not, they're just not normal to those people haha. South Africa has a whole new slang language, most people don't understand us haha


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## stells (Oct 29, 2009)

Blood pudding which we mostly call black pudding is lovely... can't have a fry up without it....

More info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pudding


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## t_mclellan (Oct 29, 2009)

As for the metric system in the USA, Think about your $$ & you'll see we've been metrificated* for a long time!
If a dollar is a meter, Then a quarter is 25 centimeters, A dime is 10 centimeters ect. ect.

* Mertficated = Backwoods Cracker slang word meaning that we have been using the metric system for "A long time"!
Most of this slang language was originally used & understood only by Tom McLellan & several other unsavory types.
It is widely thought to have originated with past pres. George Bush Jr..
This is incorrect! He stole some of our words & phrases after a "Hog hunt" in N. Florida!
If any y'all-z needin me ta interpiphy fuyah, Lemeyno!


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## Yvonne G (Oct 29, 2009)

tyres, petrol, kerb (U.K.)


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## Yvonne G (Oct 29, 2009)

Fairy liquid (dish washing soap), fairy cakes, digestive biscuits, biro (ball point pen) I believe a cookie is a biscuit, but I wonder what exactly is a digestive biscuit?

Yvonne


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## Isa (Oct 29, 2009)

At the American custom, someone already asked me to leave my pocket book in the care and I did not know what is was and he repeated it and my fiance told me that you guys call a purse a purse or a pocket book, here we only use purse. 
Yvonne, for Us, Digestive Biscuit is a mint cookie.


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## Yvonne G (Oct 29, 2009)

t_mclellan said:


> we've been metrificated* for a long time!



That's pretty funny. I had the picture in my mind of someone on Saturday Night Live doing their impression of G. Bush when I read this first line. So we have YOU to credit for that, huh?

Yvonne


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## stells (Oct 29, 2009)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digestive_biscuit

Wiki is brill for stuff like this.... Myself and Danny use it all the time when something crops up.... i found out on the last trip that your biscuits are similar to what we call yorkshire puddings...


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## Isa (Oct 29, 2009)

Kelly, I do not know if they are the same kind of biscuit but here we call them social tea


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## egyptiandan (Oct 29, 2009)

You forgot the most important Stephanie  The loo=toilet

Fairy cakes are cupcakes here 

Nappy=Diaper
There are more just not coming to me right now (jet lag)

Than there is pronunciation.  Plenty of words are spelt the same but pronounced differently
vita min (english) vi ta min (american)
yog urt (english) yo gurt (american)

Danny


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## stells (Oct 29, 2009)

lol the yog urt one made me giggle... just remembering your shock at the TV adverts over here


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## Kymiie (Oct 29, 2009)

Is it true that in america they have overly sized portions of food? xx


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## stells (Oct 29, 2009)

Fanny.... over there it is you rear end.... here it would be your lady bits...

Pants... over here would be boys/men underwear... over there they are your trousers... sd you saying you were putting on your pants here would sound like you were putting on your underwear...

Panties... Lady's underwear we call them knickers...

Sorry to lower the tone lol



Kymiie said:


> Is it true that in america they have overly sized portions of food? xx




Talking from experiencing the amount Danny puts away... yes lol


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## Stephanie Logan (Oct 30, 2009)

And don't forget our most recently acquired Queen's English slang: "trump" for passing gas! That was funny and I am planning on sharing it with my students, because it is a perfect example of onomatopoeia (where the word is pronounced just like the sound it makes: zip, bark, moan, slam, squeak, etc.). Trump sounds just like a fart (unlike the word "fart" itself), so is a much better term and unlikely to cause teacher disapproval, because they won't have heard it before!

I don't know very many Cockney rhyming slang phrases, but I do know that "fart" has its roots in "raspberry tart", and that phrase is also responsible for "blowing raspberries", in which one sticks out the tongue and makes the noise that sounds more like trump than fart!

BTW, a great, hilarious book on our language is called The Mother Tongue: English and How it got that way, by Bill Bryson. Read it, or listen to it on disc!


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## Stazz (Oct 31, 2009)

Here's a good one ! What the U.S calls a pacifier, we call a dummy in SA ! Lol. I looooove digestive biscuits, they're so good for you! I call the toilet the Loo as well. When I went to the States, travelled CA flat, I always had to think about things I said as half of the Americans couldn't understand me! "Where's your Loo please"..."Say what?!" hahaha


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## Stephanie Logan (Nov 1, 2009)

That's what makes travelling so fun--adapting to a "foreign" language! I always joke that in England they speak ALMOST the same language. And idioms! Where would we be without them? Yet those differ quite a bit between places like England, Australia, South Africa (seems like) and the USA.


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