# Wherein we ask each other dialect questions we don't quite understand



## Morrus (Jun 9, 2015)

This might be a fun thread. Ask any dialect/vocabulary related question that you want to know the answer to, probably could look up but never did, and feel like getting a quick explanation from your friends at EN World.

Ask anything you like. Answer questions you know the answer to. Be nice - just because there are things in the world not exactly like the things right where you are right now or people who don't speak exactly the same way as you do doesn't mean they're better or worse. Our differences should be enjoyed. It'd be rubbish if we all sounded liked identical robots when we spoke!

I'll start. In US movies I often hear an event called "Homecoming" referred to in relation to schools. What is it, and where are they coming home from?


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 9, 2015)

It usually marks the point in the fall of the school year when alumni are invited "back home" to visit their school.

It also is often connected to the point in a season when a school team- usually football, but other sports like basketball, hockey or soccer, depending on regional tastes- has played its last home game.


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## Umbran (Jun 9, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I'll start. In US movies I often hear an event called "Homecoming" referred to in relation to schools. What is it, and where are they coming home from?




Homecoming is a tradition in high schools and colleges, in which they welcome back alumni for a visit.  It is usually the first school-wide social event in the academic year - usually in September or October.

Though, my understanding isn't that it is for the last home game, but instead for the game after the longest road trip the team has to make in the season, so the team is also coming home, you see.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 9, 2015)

Probably depends on the particular season, since schedules can vary year-to-year.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 9, 2015)

Is there a noticeable Welsh accent? I can identify an English, a Scottish, and an Irish accent by hearing them, but although I've occasionally heard someone identified as Welsh, I have no idea if a Welsh accent is any different than an English one.

Bullgrit


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## Morrus (Jun 9, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> Is there a noticeable Welsh accent? I can identify an English, a Scottish, and an Irish accent by hearing them, but although I've occasionally heard someone identified as Welsh, I have no idea if a Welsh accent is any different than an English one.
> 
> Bullgrit




Very much so. It's a lilting, almost sing-song accent. I really like it. There are dozens of very different English accents, too - Cockney, Liverpool, RP (the one you probably think of as English), West Country, Birmingham, Geordie, etc., all very different to one another.

I know what you mean, though. In the US I can differentiate "general Southern" and "New York" if they're pronounced, but little else, though I understand there are far more. I can't distinguish US and Canadian accents from each other - is that typical?


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## Bullgrit (Jun 9, 2015)

US vs. Canadian accents -- I've met people whom I didn't know were from Canada until they directly stated it. So although I've heard a Canadian accent portrayed in media, I haven't notice it in any real life interactions. They just sound "Northern".

As for just US accents -- Southern, Northern, Mid-western, Texan, and maybe Californian might be the only ones easily identifiable without the accent being particularly strong or the speaker using local terms or slang. I live in the South, but all my career I've worked with people from all over the country (and world), and I'm finding it harder to identify a particular US accent. My sons were born and are being raised in the South, but to my ears, they have very little Southern accent. (My youngest sometimes laughs at my "y'all".)

Bullgrit


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 9, 2015)

I have cousins from Minnesota that sound like what is portrayed as Canadian.Certain parts of California have a particular accent, but others have no accent.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Jun 9, 2015)

Watch for the long vowels.  Pronouncing "about" as "aboot" is a dead giveaway for most Canadians I've met.

Outside of Val-speak (like, fer sure, no way!) I'm not familiar with a California accent, and I'm a native (southern) Californian -- curious what people identify as a California accent.

Now New England (especially Bawston!), New Yawker, Bal'mer (hun!) mid-Atlantic, the general Southern twang, generic central Midwestern, Yooper-Upper-Midwest, hard Texas twang ... thems I'll give ya.

In English English (British English? UK English? Who owns English?) it's the mixed common terms that get me. The pants-trousers divide is particularly humorous; chips-crisps has caused me frustration; I never know what I'm getting if offered a biscuit; and corn-maize has me downright bumfoozled.


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 9, 2015)

Re: California accent. There is a particular cadence. I can't put my finger on it though.


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## Morrus (Jun 9, 2015)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> Watch for the long vowels.  Pronouncing "about" as "aboot" is a dead giveaway for most Canadians I've met.




I'm not able to hear the difference - you all have long vowels compared to me!  Probably the same way @_*Bullgrit*_ can't hear the difference between English and Welsh.  We're simply not used to the accents enough to hear the fine-tuning which seems obvious to locals.



> Outside of Val-speak (like, fer sure, no way!) I'm not familiar with a California accent, and I'm a native (southern) Californian -- curious what people identify as a California accent.




I don't think I could pick one out.  It would just be "generic strong American accent" to me.  Really, it's just the Southern drawl and the Noo Yoik accents that I can pick out; the rest all sounds the same. Just like you probably can't distinguish between a Yorkshire and a West Country accent, or a Geordie and a Cockney accent.



> In English English (British English? UK English? Who owns English?) it's the mixed common terms that get me. The pants-trousers divide is particularly humorous; chips-crisps has caused me frustration; I never know what I'm getting if offered a biscuit; and corn-maize has me downright bumfoozled.




Don't worry; it works both ways!


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 10, 2015)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> In English English (British English? UK English? Who owns English?) it's the mixed common terms that get me. The pants-trousers divide is particularly humorous;




Don't forget slacks and jeans


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## Morrus (Jun 10, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> Don't forget slacks and jeans




They're two different things.  They mean the same in both dialects - jeans are those denim things made by Levis and the like, while slacks are (a fairly old-fashioned term for)  loose trousers. I don't imagine the term's been used since, say, WW2!


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 10, 2015)

ah hush! I'm trying to a bit o fun there!


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Jun 10, 2015)

It might be a shorter list to focus on things that are the same in all dialects! 

Do any of these other outer leg coverings in American English become unmentionables in British English? Pants, trousers, slacks, jeans, knickers, bloomers, chaps, shorts, capris, khakis ... (I hear the phrase "Don't get your knickers in a twist" in the US, but that saying makes more sense in the British interpretation of knickers than in the US one, where knickers are knee-length short pants, cf: knickerbockers.)

I notice "pants" redirects to "trousers" in Wikipedia, so it appears the Brits have won this round.

--- 

I need to find an episode of "Law and Order UK". Being familiar with the US version, it's fascinating the differences that arise from the same procedural model applied to a different justice system, especially when overlaid with the UK-specific language (and robes and wigs in court, but I digress). I suspect if there are Brits who have watched the UK version and then seen the US they might be equally boggled.

---



			
				Scott Dewar said:
			
		

> Re: California accent. There is a particular cadence. I can't put my finger on it though.




Sandy Eggo, dude!

The rest of the English speaking world _does_ understand that Bill and Ted are parodies of Californians, right?


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 10, 2015)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> Sandy Eggo, dude!
> 
> The rest of the English speaking world _does_ understand that Bill and Ted are parodies of Californians, right?




Like totally dude!


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 10, 2015)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> The rest of the English speaking world _does_ understand that Bill and Ted are parodies of Californians, right?



No they aren't!


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## Tonguez (Jun 10, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I'm not able to hear the difference - you all have long vowels compared to me!  Probably the same way @_*Bullgrit*_ can't hear the difference between English and Welsh.  We're simply not used to the accents enough to hear the fine-tuning which seems obvious to locals.




At University I had a party trick of identifying where girls were from by their accents so I trained my ear and was  even able to identify about 5 New Zealand regional accents and even a rural-urban divide, although thats disappearing now.

Strangely enough I find that northern US accents are more neutral than Canadian, although Canadians aren't as distinct as US comedy implies.. I do hear the California valley accent and the Compton accent, New York of course and then theres Texan and a few others.

The UK has a huge range of accents and some of them don't even sound like English Central London has distinct drawl and I can distinguish a Glaswegian, Cockney, Geordie, Preston*, Cornish accents too.

*My grandfathers from Preston


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## Bullgrit (Jun 10, 2015)

Something to keep in mind about the American accent(s): "General American" is what most people hear in American media. And many/most celebrities hide their natural accent, or at least try to sound more "general", unless they are specifically portraying someone with a particular accent. So as a result, in most American media, where most Americans and non-Americans hear American English, (outside their own local dialect), American English sounds sort of "accent neutral" to Americans.

And since I've used the word "American" so many times in this post, I feel I should post this:





Bullgrit


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## delericho (Jun 10, 2015)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> Who owns English?




The Queen. Though the rest of us get to use it under an Open Language License. Efforts to revoke said license have failed, although one guy did suggest transferring the copyrights to Mexico...


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## tomBitonti (Jun 10, 2015)

Lots more distinct accents: Chicago, Boston, The Bronx (New York) can be pretty strong.  But there are a lot.

Odd to not remember them clearly (I have this problem myself), but, I suspect that's a memory retrieval problem.  I'm not often trying remember accents out-of-context.  The accents are quite easy to discern while actively hearing them.

Ah ... here is a nice map:

http://www.pbs.org/pov/americantongues/photo_gallery_map.php#.VXh9NWMf3Wh

Thx!

TomB


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Jun 10, 2015)

Nice map, but I'm not sure I follow all of it.  And there's parts that make little sense to me. For example, there's a callout in the SF area that splits " 'on' rhymes with 'Dawn' " and " 'on' rhymes with 'Don'" -- my answer is "But wait, 'Dawn' rhymes with 'Don'!"


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## Umbran (Jun 10, 2015)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> Nice map, but I'm not sure I follow all of it.  And there's parts that make little sense to me. For example, there's a callout in the SF area that splits " 'on' rhymes with 'Dawn' " and " 'on' rhymes with 'Don'" -- my answer is "But wait, 'Dawn' rhymes with 'Don'!"




Consider that many might say that "Don" leans a bit toward 'Dahn'.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 10, 2015)

I saw an interview one time with the speech coach who taught Julia Roberts how to lose her Southern accent. He described her thick/pronounced accent when he started working with her and how he trained it out of her. Then the journalist doing the interview went to Julia's old high school and spoke with a teacher and asked him about her accent. The teacher said she didn't have a thick accent, and generally contradicted what the speech coach said about her original accent. I got the impression from the whole report was that the teacher was surprised anyone would describe Julia's Southern accent as thick, and the speech coach was really just padding his work to sound much more impressive than it was.

In fact, everything the speech coach said about the Southern accent in general, (not just Julia, specifically), sounded like he got his knowledge of it from too much Foghorn Leghorn.

Bullgrit


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## Morrus (Jun 10, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> I saw an interview one time with the speech coach who taught Julia Roberts how to lose her Southern accent. He described her thick/pronounced accent when he started working with her and how he trained it out of her. Then the journalist doing the interview went to Julia's old high school and spoke with a teacher and asked him about her accent. The teacher said she didn't have a thick accent, and generally contradicted what the speech coach said about her original accent. I got the impression from the whole report was that the teacher was surprised anyone would describe Julia's Southern accent as thick, and the speech coach was really just padding his work to sound much more impressive than it was.
> 
> In fact, everything the speech coach said about the Southern accent in general, (not just Julia, specifically), sounded like he got his knowledge of it from too much Foghorn Leghorn.
> 
> Bullgrit




Presumably the high school teacher can't hear her own (and Julia Roberts') accent. People often think their own accent is no accent.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 10, 2015)

delericho said:


> Olgar Shiverstone said:
> 
> 
> > Who owns English?
> ...







Keep calm and rock on.


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## Janx (Jun 10, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> Something to keep in mind about the American accent(s): "General American" is what most people hear in American media. And many/most celebrities hide their natural accent, or at least try to sound more "general", unless they are specifically portraying someone with a particular accent. So as a result, in most American media, where most Americans and non-Americans hear American English, (outside their own local dialect), American English sounds sort of "accent neutral" to Americans.
> 
> And since I've used the word "American" so many times in this post, I feel I should post this:
> 
> ...




I'd quibble about the term "General American" accent.  In the media, it's called MidWestern.  So Tom Brokaw, etc and pretty much everybody on American TV not playing a stereotype of somebody from a specific region all speak (or try to) with a MidWestern accent.

As such, anybody trained in theatre, or broadcast news (aka Julia Roberts) knows this, and is likely aware of their own accent lest it interfere with their career.

I don't know why it became the "standard", presumably because it doesn't accentuate exaggerations noted in the other regional dialects.


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## Janx (Jun 10, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Presumably the high school teacher can't hear her own (and Julia Roberts') accent. People often think their own accent is no accent.




very likely a little bit of both.  I speak MidWestern pretty well, but there's a few Minnesotanisms in how I speak, but I'm far more MidWestern than my friends from the home state.

Same here in TX.  Most the people I meet in the 4th largest city in the US don't talk like cowboys with a wad of chaw in their cheek.  But they have a few bits that hint at Texas still.

Probably need a bit a practice to get out of, but not likely to be described as "thick/pronounced accent" to any but the pickiest (say a speech coach)


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 10, 2015)

It is understandable to most Americans without difficulty.  It is "Vanilla* American-English".








* Vanilla is, FWIW, my favorite flavor of ice cream, so don't read that as an insult, just a flavorful _*ahem* _description of its ubiquity.


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## Morrus (Jun 10, 2015)

Plus I'd find it thick and pronounced, even if you wouldn't!


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## Janx (Jun 10, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Plus I'd find it thick and pronounced, even if you wouldn't!




that depends.  name some American TV shows aimed at a general demographic.  Odds are most of them have mid-western accents.

Do you find them thick and pronounced?  Compared to the samples of american regional dialect (Bill and Ted valley/surfer), New Englander/bostonian accent, or gangster New Jersey accent?  Or how about the folks in the movie Fargo with their Minnesotan/Youper "oh ya, You betcha, doncha know"

I'm sure MidWestern is still funky weird to a UK person, but it's relatively tame among the variety spoken in the US.  Since it's the Lingua Media, everybody is the one-off from standard


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## Morrus (Jun 10, 2015)

Janx said:


> Do you find them thick and pronounced?




I'm not sure what you mean. I find *all* US accents thick and pronounced, of course. The degree doesn't particularly come into it unless it's insanely extreme.  I imagine you find mine thick and pronounced, too, though from my perspective I don't have one at all.


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 10, 2015)

I use to be able to listen through any accent and clearly hear what is being said, but since my induced coma, I am having troubles understanding some of the thicker English accents.


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## Morrus (Jun 10, 2015)

This appears to have rather drifted off the "ask questions" premise of the thread to a general debate about the nature of accents.


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 10, 2015)

Morrus said:


> This appears to have rather drifted off the "ask questions" premise of the thread to a general debate about the nature of accents.




So, do people in Britain walk on the pavement? It was one of a few joke made amongst military folk when being transferred to England


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## Morrus (Jun 10, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> So, do people in Britain walk on the pavement? It was one of a few joke made amongst military folk when being transferred to England




Yes? I don't get the joke, though.


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 10, 2015)

It was not much of a joke, actually. More of a shameful act of ignorance toward another society. I should not have called it a joke, in retrospect.


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## Dog Moon (Jun 11, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> So, do people in Britain walk on the pavement? It was one of a few joke made amongst military folk when being transferred to England




Do people in England drive on a parkway and park in a driveway like us Americans do?


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## Janx (Jun 11, 2015)

what does a butter knife look like?

I was hosting an event, and a guest asked for a butter knife.  I reached in my drawer and produced what I was raised to call a butter knife and she decried that it was not a butter knife.  Lacking any other such thing, she had to make due with what I gave her.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 11, 2015)

Janx said:
			
		

> I'd quibble about the term "General American" accent. In the media, it's called MidWestern. So Tom Brokaw, etc and pretty much everybody on American TV not playing a stereotype of somebody from a specific region all speak (or try to) with a MidWestern accent.



For what it's worth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American

Bullgrit


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## Janx (Jun 11, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> For what it's worth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American
> 
> Bullgrit




weird.  Never heard of it.  My wife worked in public radio, journalism.  It was always referred to as Midwestern accent in school, etc, with regards to news/tv dialect.

Thanks for the info bit.  I learned something new.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 11, 2015)

"We don't have an accent. God talks like we do."
-- Lewis Grizzard


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## Morrus (Jun 11, 2015)

[video=youtube;dz4Ps55Rx40]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz4Ps55Rx40[/video]


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## Bullgrit (Jun 11, 2015)

Way, way back in the day, I met a girl from England who invited me to "come round and knock me up sometime."

When I lived in a US port city, British military ships would port for a couple of days. The British sailors would flood the local nightlife. I remember they got a kick out some signs in front of the nightclubs:
"Come shag the night away with us."
"Shag contest Saturday night."

A few years ago, when visiting Sweden for work, I spent time with my Swedish and English coworkers. I taught them the meaning of "riding shotgun" and "calling shotgun."

Do our non-Americans here know why "knock up" is funny to Americans? Do you know the terms Shag and shotgun? Do our non-Southerners here know the Shag? (I bet few Southerners even know the Shag, nowadays.)

Bullgrit


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 11, 2015)

I remember reading about shag clubs a couple of years ago. They are still popular.


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 11, 2015)

Janx said:


> what does a butter knife look like?
> 
> I was hosting an event, and a guest asked for a butter knife.  I reached in my drawer and produced what I was raised to call a butter knife and she decried that it was not a butter knife.  Lacking any other such thing, she had to make due with what I gave her.




You probably handed her a table knife. A butter knife looks like these:


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Jun 11, 2015)

Yeah, what's the Brit version of calling shotgun? Calling billy club?


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## Ryujin (Jun 11, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Very much so. It's a lilting, almost sing-song accent. I really like it. There are dozens of very different English accents, too - Cockney, Liverpool, RP (the one you probably think of as English), West Country, Birmingham, Geordie, etc., all very different to one another.
> 
> I know what you mean, though. In the US I can differentiate "general Southern" and "New York" if they're pronounced, but little else, though I understand there are far more. I can't distinguish US and Canadian accents from each other - is that typical?




Over the years many American newsreaders have actually been Canadian, because a general Canadian city accent tends to come off sounding Middle American. One example would be John Roberts of Fox News who, when I was a teenager, was a VJ on Canada's music TV station "Much Music" and known as J.D. Roberts. The Canadian accents that are portrayed in media are a general mish-mash of rural Canadian and East Coast Canada manners of speech.

On Welsh: Actress Eve Myles (Doctor Who, Torchwood, Merlin, Broadchurch) is one who I think has a beautiful example of a Welsh accent.


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## Morrus (Jun 11, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> A few years ago, when visiting Sweden for work, I spent time with my Swedish and English coworkers. I taught them the meaning of "riding shotgun" and "calling shotgun."
> 
> Do our non-Americans here know why "knock up" is funny to Americans? Do you know the terms Shag and shotgun? Do our non-Southerners here know the Shag? (I bet few Southerners even know the Shag, nowadays.)




We know - and use - the shotgun terminology. While American in origin, it's not at all obscure.

The 'knock-up' anecdote is one I've bizarrely heard from every American I've ever spoken to about dialects. I've never used or heard the term in any way except the "get pregnant" meaning, though I am aware of the alternate meaning. 

I only know about the Shag because [MENTION=158]Henry[/MENTION] gave me a book about it at my first Gen Con.  As you know, it means something very different over hear. If anyone says to you "fancy a shag?" they are not asking you to engage in a traditional Southern US dance.


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## Morrus (Jun 11, 2015)

Ryujin said:


> Over the years many American newsreaders have actually been Canadian, because a general Canadian city accent tends to come off sounding Middle American. One example would be John Roberts of Fox News who, when I was a teenager, was a VJ on Canada's music TV station "Much Music" and known as J.D. Roberts. The Canadian accents that are portrayed in media are a general mish-mash of rural Canadian and East Coast Canada manners of speech.
> 
> On Welsh: Actress Eve Myles (Doctor Who, Torchwood, Merlin, Broadchurch) is one who I think has a beautiful example of a Welsh accent.




The two most famous examples, I suppose, would be Anthony Hopkins and Tom Jones. Although the former doesn't always use it.

Oh, and Christian Bale. Who is Welsh, but when talking in a British accent oddly seems to have developed a Cockney accent instead.


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## Henry (Jun 11, 2015)

Morrus said:


> The two most famous examples, I suppose, would be Anthony Hopkins and Tom Jones. Although the former doesn't always use it.
> 
> Oh, and Christian Bale. Who is Welsh, but when talking in a British accent oddly seems to have developed a Cockney accent instead.




I recently discovered the Anglophenia Youtube channel with Siobhan Thompson, and her examples of something like 17 UK regional dialects was pretty fun.



Morrus said:


> The 'knock-up' anecdote is one I've bizarrely heard from every American I've ever spoken to about dialects. I've never used or heard the term in any way except the "get pregnant" meaning, though I am aware of the alternate meaning.
> 
> I only know about the Shag because [MENTION=158]Henry[/MENTION] gave me a book about it at my first Gen Con.  As you know, it means something very different over hear. If anyone says to you "fancy a shag?" they are not asking you to engage in a traditional Southern US dance.



I always get a smile at an old Holmes & Watson story that Doyle wrote, where in one scene Watson is awakened from sleep by an apologetic Holmes saying, "sorry to knock you up, Watson..." 

And Russ, if you ever come to South Carolina, I'll be sure to take you to a Shagging lesson.


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## Tonguez (Jun 11, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> Way, way back in the day, I met a girl from England who invited me to "come round and knock me up sometime."
> 
> When I lived in a US port city, British military ships would port for a couple of days. The British sailors would flood the local nightlife. I remember they got a kick out some signs in front of the nightclubs:
> "Come shag the night away with us."
> ...





We use to watch Scooby Doo waiting to hear someone yell "Scooby Shag Daphne!" - it never happened

then of course theres the different meaning of Fanny - even Fannypack makes me giggle. Worse still is a slap on the Fanny.


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## Dog Moon (Jun 11, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> Do our non-Southerners here know the Shag? (I bet few Southerners even know the Shag, nowadays.)
> 
> Bullgrit




When I hear Shag or Shagging, I think of something dirty and it makes me want to giggle when I see something like "Shag contest Saturday night.

I didn't even know there WERE other definitions to the word shag...


Edit: I'm from Minnesota


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## Ryujin (Jun 11, 2015)

Morrus said:


> The two most famous examples, I suppose, would be Anthony Hopkins and Tom Jones. Although the former doesn't always use it.
> 
> Oh, and Christian Bale. Who is Welsh, but when talking in a British accent oddly seems to have developed a Cockney accent instead.




I can't recall hearing Hopkins speak with a Welsh accent, though I suspect that he might affect a different accent when doing North American interviews. Tom Jones is one I'd forgotten about.


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## Morrus (Jun 11, 2015)

Ryujin said:


> I can't recall hearing Hopkins speak with a Welsh accent, though I suspect that he might affect a different accent when doing North American interviews.




Hopkins' Welsh accent can be very faint.


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## Ryujin (Jun 11, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Hopkins' Welsh accent can be very faint.




That would make it harder for someone like me to detect it, almost certainly. Sort of like how a New Zealander's accent is patently obvious to an Aussie but not so much to someone from North America, unless they've been schooled in the differences.


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## Janx (Jun 11, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> I remember reading about shag clubs a couple of years ago. They are still popular.




I've never heard of a shag club, and I assume the usage is not the same as the brittish term for sex.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 11, 2015)

Dance or porn? You decide:
[video=youtube;8l5pczCZw04]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l5pczCZw04[/video]

Bullgrit


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## Ryujin (Jun 11, 2015)

1930s dance style similar to the Lindy.


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## Tonguez (Jun 11, 2015)

For the Americans, One thing I do want to know (hopefully without being controversial) is what is the difference between Hispanic and Latino?


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## Bullgrit (Jun 11, 2015)

Tonguez said:
			
		

> For the Americans, One thing I do want to know (hopefully without being controversial) is what is the difference between Hispanic and Latino?



Well, without looking it up, I don't really know. They seem to be interchangeable, but there probably is some technical difference.

Now to go look it up.

Bullgrit


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## Bullgrit (Jun 11, 2015)

Is cricket still a big thing the UK?

My neighborhood has several Indian families, and the kids play cricket in our cul de sac nearly every day. I know it's a major sport in India, but I haven't heard much of cricket in the UK in a long time. When I hear of sport in the UK, it's soccer/football.

Bullgrit


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## Ryujin (Jun 11, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> Well, without looking it up, I don't really know. They seem to be interchangeable, but there probably is some technical difference.
> 
> Now to go look it up.
> 
> Bullgrit




Yup, pretty much used interchangeably with the biggest difference being who is using it, rather than who it's being used upon. Latino means Latin American, or of Latin American descent. That covers Mexico, central America, and almost all of South America. Hispanic refers to descendants of people from Spain, Portugal, and other nations in that peninsular area of Europe.


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## Morrus (Jun 11, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> Is cricket still a big thing the UK?




Yeah. It's a pretty major worldwide sport, although I've never paid it even the slightest bit of attention. Plus it's one of the sports kids play at school, along with football, rugby, etc. Rugby's pretty major, too, but again not something I pay attention to. We have lots of sports.


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## Ryujin (Jun 11, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Yeah. It's a pretty major worldwide sport, although I've never paid it even the slightest bit of attention. Plus it's one of the sports kids play at school, along with football, rugby, etc. Rugby's pretty major, too, but again not something I pay attention to. We have lots of sports.




'Less it involves the hurling of tree trunks or big rocks on sticks, 'tis na game 

The city I live in, Brampton, Canada, is something like 40% South Asian. There are more than a few Cricket teams, though I've never been to a game.


----------



## Tonguez (Jun 11, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Yeah. It's a pretty major worldwide sport, although I've never paid it even the slightest bit of attention. Plus it's one of the sports kids play at school, along with football, rugby, etc. Rugby's pretty major, too, but again not something I pay attention to. We have lots of sports.




you guys don't have a tradition of family picnics playing non-stop cricket on the beach? - is that an antipodean thing? _wow so Britain really is all about organised hooliganism 
_

Anyway slightly tangential what parts of South America are NOT part of Latin America?


----------



## Morrus (Jun 11, 2015)

Tonguez said:


> you guys don't have a tradition of family picnics playing non-stop cricket on the beach? - is that an antipodean thing?




Beach?  Britain?


----------



## Tonguez (Jun 11, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Beach?  Britain?




yeh as I wrote beach I was thinking maybe I should change that to cricket on the commons  

although I did discover (via google) that beach cricket is played on the Goodwin Sands in Kent and East Neuk of Fife


----------



## Ryujin (Jun 11, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Beach?  Britain?




That's how you refer to those rock-strewn sections of shoreline, isn't it?


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 11, 2015)

Ryujin said:


> That's how you refer to those rock-strewn sections of shoreline, isn't it?




As long as we'r not talking pure cliff sides, even a rocky beach is still a beach.

Consider Glass Beach, in California.




As for cricket...I've seen snippets of matches, but have never seen a whole game.  I don't even understand the scoring system.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 11, 2015)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> As for cricket...I've seen snippets of matches, but have never seen a whole game.  I don't even understand the scoring system.




Me neither! Never did. To be fair, I haven't the slightest inkling how American Football works, either (that one's not a request for information!)


----------



## Janx (Jun 11, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Me neither! Never did. To be fair, I haven't the slightest inkling how American Football works, either (that one's not a request for information!)




really?  Like 90% of all sports games involve getting a thingy from one side of the map to a goal area of the other side.

So football, soccer, tennis, basketball, hockey, la crosse, beer pong are all just variations on the same theme.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 11, 2015)

Janx said:


> really?  Like 90% of all sports games involve getting a thingy from one side of the map to a goal area of the other side.
> 
> So football, soccer, tennis, basketball, hockey, la crosse, beer pong are all just variations on the same theme.




Tennis is the same as American Football? Now you're just messing with me!


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 11, 2015)

Well...both are USUALLY* played on green grass with white stripes on it, and grunting is involved.




* everything after the asterisk is variable.


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 11, 2015)

[MENTION=31216]Bullgrit[/MENTION], also knowen as cuttin' the carpet!


----------



## Janx (Jun 11, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Tennis is the same as American Football? Now you're just messing with me!




absolutely the same game.  

  just different fetishes about how you touch the ball and how many people on the field at once.  Once it crosses the end zone, the crowd goes wild.

Heck, tennis is just volleyball for people who are afraid to touch the ball with their hands.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 11, 2015)

Janx said:


> absolutely the same game.
> 
> just different fetishes about how you touch the ball and how many people on the field at once.  Once it crosses the end zone, the crowd goes wild.
> 
> Heck, tennis is just volleyball for people who are afraid to touch the ball with their hands.




I dare you to hit a 150mph ball with your hands!


----------



## Bullgrit (Jun 11, 2015)

Speaking of cricket and tennis: the kids in my neighborhood playing cricket use a heavy tennis ball. Looks like a tennis ball, but is heavier. Is this a cricket ball?

I haven't played with them (no clue how), but I have picked up the ball a couple of times.

Bullgrit


----------



## Morrus (Jun 11, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> Speaking of cricket and tennis: the kids in my neighborhood playing cricket use a heavy tennis ball. Looks like a tennis ball, but is heavier. Is this a cricket ball?




Probably. A cricket ball is a similar size, but heavy and it's *solid*. Heavier than a baseball. That thing hits you in the face, you're not getting up again!


----------



## Tonguez (Jun 11, 2015)

Cricket Ball and Bat

I have seen white 'training' balls too but red is standard, the balls are cork covered in leather.
A lighter tennis ball type is used for children.


----------



## Bullgrit (Jun 11, 2015)

Morrus said:
			
		

> In US movies I often hear an event called "Homecoming" referred to in relation to schools. What is it, and where are they coming home from?



Going back to the first question in this thread:

I never really understood what homecoming was, myself, and I've lived here all my life. Heck, I was even in the homecoming court my senior year of high school -- invited to escort one of the girls in the court. (I had to wear a suit and walk out on the football field with my girl and the others in front of a couple hundred people.) I always just assumed it was the first home football game of the season. I knew it was a thing, and I heard the term/time announced for various high schools and colleges, but I never gave it two thoughts before or after that one escort.

Like Morrus with cricket, it's funny how something can be a big part of one's culture, but that doesn't mean you actually pay it any attention.

Bullgrit


----------



## Janx (Jun 11, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I dare you to hit a 150mph ball with your hands!




they shrunk the volley ball so you could hit it with a racket more easily.  That changed the speed and dynamic of the game.

hockey was the same way.  Sven and Ole were playing basketball on the lake (flattest level place), and saw it was too cold, so they wore gloves.  They saw that got in the way of dribbling, so they just used sticks.  Then they saw the ball action was too wonky, so they sawed off a chunk of frozen sewage from Sven's clogged drain and made the first puck.  Ever hear of horse puckey?  they found frozen horse manure worked better for pucks until modern materials came along.


----------



## Tonguez (Jun 12, 2015)

Janx said:


> they shrunk the volley ball so you could hit it with a racket more easily.  That changed the speed and dynamic of the game.
> 
> hockey was the same way.  Sven and Ole were playing basketball on the lake (flattest level place), and saw it was too cold, so they wore gloves.  They saw that got in the way of dribbling, so they just used sticks.  Then they saw the ball action was too wonky, so they sawed off a chunk of frozen sewage from Sven's clogged drain and made the first puck.  Ever hear of horse puckey?  they found frozen horse manure worked better for pucks until modern materials came along.




ironically you just highlighted another difference. Where I come from Hockey is played on grass with J-shaped sticks and a small hard ball. 

The only game properly played on ice is Curling


----------



## Dog Moon (Jun 12, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Me neither! Never did. To be fair, I haven't the slightest inkling how American Football works, either (that one's not a request for information!)




This is American Football:

[video=youtube;ygWFISePdjo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygWFISePdjo[/video]


----------



## tuxgeo (Jun 12, 2015)

Re: who is Welsh: 



Morrus said:


> The two most famous examples, I suppose, would be Anthony Hopkins and Tom Jones. Although the former doesn't always use it.
> 
> Oh, and Christian Bale. Who is Welsh, but when talking in a British accent oddly seems to have developed a Cockney accent instead.




Is Charlotte Church still Welsh?


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 12, 2015)

That football was underinflated by at least 1psi.


----------



## billd91 (Jun 12, 2015)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> (I hear the phrase "Don't get your knickers in a twist" in the US, but that saying makes more sense in the British interpretation of knickers than in the US one, where knickers are knee-length short pants, cf: knickerbockers.)




A more common American expression of the exact same sentiment is "don't get your undies in a bundle". It's pretty much a direct parallel to "knickers in a twist".


----------



## billd91 (Jun 12, 2015)

Dog Moon said:


> When I hear Shag or Shagging, I think of something dirty and it makes me want to giggle when I see something like "Shag contest Saturday night.
> 
> I didn't even know there WERE other definitions to the word shag...
> 
> ...




One of our football coaches in high school (he was the primary math teacher and a tremendous geek yet somehow the star QB back when he was in high school) would tell the players being coached as defensive backs to "go out and shag a few passes". So shag also means "to catch".


----------



## Deset Gled (Jun 12, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> I never really understood what homecoming was, myself, and I've lived here all my life.




I think that in modern times the etymology of "Homecoming" and the original logic behind it are largely immaterial to the cultural aspect.  The real point of Homecoming is that its the Big Social Event that takes place at the beginning of the school year.  It's characterized by a Big Dance and a Big Game.

The opposite side of Homecoming is Prom, which is the Big Social Event that takes place at the end of the school year.  Prom just has a Big Dance (no Big Game) but stereotypically also involves a Big Bang.  Other potential Big Social Events are a Sadie Hawkins Dance (called Turnabout at my high school) where girls are expected to ask guys out, and some sort of a winter dance.



One of the big things I never understood about the Queens English is why people use so much rhyming slang.  For example, I've heard (on these boards) someone use the term "telling porkies" to mean "telling lies".  Lies rhymes with pork pies which becomes porky pies which becomes porkies.  But "porkies" is longer and less efficient than "lies" and just MAKES NO SENSE.  I mean, thousands of words rhyme with "lies".  Why not "telling flys" or "telling guys" or anything else?  And there's a lot of completely random rhyming slang.  How are people who aren't personally familiar with what arbitrary rhyme was chosen supposed to make the connection?  Are you lot just intentionally making your language hard for foreigners or something?


----------



## Morrus (Jun 12, 2015)

Deset Gled said:


> I think that in modern times the etymology of "Homecoming" and the original logic behind it are largely immaterial to the cultural aspect.  The real point of Homecoming is that its the Big Social Event that takes place at the beginning of the school year.  It's characterized by a Big Dance and a Big Game.
> 
> The opposite side of Homecoming is Prom, which is the Big Social Event that takes place at the end of the school year.  Prom just has a Big Dance (no Big Game) but stereotypically also involves a Big Bang.  Other potential Big Social Events are a Sadie Hawkins Dance (called Turnabout at my high school) where girls are expected to ask guys out, and some sort of a winter dance.
> 
> ...




If you're expecting language to be logical and efficient, you're in for a disappointment.  It's not designed - it just evolves. 

But yes, Cockney Rhyming Slang was originally supposed to be hard to understand. So much of it is in regular British usage nowadays now that we use it all the time without even noticing.  Telling porkies, taking a butchers, using your loaf - all just integrated into normal colloquial speech now. 

Think of it originally being Thieves Cant.


----------



## delericho (Jun 12, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> Is cricket still a big thing the UK?




It's more an _English_ thing than UK-wide - although there is a Scottish team (and I expect there are also Welsh and Northern Irish teams), very few people up here play to any extent. And anyone who is serious about the sport almost inevitably has to head south to play.

I do know one guy who plays at a semi-serious but still amateur level. Not sure if that counts, though, since he's originally from India. 



Dannyalcatraz said:


> As for cricket...I've seen snippets of matches, but have never seen a whole game.  I don't even understand the scoring system.




It's not so hard, at least at its core. Team 1 gets an innings to try to accumulate as many runs as possible, then Team 2 have their innings, then Team 1 has a second innings, then Team 2... and at the end of 5 days they declare it a draw and play again some other time.

The "5 days and then it's a draw" thing is an exaggeration, but not by all that much. The rules of the game give conditions for winning the game, but if the time limit for the game expires before then, it's a draw - it doesn't matter who was 'winning' at that point, or even if the outcome was a foregone conclusion. The game is either won decisively, or it's a draw. This means that if (as is quite common) the 5-day test match loses a day or two due to rain, it's almost certainly a draw. And it also gives rise to some strategic play where a team might be getting beaten by a vastly superior team and so rather than trying to win the game, they instead try desperately just to cling on, to run down the clock, and to get a draw.

At least, that applies to test match cricket, which plays out over 5 days. There are other formats which have different rules (generally designed to reduce the number of draws). But my grandfather is a test match purist, so I've never really been exposed to them.


----------



## Tonguez (Jun 12, 2015)

Heres what I wonder

What are the American versions of

- Scones
- Biscuits
- Crumpets
- Muffins
- Jam (not Jelly which is different)
- Mince pies
- cornish pasties
- battered sausage on a stick (we call it a hotdog)

and do Americans eat sausage rolls?


----------



## Ryujin (Jun 12, 2015)

Tonguez said:


> Heres what I wonder
> 
> What are the American versions of
> 
> ...




- scones or biscuits (depends on where)
- cookies
- English muffins (North American muffins are more like little cakes)
- You'll have to give me a definition on that (I was thinking of crumpets)
- jam
- butter tart (closest analogue)
- meat pie (but not really the same)
- corn dog or corn dodger (though a hot dog rather than a sausage)

For the real thing we generally have to go to a "Scottish Bakery."


----------



## delericho (Jun 12, 2015)

Ryujin said:


> For the real thing we generally have to go to a "Scottish Bakery."




Do they deep-fry everything?


----------



## Ryujin (Jun 12, 2015)

delericho said:


> Do they deep-fry everything?




Not deep fried, but quite often fried. Some things are first boiled and THEN fried.


----------



## billd91 (Jun 12, 2015)

Tonguez said:


> Heres what I wonder
> 
> What are the American versions of
> 
> ...




Scones and pasties are known as scones as pasties around here. A lot of Cornish miners settled in southern Wisconsin and ended up giving the state its nickname as the Badger State so we may be a bit more pasty-friendly than other regions. But scones are pretty ubiquitous.



Tonguez said:


> and do Americans eat sausage rolls?




Some do, but then my wife spent a lot of time living in the UK so she may have been corrupted.


----------



## Janx (Jun 12, 2015)

Tonguez said:


> ironically you just highlighted another difference. Where I come from Hockey is played on grass with J-shaped sticks and a small hard ball.
> 
> The only game properly played on ice is Curling




oh yeah, that version of hockey.  That happened when Ole almost drowned playing their new game of Hockey on the pond, in the summer.  So he politely suggested they play on the lawn instead since he and Sven kept losing to Jesus's team.  Then they found that the sticks kept catching on the crab grass lawn, so they put a curved end on them.


----------



## billd91 (Jun 12, 2015)

Janx said:


> oh yeah, that version of hockey.  That happened when Ole almost drowned playing their new game of Hockey on the pond, in the summer.  So he politely suggested they play on the lawn instead since he and Sven kept losing to Jesus's team.  Then they found that the sticks kept catching on the crab grass lawn, so they put a curved end on them.




I... can't recall the last time I saw a Sven and Ole ethnic joke.


----------



## Ryujin (Jun 12, 2015)

Janx said:


> oh yeah, that version of hockey.  That happened when Ole almost drowned playing their new game of Hockey on the pond, in the summer.  So he politely suggested they play on the lawn instead since he and Sven kept losing to Jesus's team.  Then they found that the sticks kept catching on the crab grass lawn, so they put a curved end on them.




Actually, in Canada, curling is frequently referred to as "Eskimo Bowling."


----------



## tomBitonti (Jun 12, 2015)

Something I've always wondered about was the usage of "maths" in the British Isles.  (Not sure of the exact geography.)  For example, from Elementary, Moriarty has a line where she says, "You've done the maths," in reference to her daughter and that she cannot be Sherlock's.

The usage seems quite common, but it's not usual for folks in the United States.  We would probably say, "You've done the arithmetic."

Thx!

TomB


----------



## Morrus (Jun 12, 2015)

tomBitonti said:


> Something I've always wondered about was the usage of "maths" in the British Isles.  (Not sure of the exact geography.)  For example, from Elementary, Moriarty has a line where she says, "You've done the maths," in reference to her daughter and that she cannot be Sherlock's.
> 
> The usage seems quite common, but it's not usual for folks in the United States.  We would probably say, "You've done the arithmetic."




What's the question?  Your observation is correct; that is the term used over here.


----------



## Bullgrit (Jun 12, 2015)

> The usage seems quite common, but it's not usual for folks in the United States. We would probably say, "You've done the arithmetic."



Or "You've done the math." Singular; no "s".

Bullgrit


----------



## billd91 (Jun 12, 2015)

tomBitonti said:


> Something I've always wondered about was the usage of "maths" in the British Isles.  (Not sure of the exact geography.)  For example, from Elementary, Moriarty has a line where she says, "You've done the maths," in reference to her daughter and that she cannot be Sherlock's.




Eh. Both maths and math (as used in North America) are shortened from mathematics. The British usage just retains the s.


----------



## Janx (Jun 12, 2015)

billd91 said:


> I... can't recall the last time I saw a Sven and Ole ethnic joke.




Me and the other Minnesotan have probably heard the last Sven and Ole joke you heard.

Which hopefully, it's understood that I'm just teasing and not disparaging anybody.  At least in my versions, Sven and Ole are the founders of all sports   Which is why most of them are the same.


----------



## Janx (Jun 12, 2015)

billd91 said:


> Eh. Both maths and math (as used in North America) are shortened from mathematics. The British usage just retains the s.




some folks in Texas seem to be trying to adopt the brittish version of "Maths".  These are usually the same folks behind Common Core nonsense math to confuse kids and their parents and they insist on pronouncing comptroller with the "mpt" instead of as "controller" which is the correct way per my accounting professor.


----------



## Dog Moon (Jun 13, 2015)

Janx said:


> Me and the other Minnesotan have probably heard the last Sven and Ole joke you heard.
> 
> Which hopefully, it's understood that I'm just teasing and not disparaging anybody.  At least in my versions, Sven and Ole are the founders of all sports   Which is why most of them are the same.




I, uh, don't even know what a Sven and Ole joke is!


----------



## Tonguez (Jun 13, 2015)

Dog Moon said:


> I, uh, don't even know what a Sven and Ole joke is!




neither had I so I googled and it has its own wikipedia entry thus "_Ole and Lena (also Sven and Ole) are central characters in jokes by  Scandinavian Americans, particularly in the Upper Midwest region of the U.S., particularly in Minnesota_"

just another strange Americanism that the rest of us have no idea aboot


----------



## Tonguez (Jun 13, 2015)

Ryujin said:


> - You'll have to give me a definition on that (I was thinking of crumpets)
> 
> "





 

These muffins
 they're bread based so not cupcakes. Are these American Muffins as opposed to English Muffins?


----------



## Dog Moon (Jun 13, 2015)

Tonguez said:


> neither had I so I googled and it has its own wikipedia entry thus "_Ole and Lena (also Sven and Ole) are central characters in jokes by  Scandinavian Americans, particularly in the Upper Midwest region of the U.S., particularly in Minnesota_"
> 
> just another strange Americanism that the rest of us have no idea aboot




Yeah, but I LIVE in Minnesota!  Edit: And I have my entire 32 years  and 361 days of it.

And I've never heard of a Sven and Ole joke.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 13, 2015)

Hilariously, I'm a Louisianan living in Texas, and I have heard Sven & Ole jokes.

I mean, yeah- I'm an army brat-  I've lived in a lot of places, but nowhere that the "Norse" cultural jokes would have been prominent.

...and yet?

I don't remember who told me my first one, but I betcha it was my college buddy from South Dakota, with whom I threw the infamous "Negro Vikings" party...


----------



## Ryujin (Jun 13, 2015)

Tonguez said:


> View attachment 68838
> 
> These muffins
> they're bread based so not cupcakes. Are these American Muffins as opposed to English Muffins?




Those are muffins over here also.


----------



## Tonguez (Jun 13, 2015)

Ryujin said:


> Those are muffins over here also.




ah so its muffins and english muffins as opposed to muffins and crumpets? got it

last one, is there a difference between Bannock, fried bread and donuts?


----------



## Ryujin (Jun 13, 2015)

Tonguez said:


> ah so its muffins and english muffins as opposed to muffins and crumpets? got it
> 
> last one, is there a difference between Bannock, fried bread and donuts?




Well doughnuts/donuts are quite sweet. Some people wonder how a company like Krispy Kreme manages to fit a full cup of sugar, into a half a cup worth of doughnut. Bannock is a type of fried bread.

https://home.comcast.net/~osoono/ethnicdoughs/frybread/frybread.htm


----------



## Morrus (Jun 13, 2015)

Tonguez said:


> ah so its muffins and english muffins as opposed to muffins and crumpets? got it




I tried English Muffins in the US.  They're nothing like crumpets. Much breadier.


----------



## Ryujin (Jun 13, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I tried English Muffins in the US.  They're nothing like crumpets. Much breadier.




Depends on where you get them. Some are more 'bready' than others. The ones I prefer have a more spongy consistency.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 13, 2015)

Ryujin said:


> Depends on where you get them. Some are more 'bready' than others. The ones I prefer have a more spongy consistency.




No, they're a different thing.


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 13, 2015)

Tonguez said:


> Heres what I wonder
> 
> What are the American versions of



- Scones - served with coffee, my favorite with cinnamon
- Biscuits - served with gravy made from sausage
- Crumpets - that is something we think the tea drinkers of the world have with their tea
- Muffins - a cake like goodie made a vari3ety of ways such as, but not limited to: made of corn bread or made with cinnamin and rasins or blueberries or lemon and poppy seeds or cream cheese and oranges, or . . . . .
- Jam (not Jelly which is different) a fruit preserve made with chunks of fruit inside of it. My favorites are strawberry or plumbs.
- Mince pies - I know of these, but not entirely sure so I looked it up. But first this: Klondike cat was always after savoi fair to make mince meat out of that mouse.
 - - I looked it up and I would say that Mince meat pies look like something I would greatly enjoy. 
- cornish pasties - Is tht made fron cornish hens?
- battered sausage on a stick (we call it a hotdog) sounds like a corn dog.



> and do Americans eat sausage rolls?



What are those?


----------



## Morrus (Jun 13, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> What are those?




Heaven.  Especially served hot.


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 13, 2015)

Dog Moon said:


> Yeah, but I LIVE in Minnesota!  Edit: And I have my entire 32 years  and 361 days of it.
> 
> And I've never heard of a Sven and Ole joke.



seriously? Is that even possible??


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 13, 2015)

Tonguez said:


> The only game properly played on ice is Curling



 I thought curling was what you did with a barbell?


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 13, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Heaven.  Especially served hot.




I was hungry before I saw that, now my mouth is salivating like a starved homeless man looking at a roast 1 foot in front of him.


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 13, 2015)

So, a slight change in topic while keeping to the thread;

Hospital and Surgeon vs The Hospital and The doctor

It almost seems Hospital and Surgeon are proper nouns with out the "The" added before them as normal nouns. Is that correct? Do Brits use these terms?


----------



## Morrus (Jun 13, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> So, a slight change in topic while keeping to the thread;
> 
> Hospital and Surgeon vs The Hospital and The doctor
> 
> It almost seems Hospital and Surgeon are proper nouns with out the "The" added before them as normal nouns. Is that correct? Do Brits use these terms?




I'm not sure I understand the question.  Are you asking whether we say "I'm going to hospital?" as opposed to "I'm going to the hospital?"

Yes, we do.  Like "I'm going to school" or "I'm going to jail", the definite article is not spoken when referring to it as a general state.  When referring to the actual specific location, though, we say "the prison" and "the school" and "the hospital". "I applied for a cleaning job at the hospital" is correct, as is "he has been contracted to do some repairs to the prison roof".

You do the same thing as us with school, college, jail, and other words.  You have a special exception for hospital, though.  We don't.

We don't say "I'm going to doctor" though.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 13, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Heaven.  Especially served hot.




Many cultures have some kind of dish that is essentially meat in a baked bread.  

My favorite take, these days, is the kolache- Texas has a large number of Czech descendants, so those things are everywhere.  Favorite type of kolache: spiced sausage with Swiss cheese and sauerkraut, especially the ones from The Czech Stop in West, Texas, right off of I-35, just north of Waco.

Amusingly, because Texas is surprisingly diverse in demographics, you're more likely to get your kolaches* from Mexicans, Vietnamese or Korean bakers than Czechs in most of the major cities.  









* and almost every other ethnic food as well: those groups- especially the Mexicans- are found cooking in almost every kitchen around.  Because of this, I've been saying for years that the next great fusion chef or cuisine is going to come out of one of Texas' cities.


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 13, 2015)

Do you say going to surgeon?


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 13, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> Do you say going to surgeon?




That SO sounds like verbing a noun!


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 13, 2015)

Re: verbing a noun:

would that be like friending someone on facebook?


----------



## Morrus (Jun 13, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> Do you say going to surgeon?




No.  We will say "going into surgery", though.  Surgery being the state, not the action.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 13, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> Re: verbing a noun:
> 
> would that be like friending someone on facebook?




Table the motion. Shelve that idea. Action that plan!


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 13, 2015)

Tangentially, not an observation of dialect, but of culture...I just stumbled on this bit excerpted from a piece about a Danish author who focused on/wrote about/codified the Danish cultural trope of Jante Law:



> These are the rules of Jante Law, the social norms one should apparently be aware of if one is planning a move to the north:
> 
> You shall not believe that you are someone.
> You shall not believe that you are as good as we are.
> ...


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 13, 2015)

Morrus said:


> No.  We will say "going into surgery", though.  Surgery being the state, not the action.




Understood, especially since I have been in surgery 9 times.


----------



## billd91 (Jun 13, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> I thought curling was what you did with a barbell?




Heck no, when I curled in high school, it was with a 40-odd pound granite rock.


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 13, 2015)

When I curled in High school it was with barbell or dumbbells. 

*I    A M     S O     C O N F U Z Z Z E D ! ! !* ​


----------



## Olgar Shiverstone (Jun 14, 2015)

Am I the only one who curls with a curling iron?


----------



## Dog Moon (Jun 14, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> seriously? Is that even possible??




Apparently yes, yes it is.


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## Tonguez (Jun 15, 2015)

Okay next round Roads - we drive on the road, part of a network of roadways and we walk on footpaths (which are paved with concrete pavement). Most houses also have their own driveway where the family car, ute, van or SVU is parked (sometimes in a carport or even in its own garage) if you don't have a driveway then you are forced to park on the 'street', against the curb but not of the grass verge.

What do you do?

Also if Motorways and Freeways are the same thing then what is an Expressway and a Parkway?


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 15, 2015)

a bit of clarification of some of what is mentioned above:

Freeway is the same as the interstate highway and by definition of an expressway of limited access it could either mean a us highway or the freeway, where the freeway /interstate is accessed at on and off ramp and are non stop with no lights (except when there is an accident or construction or something) and the US highway is accessed at access points that require you, most of the time, to stop or sometimes you have to stop at an actual stop light. Some times you have on/off ramps at a US highway.

US 63 and I 70 for these two examples for the above descriptions. I am going to on a limb and ask if by expressway you meant the interstate due to the 'express' movement of traffic.


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## Morrus (Jun 15, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> a bit of clarification of some of what is mentioned above:
> 
> Freeway is the same as the interstate highway and by definition of an expressway of limited access it could either mean a us highway or the freeway, where the freeway /interstate is accessed at on and off ramp and are non stop with no lights (except when there is an accident or construction or something) and the US highway is accessed at access points that require you, most of the time, to stop or sometimes you have to stop at an actual stop light. Some times you have on/off ramps at a US highway.
> 
> US 63 and I 70 for these two examples for the above descriptions. I am going to on a limb and ask if by expressway you meant the interstate due to the 'express' movement of traffic.




You've just defined a U.S.-specific term using a bunch of other US-specifics terms. "Highway" is no clearer than "freeway". And "US 63" means as much to me as I suspect "the M27" means to you. The result has not been clarification.


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 15, 2015)

Hey! isn't it at 3 am there ?!? Sorry. Let me just ask you to ignore it untill I return on my tomorrow, please.


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## Morrus (Jun 15, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> Hey! isn't it at 3 am there ?!? Sorry. Let me just ask you to ignore it untill I return on my tomorrow, please.




Don't worry about it! It wasn't my question - I was just making a trivial observation about the reply. I have no desire to learn anything about road naming conventions in the US.


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 15, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Don't worry about it! It wasn't my question - I was just making a trivial observation about the reply. I have no desire to learn anything about road naming conventions in the US.



Oh. OK then. I do understand the M27 is a major roadway. I am curious what the equivalent is.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 15, 2015)

Is tea time a real (modern) thing for the English?

When I spent a week in Sweden, I learned fika is a real (modern) practice. In the US, we might have coffee and doughnuts in a meeting, (especially if first thing in the morning), but that is not an assumption, nor does the practice have a name (other than, "we'll have coffee and doughnuts in the conference room".)

Is "continental breakfast" a term known/used in Europe?

Bullgrit


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## Morrus (Jun 15, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> Is tea time a real (modern) thing for the English?




It's one of many names for the evening meal, usually used by those who have their main meal at lunch time.  I don't use the term myself.



> Is "continental breakfast" a term known/used in Europe?




It's known in the UK; we invented the term. At least the term exists - I don't know if it means the same thing to us that it does to you. It refers to the British term "the continent" as being mainland Europe, as opposed to Britain.  Dates back a long time. 

It means a mainland Europe (specifically Mediterranean) style breakfast. On the continent, I assume they just say "breakfast" in French, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch or whatever.

Bunch of interesting info on the etymology of the term here:  http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/37939/origin-of-continental-breakfast


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## pedr (Jun 16, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Table the motion. Shelve that idea. Action that plan!




Of course "to table (a motion, etc)" means exactly the opposite thing in British English (introduce for discussion) as in American English (put off discussion to another date, or indefinitely).

On roads, linguistic difficulties are tied up with parallel development of similar things, resulting in different names and in different rules for similar arrangements. So a Brit understands "motorway" and includes in that meaning the restrictions - no pedestrians or pedal cycles; no stopping or turning around; limited, numbered entrance/exit points often many miles apart; segregated lanes for each direction (a "dual carriageway") etc. I expect that in different parts of the US the rules differ - and that the language used locally may too. 

Terms like Parkway (used in the name of a non-motorway road here in Sheffield), by-pass (a newer road built to reduce traffic travelling along the old road through a town centre), etc are likely to develop naturally, unlike motorway, with its particular legal definition, or Interstate, which presumably has a strong historical meaning/significance, even if driving on Interstate highways in different parts of the US may feel different.


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## Janx (Jun 16, 2015)

Tonguez said:


> neither had I so I googled and it has its own wikipedia entry thus "_Ole and Lena (also Sven and Ole) are central characters in jokes by  Scandinavian Americans, particularly in the Upper Midwest region of the U.S., particularly in Minnesota_"
> 
> just another strange Americanism that the rest of us have no idea aboot




which is why I worked Sven and Ole into the conversation because it's a cultural thing that not everybody's heard of.

As to why DogMoon hasn't heard Sven and Ole jokes, I got no clue.  What part of Minnesota are you from?  I grew up in the northern half of the state.  I imagine folks in the Twin Cities might be too urbanized or very well racially mixed to tell those jokes.  Farther up north, it was just us white folks telling jokes making fun of us white folks or people from Wisconsin.


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## Ryujin (Jun 16, 2015)

Janx said:


> which is why I worked Sven and Ole into the conversation because it's a cultural thing that not everybody's heard of.
> 
> As to why DogMoon hasn't heard Sven and Ole jokes, I got no clue.  What part of Minnesota are you from?  I grew up in the northern half of the state.  I imagine folks in the Twin Cities might be too urbanized or very well racially mixed to tell those jokes.  Farther up north, it was just us white folks telling jokes making fun of us white folks or people from Wisconsin.




This is the only place that I know Sven and Ole from:

[video=youtube;3CjcfEQ77fA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CjcfEQ77fA[/video]


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## Janx (Jun 16, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I'm not sure I understand the question.  Are you asking whether we say "I'm going to hospital?" as opposed to "I'm going to the hospital?"
> 
> Yes, we do.  Like "I'm going to school" or "I'm going to jail", the definite article is not spoken when referring to it as a general state.  When referring to the actual specific location, though, we say "the prison" and "the school" and "the hospital". "I applied for a cleaning job at the hospital" is correct, as is "he has been contracted to do some repairs to the prison roof".
> 
> ...




You Europeans also say "I'm going to University" which is a little wierd to us americans.

We say "I'm going to college"  or "He's going to the University of Wisconsin"

college is the general term (and not all colleges are Universities).  University is just part of the name of the college. Like University of Texas or University of Houston. 2 very different schools.  Which are not the same as Texas A&M or Baylor.


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## Morrus (Jun 16, 2015)

Janx said:


> You Europeans also say "I'm going to University" which is a little wierd to us americans.
> 
> We say "I'm going to college"  or "He's going to the University of Wisconsin"




Yup. Though I don't know how most of Europe says it, as they have their own languages. You're really talking about the UK and English there.

One thing worth noting is that if you say "European", people in the UK don't imagine you're referring to them.  That implies the continental mainland to us - which is very much a "somewhere else".  While you're right in that the UK is technically part of the same continent, when I say "American" I don't mean Canadians, either.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 16, 2015)

> > Is "continental breakfast" a term known/used in Europe?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Here, a continental breakfast is breads and pastries for breakfast. As opposed to an American breakfast which is eggs and meat. And a Southern breakfast would be an American breakfast plus grits, biscuits, and gravy.

Bullgrit


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## Umbran (Jun 16, 2015)

Janx said:


> University is just part of the name of the college.




While there is no official control on this - the typical difference between a college and a University in the US is that the University has full undergraduate and graduate education, while a College is typically undergraduate-focused, and often has a narrower focus of programs than a University.

In several instances, a University is composed of several Colleges.


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## pedr (Jun 16, 2015)

The 'origin of the term' bit in the US section of the "College" entry on Wikipedia is interesting - while the first US higher education institutions were small and their founders compared them to the constituent colleges of the two English Universities they knew of (and were graduates of) as they were places of residence, eating together, individual tuition, etc rather than formal and bureaucratic (and didn't teach higher degrees in theology and medicine) the expansion of higher education in the UK came by 19th and early 20th century institutions receiving University status, and these tended not to have an Oxbridge-style collegiate structure so the word "college" wasn't used except internally within Oxford, Cambridge and a handful of others.

And to be precise, in the UK the word "university" generally designates an institution which awards its own degrees while a college is part of a larger institution with degree-awarding powers. It seems that the early US colleges were given these powers in their own right so the word doesn't carry that distinctive meaning in the US.


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## Morrus (Jun 16, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> Here, a continental breakfast is breads and pastries for breakfast. As opposed to an American breakfast which is eggs and meat. And a Southern breakfast would be an American breakfast plus grits, biscuits, and gravy.
> 
> Bullgrit




That entire last sentence is largely incomprehensible to me. What on earth are "grits"?  (The name sounds hideous!) And I'm given to understand biscuits are an entirely different thing over there, too (what you call cookies we call biscuits, and what you call biscuits I haven't the faintest idea!) You'll probably tell me gravy is something different there, too, from the way things are going! I would put gravy on roast beef for Sunday lunch.  So the breakfast image you've just conjured up for me sounds like cookies covered in beef gravy with a side of the stuff they put down on icy roads.

Here's what you've conjured in my mind:








I'm assuming that isn't the actual meal, though.


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## Morrus (Jun 16, 2015)

pedr said:


> And to be precise, in the UK the word "university" generally designates an institution which awards its own degrees while a college is part of a larger institution with degree-awarding powers.




Or a sixth form, or A-Level giving place, of course. Do they still have A Levels?


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## pedr (Jun 16, 2015)

Yes I wasn't precise enough - college has lots of meanings as a rather generic word for "educational institution" and in general usage in England probably refers most often to a Further Education college which provides education for 16-18 year olds (US grades 11 & 12, English years 12 & 13) and training and education courses as part of the wonderful variety of UK qualification and training frameworks. Sometimes compared with US Community Colleges, but I'm sure there are significant differences. 

The biggest, of course, is that until relatively recently formal qualifications at 16 were highly regarded as preparation for work or further study, with CSEs providing a basis for training in various trades or simple clerical work and O-Levels having a real meaning (in the economy of the mid-20th Century, at least). Leaving school at 16 with significant qualifications was a real possibility. Only certain schools offered education to 16-18 year olds and as the economy shifted to needing far more workers with more advanced qualifications, "sixth form colleges" developed. What's the school leaving age in the US? (Perhaps it varies from state to state?) It's only in the last few years that 16-18 year olds are expected to be receiving some kind of formal education and training - and for many that will be in apprenticeships or other work-based learning. 

(Most of this not really responding to Morrus, though the direct answer is Yes, A-Levels still exist and are the primary post-16 qualification for those planning to go to university. There are lots of alternative or complementary qualifications, though, with different focuses.)


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## Bullgrit (Jun 16, 2015)

American biscuits:









Grits:









Breakfast gravies:
Sawmill gravy (white, thick):




Red eye gravy (red-brown, thin):





As we would say, "This food will put hair on your chest."

Bullgrit


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## Morrus (Jun 16, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> As we would say, "This food will put hair on your chest."




Wow.  So _every single word_ meant something different! It was an entirely different sentence in each dialect!


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## pedr (Jun 16, 2015)

I'm trying to think of a meat-flavoured white sauce in English cooking and not recalling one, though it's a sensible concoction! 

I've never tasted an American biscuit and think of it like a savoury scone - is that accurate? 

Grits aren't part of English cooking as maize isn't the staple grain - I guess it's like eating a thick porridge?


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## nerfherder (Jun 16, 2015)

Umbran said:


> In several instances, a University is composed of several Colleges.




Similarly, the University of London is composed several Colleges - e.g. Imperial College, Kings College, University College.

So, I would say that I was going to college, but most of my friends, going to other establishments around the country, would say that they were going to university.


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## Umbran (Jun 16, 2015)

Morrus said:


> What on earth are "grits"?




A cornmeal porridge, like a loose, creamy polenta.  While polenta is usually made with standard cornmeal, grits are traditionally made from hominy, which is corn treated with lye.  Grits can be a sweet or savory dish.



> And I'm given to understand biscuits are an entirely different thing over there, too (what you call cookies we call biscuits, and what you call biscuits I haven't the faintest idea!)




What we call biscuits are a usually a quickbread (meaning, chemically leavened, rather than yeast-leavened), small loaf, firm and browned crust with a softer (occasionally flakey) interior.  Their closest British analog is likely a savory scone.



> You'll probably tell me gravy is something different there, too, from the way things are going! I would put gravy on roast beef for Sunday lunch.




The gravy he's talking about is... similar.  For your roast beef gravy, you'd take the roast drippings to make a roux, and use that to thicken some broth.

For sausage gravy, you'd use drippings from browning up ground pork sausage rather than roast drippings.  You'd add some cream and/or milk instead of broth, and then put some of the ground sausage back into the gravy, and pour it over a split (bread) biscuit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biscuits_and_gravy


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## Bullgrit (Jun 16, 2015)

I've heard of scones, and I'm sure I've seen one sometime in my life, but I can't remember or imagine right now what they look like.

Bullgrit


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## Umbran (Jun 16, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> I've heard of scones, and I'm sure I've seen one sometime in my life, but I can't remember or imagine right now what they look like.




I have never been to England to have a scone.  However, I've made scones at home pretty frequently.  They actually are very similar to biscuits.


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## Janx (Jun 16, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Yup. Though I don't know how most of Europe says it, as they have their own languages. You're really talking about the UK and English there.
> 
> One thing worth noting is that if you say "European", people in the UK don't imagine you're referring to them.  That implies the continental mainland to us - which is very much a "somewhere else".  While you're right in that the UK is technically part of the same continent, when I say "American" I don't mean Canadians, either.




ah yes, good point.  Though I've heard europeans (not from those islandy bits like you) in english, use the same phrasing.  So however they talk, seems to translate to "I am going to University next fall"

Here's a different one from Indians, that may be influenced by the british, so maybe you'll know why:

if you work on a project with Indians, eventually one of them will say something like "I have a few doubts"

Which really means in American English "I have a few questions"

For some reason, they use the word "doubt" when to us, they should be saying "question".  "Doubt" to an american signifies a lack of confidence, rather than a query in need of an answer.  I suspect it lies in the multi-meaning usage of the word "doubt" and "question" in some context (surely, if you had questions about how to do something, you lacked confidence in the doing of that thing).  Of if your slacker buddy promises to wake up early and get that task done for you, you might say "I doubt it" or just as easily say "I question the likelyhood of that happening"

So anyways, is that just an Indian quirk of translation or is it part of British speech as well?


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## Morrus (Jun 16, 2015)

Janx said:


> ah yes, good point.  Though I've heard europeans (not from those islandy bits like you) in english, use the same phrasing.  So however they talk, seems to translate to "I am going to University next fall"
> 
> Here's a different one from Indians, that may be influenced by the brittish, so maybe you'll know why:
> 
> ...




Erm. Dunno. I can imagine both being used, but for the life of me now can't remember which I use.


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## billd91 (Jun 16, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> I've heard of scones, and I'm sure I've seen one sometime in my life, but I can't remember or imagine right now what they look like.
> 
> Bullgrit




Here's what a google search gives me on scone images: Scones

They're pretty common in the grocery store bakeries around Wisconsin, usually a bit sweeter than American biscuit, often with some kind of fruit like cranberries. A friend of mine makes a wicked heath bar and whipped cream scone.


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## Janx (Jun 16, 2015)

Umbran said:


> I have never been to England to have a scone.  However, I've made scones at home pretty frequently.  They actually are very similar to biscuits.




they are triangle shaped when you buy them at Starbucks or other places in the US (that may or may not be the Official British Form Factor for Scones)

biscuits are roundish moundish things.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 16, 2015)

Coincidentally, my mother is coming home today from a trip ("vacation" in American English, "holiday" in British English?) to the UK. I know she explored some of England and Scotland -- she sent me a pic of Stonehenge. I can't wait to hear what she saw and learned.

She has also been (in previous years) to Italy and South Korea -- and thinking of this brings up another question, for our Asian folks around here: "South Korean" or "Korean"?

Bullgrit


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## Bullgrit (Jun 16, 2015)

> Here's what a google search gives me on scone images: Scones



Yeah, I went and looked them up on Google, too. But I was trying to stay in the spirit of the OP: "...probably could look up but never did, and feel like getting a quick explanation from your friends at EN World."

Bullgrit


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## Umbran (Jun 16, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Wow.  So _every single word_ meant something different! It was an entirely different sentence in each dialect!




In a culinary sense, the gravy is really just a gravy - some meat-related drippings or liquid, thickened.  Even in England, it isn't like the only gravy is beef gravy, is it?  You have gravies associated with other meats, right?  I mean, here, we have beef gravy, turkey gravy, chicken gravy, et al.

Replace the broth with coffee, and you get a red-eye gravy.  Use sausage-drippings and cream, you get a sausage gravy.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 16, 2015)

Umbran said:
			
		

> Replace the broth with coffee, and you get a red-eye gravy.



Wait, what? Coffee is in red eye gravy? I like red eye, I hate coffee -- and I never tasted anything coffee-ish about red eye gravy. Now I need to look this up.

Bullgrit


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 16, 2015)

From the Wiki:


> Red-eye gravy is a thin sauce often seen in the cuisine of the Southern United States and associated with the country ham of that region. Other names for this sauce include poor man's gravy, bird-eye gravy, bottom sop and red ham gravy. The gravy is made from the drippings of pan-fried (or sometimes baked) sausage, country ham, bacon, or other pork, sometimes mixed with black coffee. The same drippings, when mixed with flour, make the flavoring for Sawmill gravy. Red-eye gravy is often served over ham, cornbread, fried potatoes, grits, or North American bread biscuits.




Never had it myself, at least, not knowingly.


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## nerfherder (Jun 16, 2015)

Janx said:


> they are triangle shaped when you buy them at Starbucks or other places in the US (that may or may not be the Official Brittish Form Factor for Scones)



No, British scones are...


> roundish moundish things.




Coincidentally, I had afternoon tea on Saturday, and the scones were delicious


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## Rune (Jun 16, 2015)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> From the Wiki:
> 
> 
> Never had it myself, at least, not knowingly.




You would know it. Unlike most gravies, red eye gravy is typically not thickened. (That's why it's so good over grits!)


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## nerfherder (Jun 16, 2015)

Janx said:


> if you work on a project with Indians, eventually one of them will say something like "I have a few doubts"



Can't say I remember any of our Indian contractors saying that, so I can't help you.  The one that sticks in my mind is "do the needful" - any idea where that comes from?


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## Rune (Jun 16, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> Wait, what? Coffee is in red eye gravy? I like red eye, I hate coffee -- and I never tasted anything coffee-ish about red eye gravy. Now I need to look this up.
> 
> Bullgrit




Not everyone makes it with coffee. But if you do, it still isn't supposed to overpower the pork flavor.


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## Morrus (Jun 16, 2015)

Janx said:


> brittish




By the way, you really need to start spelling that word correctly.  For better or for worse, it's starting to grate on me. It's a bit like repeatedly getting someone's name wrong.


----------



## billd91 (Jun 16, 2015)

Morrus said:


> By the way, you really need to start spelling that word correctly.  For better or for worse, it's starting to grate on me.




I believe the correct spelling is "pommy bastard". At least, that's what Bruce from the Philosophy Department at Woolloomooloo University tells me.


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## Rune (Jun 16, 2015)

On the subject of red eye gravy, traditionally it is made with country ham drippings. Country ham is quite a bit saltier than the city ham most folk are used to (even sugar cures are over 50% salt). A lot of the flavor of red eye gravy is derived from that. 

Of course, bacon is also pretty salty.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 16, 2015)

Bruce is at Woolloomooloo COLLEGE!  He says otherwise, he's putting on airs.  He got denied the post at Woolloomooloo University.


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## Umbran (Jun 16, 2015)

nerfherder said:


> No, British scones are...




I don't think the shape is telling.  I know here in the US, they frequently come both round and triangular.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 16, 2015)

Here in the US, we have all kinds of ethnic and national restaurants including British. I'm not even talking about the ones located and run within a local ethnic/national enclave, but eateries -- some are chain franchises -- in common areas. I never really thought about it before, but I really don't know if other nations have such things. Are there Chinese restaurants in France, Ethiopian in Germany, Mexican in Japan, etc. Again, I'm not talking about places that only those ethnicities/nationalities patronize -- I would say surely there are such at least for immigrants. But there are many restaurants here that we may go to without even thinking of it as "Let's have Chinese food tonight"; we'd just say, "Hey, let's go to PF Chang's* tonight." Or I'd pick up some Moe's* on the way home without a thought of burritos being a Mexican dish.

When I was in Sweden, my coworkers took me to an "American-style" restaurant, and I found it odd. It didn't really feel "American" at all other than it served burgers and french fries. It didn't even look American -- heck, the building was probably 100 years old. On my plate was a sauce of some kind that I enjoyed dipping my fries in. When I asked what it was, my Swedish coworkers said it was supposed to be "American dressing." I told them I had never seen it before, and could even compare it to any dressing I'd tasted before.

So we Americans have "English restaurants", do you have "American restaurants"?

* I know some people think chain restaurant's are crap, and the food they serve isn't "real" Chinese or Mexican or what-have-you. I'm just using chain names for examples because most will recognize the names and what they serve. Yes, we have many good, non-chain ethnic/national restaurants, but the fact that they are one-store-local kind of places, no one outside that town would recognize the name.

Bullgrit


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 16, 2015)

Yep.

When I went to Russia visiting Moscow & St. Petersburg a while back, not only did I see American chains, I saw local chains as well.  And some of them were "ethnic".

Most ethnic places, however, were single location restaurants.  And what I saw depended on where I was.  I saw a LOT of Japanese/sushi places, especially around hotels, trendy malls and tourist locations, for example. Off the beaten path, however?  Not so much.

More recently, my folks went to Hungary and Germany, and they, too, saw ethnic eateries.  Again, mostly single locations, not chains.


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## Bullgrit (Jun 16, 2015)

For the record, I know McDonald's, Subway, Pizza Hut, etc. are ubiquitous throughout the world. With my question, I was thinking of places other than that. I wonder, though, do people consider McDonald's and Subway and Pizza Hut as "American"?

Bullgrit


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## Janx (Jun 16, 2015)

Morrus said:


> By the way, you really need to start spelling that word correctly.  For better or for worse, it's starting to grate on me. It's a bit like repeatedly getting someone's name wrong.




sorry, but like the guy not being happy with the spelling of Uwe Boll, can you help out and tell me how you'd like it spelt?


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 16, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> For the record, I know McDonald's, Subway, Pizza Hut, etc. are ubiquitous throughout the world. With my question, I was thinking of places other than that. I wonder, though, do people consider McDonald's and Subway and Pizza Hut as "American"?
> 
> Bullgrit



Very much so.


----------



## Janx (Jun 16, 2015)

Umbran said:


> I don't think the shape is telling.  I know here in the US, they frequently come both round and triangular.




of course, do we know we're actually eating scones or simply something they called a scone?

Maybe they shouldn't be allowed to sell us cultural food unless a guy from that culture makes it.  It's the only way to be sure our scones are correct.


----------



## Bullgrit (Jun 16, 2015)

> Very much so.



I know it sounds like a naive question, on the face of it. But I know some such products get changed so much to match their local market that I wondered if they had been somewhat adopted as multi-cultural or neutral-cultural.

But then many people consider Toyota and Honda as Japanese? 

Bullgrit


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 16, 2015)

Janx said:


> of course, do we know we're actually eating scones or simply something they called a scone?
> 
> Maybe they shouldn't be allowed to sell us cultural food unless a guy from that culture makes it.  It's the only way to be sure our scones are correct.




That would SO not fly in Texas- almost all the cooks in commercial kitchens around here these days are Mexicans!

There was a place near me called Ying's Jalapeño Grill.  They had a complete Mexican and complete Chinese menu- all of it good.  Now, admittedly, the Chinese they were making was the Americanized stuff, but still.

Even in places where you could get authentic Japanese or Chinese dishes (on a separate menu), the cook staff were usually not Asians of any kind.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 16, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> But then many people consider Toyota and Honda as Japanese?




They are.  At least, they're at least as Japanese as a BMW is German or a Chrysler is American...


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## Bullgrit (Jun 16, 2015)

> They are. At least, they're at least as Japanese as a BMW is German or a Chrysler is American.



Yeah, in that the corporation headquarters are located in those countries. But the entire vehicle we drive in America is designed for American drivers, built with American parts, and assembled by Americans, in factories located in America. I don't think we think of them as "foreign" cars as much as we used to, say 20+ years ago. I'd bet if you asked some younger drivers nowadays, the concept of foreign vs. domestic cars doesn't mean as much (if at all) to them.

Bullgrit


----------



## tomBitonti (Jun 16, 2015)

I've seen (and had) Japanese and Indian food all over (England, Nice, Rome, Beijing).  Indian food in London is very good (but that's not surprising, I'd say).

There are McDonalds and Pizza Hut in China, at least, in the big cities.  They are a lot nicer there than here in the USA, and the food offerings and flavors are quite a bit different.  They are also quite pricy for locals.

Curiously, Pizza Hut is a high end restaurant in China.  Also, a good place to take a date.  The menu there has Pizza, of course, but a lot else, including lots of Chinese dishes, and including steak.  And you can get warm corn juice (its better than it sounds, but a bit much to drink a whole glass.)

Thx!

TomB


----------



## Janx (Jun 16, 2015)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> That would SO not fly in Texas- almost all the cooks in commercial kitchens around here these days are Mexicans!
> 
> There was a place near me called Ying's Jalapeño Grill.  They had a complete Mexican and complete Chinese menu- all of it good.  Now, admittedly, the Chinese they were making was the Americanized stuff, but still.
> 
> Even in places where you could get authentic Japanese or Chinese dishes (on a separate menu), the cook staff were usually not Asians of any kind.




That's just wrong.   We should need to import people from Morrus' land to cook our scones, serve our tea and to correct our spelling.


----------



## Umbran (Jun 16, 2015)

Janx said:


> Maybe they shouldn't be allowed to sell us cultural food unless a guy from that culture makes it.  It's the only way to be sure our scones are correct.




The best Latin bakery in the Mission District of San Francisco is owned and run by a Chinese gentleman.  And Indian restaurants are very often owned and operated by folks from India... but still serve things not actually served in India.

Who makes the food does to speak to its authenticity.


----------



## Umbran (Jun 16, 2015)

Janx said:


> That's just wrong.   We should need to import people from Morrus' land to cook our scones, serve our tea and to correct our spelling.




We did.  Several hundred years ago, at least.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 16, 2015)

Janx said:


> sorry, but like the guy not being happy with the spelling of Uwe Boll, can you help out and tell me how you'd like it spelt?




The correct way.  C'mon, man, the spelling of a major nationality isn't obscure.  Peoples' nationalities and cultures are important to them; the least you can do is make the effort to spell them correctly. It's a really basic level of respect. I'm not asking too much, am I - you're making me feel like something of an ogre for even asking it!


----------



## Morrus (Jun 16, 2015)

Bullgrit said:


> Are there Chinese restaurants in France, Ethiopian in Germany, Mexican in Japan, etc.




Of course. At least, certainly in every Western country, and every European country.  I've been to Japan, but I don't recall, sadly.



> So we Americans have "English restaurants", do you have "American restaurants"?




Yeah. You get "Italian American" themed places, or "50s America Diner" themed places, or random burger joints designed to look American.  From my experiences in the US, they're not too far off.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 16, 2015)

On Pizza:

Pizzerias are one of the most common kinds of restaurants in the USA, and are one of the safes restaurant types to open.  As such, there are lots of pizzerias out there owned and operated by ethnicities other than you'd expect...a higher percentage than is found in other ethnic restaurant types.

For instance, I know of at least 2 (very good) Romanian-owned pizzerias where I am, and one of the places near me is owned by Indians.  They even serve pizzas with things like Tandoori and Paneer on them.


----------



## Olgar Shiverstone (Jun 16, 2015)

Yeah, when I lived in New Jersey the best Italian restaurant near me was run by Ukrainians.

Honestly, though, I think calling most Chinese, Mexican, Italian, or (name your origin) restaurants by those names in the US is disingenuous.  If you called them Chinese-American, Tex-Mex, Italian-American, etc you'd be much more on target -- many of those cuisines have evolved into uniquely American varieties that aren't recognized in their reputed countries of origin.

I'm interested in what you'd find in an "English" restaurant in the US. "Authentic" as in "serves horribly bland food with awful service"? No offense to my British friends here, but Indian restaurants and one family-run place on Salisbury Plain aside, that describes my experiences with English restaurants in my few visits to the UK -- y'all really need tipping to improve the quality of product.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 16, 2015)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> I'm interested in what you'd find in an "English" restaurant in the US. "




I don't even know what one would be. I'd be fascinated to visit an English restaurant elsewhere.  The closest I've been to is a tea room at the bottom of the Spanish Steps in Rome, which charges an arm and a leg for an average cup of tea and a piece of cake.



> Authentic" as in "serves horribly bland food with awful service"?




If it's any comfort, I spend Gen Con mainly on the toilet! That cuisine does not agree with me! 

 I guess "bland" and "awful" are relative.  I know some truly world class places to eat near me. If you're ever here, I'd enjoy taking you to them!

I als know some truly awful places. Which would be amusing, too!


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 16, 2015)

British

 [MENTION=8835]Janx[/MENTION], do you see the spelling there? I am going to simply ask you to fix it as a fellow En Worlder. Please. Thank you.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 16, 2015)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> Yeah, when I lived in New Jersey the best Italian restaurant near me was run by Ukrainians.



One of the luxury suites at the now-demolished Texas Stadium was catered by an Italian restaurant owned and operated by Iran...errrrr..._Persians_.

Best damn garlic bread ever.


> Honestly, though, I think calling most Chinese, Mexican, Italian, or (name your origin) restaurants by those names in the US is disingenuous.  If you called them Chinese-American, Tex-Mex, Italian-American, etc you'd be much more on target -- many of those cuisines have evolved into uniquely American varieties that aren't recognized in their reputed countries of origin.




Some places are that honest, but most just use the simplified appellation, even if inaccurate.  But if you are a culinary adventurer, you can sort that all out.  I know which Mexican restaurants near me are Tex-Mex, Cali-Mex, northern Mexican, coastal Mexican, etc.


----------



## Dog Moon (Jun 16, 2015)

Janx said:


> which is why I worked Sven and Ole into the conversation because it's a cultural thing that not everybody's heard of.
> 
> As to why DogMoon hasn't heard Sven and Ole jokes, I got no clue.  What part of Minnesota are you from?  I grew up in the northern half of the state.  I imagine folks in the Twin Cities might be too urbanized or very well racially mixed to tell those jokes.  Farther up north, it was just us white folks telling jokes making fun of us white folks or people from Wisconsin.




Yep, from the Twin Cities area.  Been here since I've been like 2 years old.  Suppose that could be the case.


----------



## Olgar Shiverstone (Jun 16, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I know some truly world class places to eat near me.




Well, if you know of any good recommendations near the West End, I think I'm going to be back in January.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 16, 2015)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> Well, if you know of any good recommendations near the West End, I think I'm going to be back in January.




That's not near me.  I don't live in London! I'm not familiar with the city, I'm afraid. But I do know that London has some internationally renowned restaurants.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 16, 2015)

Follow your nose- it ALWAYS knows!


----------



## Dog Moon (Jun 16, 2015)

Morrus said:


> The correct way.  C'mon, man, the spelling of a major nationality isn't obscure.  Peoples' nationalities and cultures are important to them; the least you can do is make the effort to spell them correctly. It's a really basic level of respect. I'm not asking too much, am I?




Hey, we Amairykyns can spell things any way we want to and are not going to let any Brytysh people tell us otherwise!


----------



## Olgar Shiverstone (Jun 17, 2015)

Morrus said:


> That's not near me.  I don't live in London! I'm not familiar with the city, I'm afraid. But I do know that London has some internationally renowned restaurants.




Ah, well, I was speculating that the Intrawebs might have been in London.


----------



## billd91 (Jun 17, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Sorry to hear you had a bad experience. If it's any comfort, that's exactly how I'd describe American food! I spend Gen Con mainly on the toilet!
> 
> I guess "bland" and "awful" are relative.  I know some truly world class places to eat near me. If you're ever here, I'd enjoy taking you to them!




It's true that food in the UK has improved substantially since I visited in 1989 (the food at the University of Exeter could best be described as horrifying), even the British Rail sandwiches are reasonably decent now. But I get a pretty good chuckle out of a Briton complaining about food anywhere else on the globe.


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 17, 2015)

what is a rail sandwich? It sounds rather good.


----------



## sabrinathecat (Jun 17, 2015)

"Oh, that has got to hurt: someone from England complaining that your food is 'bland'."
--John Oliver (Actually, Ramsey is from Scotland, but it was John Oliver's joke, and I don't think many other Americans would have got the difference.)

Speaking of John Oliver, can someone please translate the Trinidad phrases he used to address the people in "The Mittens of Disapproval Are On"?


----------



## Morrus (Jun 17, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> what is a rail sandwich? It sounds rather good.




British Rail sandwich. British Rail was the nationalised train service a few decades ago - doesn't exist any more. Disappeared in - I think - the 1990s. But the sandwiches in the food car on the train were famously poor. Nowadays, train companies use outside contractors to run their buffet cars; British Rail sandwiches are consigned to history!


----------



## Tonguez (Jun 17, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I don't even know what one would be. I'd be fascinated to visit an English restaurant elsewhere.  The closest I've been to is a tea room at the bottom of the Spanish Steps in Rome, which charges an arm and a leg for an average cup of tea and a piece of cake.!




The British theme resteraunts I've seen tend to be Ye Olde English Pub decor including a stags head on the wall and a menu of pressed game,  roast, peas, dumplings, fish n chips,  date puddings, rhubard pies, trifles and a selection of beers and ciders.

We definitely consider McDonalds, KFC and Starbucks to be American-lite.

Australian Masterchef did an American theme show which featured Pork and Popcorn grits with Pickles, and a dessert of Peanutbutter mousse, grilled banana and maple bacon crumb...


----------



## nerfherder (Jun 17, 2015)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> Ah, well, I was speculating that the Intrawebs might have been in London.




Tripadvisor should give you some good pointers.  When I go to London I don't tend to eat anywhere special, because I can eat fantastic food here for half the price.  The one place that stands out is Kopapa, which is right in the West End - we had a lovely brunch there.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 17, 2015)

Tonguez said:


> The British theme resteraunts I've seen tend to be Ye Olde English Pub decor including a stags head on the wall and a menu of pressed game,  roast, peas, dumplings, fish n chips,  date puddings, rhubard pies, trifles and a selection of beers and ciders.




Oh, so they're like period/historical themed?  Like the 50s American Diner themed stuff, that sort of thing?

I guess if you're going to go "British Restaurant" a period themed place works.


----------



## nerfherder (Jun 17, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I know some truly world class places to eat near me. If you're ever here, I'd enjoy taking you to them!



Last summer, I enjoyed taking an American (that I know from Circvs Maximvs) to a local restaurant: http://www.thebroadchare.co.uk/proper-food/

He's quite a foodie, and said that it was the best meal he had on his vacation here (he only spent one night in Newcastle, and the rest up in Scotland or down around London).

Here's the menu, for anyone interested in what "British" food might look like:



[sblock]Bar food 


Lindisfarne Oysters
 £2.00 

Cauliflower Fritters - Curry Mayonnaise
 £3.20 

Deep-fried Monkfish Cheeks
 £3.50 

Crispy Pigs' Ears
 £2.80 

Handraised Pork Pie
 £3.50 

Scotch Egg
 £3.50 

Middlewhite Pork Crackling and Bramley Apple Sauce
 £2.80 




Small plates 


Chicory Salad, Pears, Blue Cheese & Walnuts
 £6.40 

Pork and Pistachio Terrine, Pickles and Toast
 £7.60 

Smoked Mackerel Pate- Beetroot & Apple Chutney
 £7.20 

Cauliflower Soup with Montgomery’s Cheddar
 £5.50 

Warm Onion Tart, Fried Duck Egg & Wild Mushrooms
 £7.40 

Potted Shrimps and Hot Toast
 £7.80 





Large plates 


Spicy Black Pudding, Smoked Haddock and Mustard
 £14.50 

Lentil & Root Vegetable Masala
 £10.00 

Rare-Breed Pork Belly, Garden Brassica & Scrumpy
 £15.00 

Grilled Calves Liver, Bacon & Onions
 £15.00 

Rib Eye Steak, Onion Rings & Watercress
 £19.50 

Mutton Masala
 £13.00 

Ground Rib Steak Burger with Northumberland Cheese
 £10.50 




On toast 


Pig’s Trotters and Montgomery’s Cheddar
 £7.20 

Fried Mushrooms with Mustard Butter
 £6.00 

Haggis, Fried Duck Egg & HP Sauce
 £7.60 

Local Crab
 £7.90 




Sides 


Hot Pease Pudding
 £2.00 

Steamed Greens
 £2.60 

Mixed Salad
 £3.00 

Onion Rings
 £2.50 

Pickled Red Cabbage
 £2.00 

Mash
 £2.40 

Handcut Chips
 £2.40 




Desserts 


Warm Honey & Spice Cake-Cider Sauce
 £5.50 

Rhubarb Crumble with Custard
 £5.50 

Toffee Apple & Pecan Nut Sundae
 £6.00 

Chocolate Stout Mousse with Ginger Snaps
 £5.50 

Ices; Vanilla, Earl Grey, Strawberry
 £5.00 




Cheeses 


Adrahan, County Cork
 £4.20 

Montgomery's Cheddar - Somerset
 £4.20 

Mrs. Kirkhams - Lancashire
 £4.20 

Stichelton - Nottinghamshire
 £4.20 

Selection of Three
 £8.50
[/sblock]

(Obviously, other British foods are available)


----------



## Janx (Jun 17, 2015)

Morrus said:


> The correct way.  C'mon, man, the spelling of a major nationality isn't obscure.  Peoples' nationalities and cultures are important to them; the least you can do is make the effort to spell them correctly. It's a really basic level of respect. I'm not asking too much, am I - you're making me feel like something of an ogre for even asking it!




your assumption was that I knew how to spell it.  I thought I did.  The simple courtesy was to say, hey, it's only got a single t in it.  If you want something done a certain way, say how your want it.

You got the double t because the i in brit was a short i and I assumed it took 2 t's to reflect that in english. Otherwise, for something to be LightBrite-like would be LightBritish.  Blame your language for its inconsistencies in construction.


----------



## Janx (Jun 17, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> British
> 
> [MENTION=8835]Janx[/MENTION], do you see the spelling there? I am going to simply ask you to fix it as a fellow En Worlder. Please. Thank you.




I have gone through every post on this thread of mine and fixed the spelling error.  Is that enough pennance for you?


----------



## Morrus (Jun 17, 2015)

Janx said:


> I have gone through every post on this thread of mine and fixed the spelling error.  Is that enough pennance for you?




Janx, calm down, please. You're making too much out of this. Thank you for the correction, and I'm glad you've learned something new. Now, let's drop it, please.


----------



## Umbran (Jun 17, 2015)

nerfherder said:


> (Obviously, other British foods are available)




I like how there's a couple different Masalas alongside the onion tarts and grilled liver


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 17, 2015)

nerfherder said:


> Last summer, I enjoyed taking an American (that I know from Circvs Maximvs) to a local restaurant: http://www.thebroadchare.co.uk/proper-food/
> 
> He's quite a foodie, and said that it was the best meal he had on his vacation here (he only spent one night in Newcastle, and the rest up in Scotland or down around London).
> 
> ...



That looks like a culinary adventure I'd like a slice of!


----------



## Morrus (Jun 17, 2015)

I love how they handraised the pork pie.  Brought it up from when it was a wee baby pork pie.


----------



## Rune (Jun 17, 2015)

Would the onion rings on that menu be battered and deep-fried, as they would over here?


----------



## nerfherder (Jun 17, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I love how they handraised the pork pie.  Brought it up from when it was a wee baby pork pie.




That's how we do it up North - none of your pork pie nannies!



Rune said:


> Would the onion rings on that menu be battered and deep-fried, as they would over here?




Yes.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 17, 2015)

nerfherder said:


> That's how we do it up North - none of your pork pie nannies!




You can totally tell that's a Northern menu, not a Southern one!


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 17, 2015)

The opposite of  the food in the Amtrak dining car. That food was superb in the 80's. But like the British rail system being gone, so is also Amtrak


----------



## tomBitonti (Jun 17, 2015)

> Small plates
> 
> Potted Shrimps and Hot Toast
> £7.80




Eh, what is a potted shrimp?  I'm used to potting plants, not shrimp.

Thx!

TomB


----------



## Bullgrit (Jun 17, 2015)

If you call a trip away, a "holiday", what do you call special days on a calendar (like Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or Fourth of July)?

Bullgrit

[sblock]Hehehe  I know, I know.[/sblock]


----------



## pedr (Jun 17, 2015)

We call specific public holiday days "Bank Holidays" (as historically the closure of banks presumably meant that most businesses didn't operate). 

We tend to use the word holiday in a lot of cases, including paid time off from work whatever the date. We usually call the winter celebration period "Christmas" even if we're not at all religious (and, probably, even many who are adherents of other religions will call the season Christmas). It took me a while to work out what "the holidays" meant when TV schedulers used it to mean "around Christmas time".


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 17, 2015)

Tom, it involves canniboids.


----------



## pedr (Jun 17, 2015)

I don't actually know what potted shrimp is. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a pate of some kind. 

But British English uses the word prawn for the common small or medium-sized pink shellfish often eaten with tomato mayonnaise and lettuce as a starter (prawn/shrimp cocktail?). I think we use the word shrimp for something specific and slightly different.


----------



## Tonguez (Jun 17, 2015)

nerfherder said:


> Tripadvisor should give you some good pointers.  When I go to London I don't tend to eat anywhere special, because I can eat fantastic food here for half the price.  The one place that stands out is Kopapa, which is right in the West End - we had a lovely brunch there.




Huh! Kopapa is a New Zealand Resteraunt, though fusion based. Pretty cool that it gets a thumbs up

Potted Shrimp is shrimp set in spiced butter in a small pot. James Bond likes it.


----------



## tomBitonti (Jun 17, 2015)

Tonguez said:


> Potted Shrimp is shrimp set in spiced butter in a small pot. James Bond likes it.




That sounds a lot like what I would call Shrimp Scampi (no idea of where the name is from):

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/shrimp_scampi/

Thx!

TomB


----------



## Olgar Shiverstone (Jun 18, 2015)

So let's talk nonsense.

Now I don't mean nonsense words; I mean words for nonsense.

For example, I hear "rubbish" used in British English for nonsense; while here in the US my experience it that rubbish is a seldom-used synonym for trash or garbage and not much else.

I've also heard "bollocks" from Brits in generally the same usage.  I'm not certain -- is that bovine in origin, and thus of the same extraction of the common US "bull(suffix)"?

Along those lines in the US is often "crap" (BS in origin), "quatch" or "qvatch" (Pennslyvania Dutch -- German or Yiddish in origin), etc.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 18, 2015)

No, you're confusing bollocks with bullocks. It's not a grandma friendly thing to explain, though. I think you'll have to look that one up off EN World. 

Rubbish is multi-use. It's primary meaning is garbage/trash.  It also means nonsense, as you say, poor quality, or unfortunate.

He's talking rubbish.
He's rubbish at football.
That's some rubbish luck.
His car is rubbish.
That but if bad luck is a bit rubbish.
Rubbish luck.


----------



## Olgar Shiverstone (Jun 18, 2015)

Can you rubbish something? Sounds like a word that is noun, verb, adjective, and adverb all in one. Quite an achievement, really.


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 18, 2015)

such as to trash out a room or rubbish out a room?


----------



## Ryujin (Jun 18, 2015)

I've always wondered if English secondary school soccer teams engender the same sort of rabid support that southern American high school football teams do. Sometimes I think that the most prevalent religion in the American south is actually football, not Christianity.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 18, 2015)

Ryujin said:


> I've always wondered if English secondary school soccer teams engender the same sort of rabid support that southern American high school football teams do. Sometimes I think that the most prevalent religion in the American south is actually football, not Christianity.




Nope. Not even slightly. That aspect of your culture is pretty alien to us.


----------



## Ryujin (Jun 18, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Nope. Not even slightly. That aspect of your culture is pretty alien to us.




Well I'm Canadian, but have spent time in the American south


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 18, 2015)

Ryujin said:


> I've always wondered if English secondary school soccer teams engender the same sort of rabid support that southern American high school football teams do. Sometimes I think that the most prevalent religion in the American south is actually football, not Christianity.




"Sometimes?"

And don't forget, in the American heartland, the divine sport of choice is basketball.


----------



## Ryujin (Jun 18, 2015)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> "Sometimes?"
> 
> And don't forget, in the American heartland, the divine sport of choice is basketball.




Well I'm only in the southern US 'sometimes'


----------



## billd91 (Jun 18, 2015)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> "Sometimes?"
> 
> And don't forget, in the American heartland, the divine sport of choice is basketball.




Basketball may be pretty popular, but I'd stay the divine sport of choice is still football. Big 10 basketball may be big but football is huge.


----------



## pedr (Jun 18, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> such as to trash out a room or rubbish out a room?



No, "to rubbish" is basically to criticise - to say why something is rubbish. "Watch out for John: he was rubbishing your ideas in last week's staff meeting."

Some prestigious private secondary schools and Oxford and Cambridge take student sport seriously (there's an old saying that gentlemen went to Oxford to get a First [class degree, i.e. the highest grade available], a wife, or a Blue" where a Blue is the honour awarded to those who represent the university in the major sports, with rowing and rugby being significant enough for the matches against Cambridge to be televised.) Apart from that, there's very little attention paid to inter-institution sport, except by those who participate, even if the competitors are very good - and in some sports, of course, someone can be representing their country at 14 or 15. Traditionally Wednesday afternoons are left free of classes at universities, though, so there is travel time for inter-university sport, and that makes Wednesday night particularly interesting in student bars!


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 18, 2015)

I am in the middle south where Hockey, basketball, baseball and football are seasonal religions.


----------



## Scott DeWar (Jun 18, 2015)

pedr said:


> No, "to rubbish" is basically to criticise - to say why something is rubbish.* "Watch out for John: he was rubbishing your ideas in last week's staff meeting."*
> 
> Some prestigious private secondary schools and Oxford and Cambridge take student sport seriously (there's an old saying that gentlemen went to Oxford to get a First [class degree, i.e. the highest grade available], a wife, or a Blue" where a Blue is the honour awarded to those who represent the university in the major sports, with rowing and rugby being significant enough for the matches against Cambridge to be televised.) Apart from that, there's very little attention paid to inter-institution sport, except by those who participate, even if the competitors are very good - and in some sports, of course, someone can be representing their country at 14 or 15. Traditionally Wednesday afternoons are left free of classes at universities, though, so there is travel time for inter-university sport, and that makes Wednesday night particularly interesting in student bars!




We use trash: trashing someone's idea, trash talking.


----------



## Nellisir (Jun 18, 2015)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> One of the luxury suites at the now-demolished Texas Stadium was catered by an Italian restaurant owned *and operated by Iran...errrrr...Persians.*




Um, maybe this is covered elsewhere in the thread, but what's wrong with saying Iranians? Seriously. Is this a thing now?


----------



## billd91 (Jun 18, 2015)

Nellisir said:


> Um, maybe this is covered elsewhere in the thread, but what's wrong with saying Iranians? Seriously. Is this a thing now?




I think there are probably groups in the US since about 1979 or thereabouts that may want to distance themselves from the current Iranian regime.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 18, 2015)

billd91 said:


> Nellisir said:
> 
> 
> > Um, maybe this is covered elsewhere in the thread, but what's wrong with saying Iranians? Seriously. Is this a thing now?
> ...



Exactly.

Many of the yahoos who don't make distinctions between good & evil members of a given group tend not to be aware of the history of the Fertile Crescent beyond the last 100 years or so.  Thus, "Persian".  It saves them a lot of headaches...and property damage and hospital visits.

They even played with this somewhat in the episode of South Park spoofing "The 300" movie.


----------



## Ryujin (Jun 18, 2015)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Exactly.
> 
> Many of the yahoos who don't make distinctions between good & evil members of a given group tend not to be aware of the history of the Fertile Crescent beyond the last 100 years or so.  Thus, "Persian".  It saves them a lot of headaches...and property damage and hospital visits.
> 
> They even played with this somewhat in the episode of South Park spoofing "The 300" movie.




Those same yahoos can't distinguish between very disparate cultural groups, either. Since 9/11 there have been more than a few cases of Sikhs being assaulted or victims of bigotry, to the point of a Sikh temple being attacked by a gunman, reportedly because of 'confusion' about just who they are.


----------



## Nellisir (Jun 18, 2015)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Exactly.
> 
> Many of the yahoos who don't make distinctions between good & evil members of a given group tend not to be aware of the history of the Fertile Crescent beyond the last 100 years or so.  Thus, "Persian".  It saves them a lot of headaches...and property damage and hospital visits.
> 
> They even played with this somewhat in the episode of South Park spoofing "The 300" movie.




I ask because my new boss is Iranian, and he and I had a conversation yesterday (about 6 hours before I posted) about whether I should use his American name or his Iranian name. We settled on his Iranian name because he's obviously proud of it, and his American name is the same as my brother-in-law's, which makes it somewhat confusing in my house. I've seen him fudge about where he's from (he moved to the US as a kid, but lives in Iran part-time now and helps run his family's farm there), and seen him talk about Iran, and it's obvious he's proud of his heritage separate from the political issue.


----------



## Janx (Jun 18, 2015)

Nellisir said:


> I ask because my new boss is Iranian, and he and I had a conversation yesterday (about 6 hours before I posted) about whether I should use his American name or his Iranian name. We settled on his Iranian name because he's obviously proud of it, and his American name is the same as my brother-in-law's, which makes it somewhat confusing in my house. I've seen him fudge about where he's from (he moved to the US as a kid, but lives in Iran part-time now and helps run his family's farm there), and seen him talk about Iran, and it's obvious he's proud of his heritage separate from the political issue.




seems like a smart play.  Call the person by what they want to be called, whether they be trans-planted, trans-racial or trans-gender.


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## tomBitonti (Jun 18, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> We use trash: trashing someone's idea, trash talking.




Hmm, "trash talking" seems more "talking down" or "dissing" someone.

Calling something rubbish seems more like calling it nonsense.

I would put calling someones idea rubbish a way of trash talking them, but only one of many ways.

Thx!

TomB


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## tomBitonti (Jun 18, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> Tom, it involves canniboids.




Haha, which is now possible in places here in the US.

Adding the raw plant seems odd, but can't you add oils/extracts to achieve the desired effect?

Thx!

TomB


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 18, 2015)

and now there are synthetic canniboids!


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Jun 19, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> and now there are synthetic canniboids!




Are those the kind that eat other boids?


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 19, 2015)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> Are those the kind that eat other boids?



 yup, but they need to be careful not to contract laughing disease.


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## Rune (Jun 19, 2015)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> Are those the kind that eat other boids?




Well, Domino's did caution us to avoid...no, wait, that was noids.


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## sabrinathecat (Jun 19, 2015)

No one even going to try to translate those Trinidad expressions?


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 19, 2015)

sabrinathecat said:


> No one even going to try to translate those Trinidad expressions?



the trini-huh-wha?

I was going to simply say: don't hoit da boid.


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## sabrinathecat (Jun 19, 2015)

These:
Can someone please translate the Trinidad phrases he used to address the people in "[video=youtube;DnDPI5z7LdY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnDPI5z7LdY[/video]".


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## Ryujin (Jun 19, 2015)

I worked with a lot of Jamaicans and Trinis for about 5 years so I might have a shot at it, if he wasn't the whitest guy in the world. I'll try.

"Watch me for a minute now." - Pay attention/listen
"What's the scene" - what's up/what's going on
"I know you're getting to banker right now" (?) - (I don't have a bloody clue about that one; can only think of something I've hear the odd Brit say, "banker" = "a sure thing")
"sounding real doltish, ent" - sounding really stupid, no?
"aye aye" - hey hey


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 19, 2015)

That was quite funny!


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## sabrinathecat (Jun 19, 2015)

Oh, it's hillarious.
While the Daily show pokes a quick joke at as many topics as they can cram in, Last Week Tonight picks 3-4 topics, and runs with them for the entire episode. 
Youtube.

What is even funnier is that the guy responded with another video, to which John Oliver replied on his show, setting (or trying to set up) a chain of one-up-manship.


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## EzekielRaiden (Jun 26, 2015)

Scott DeWar said:


> and now there are synthetic canniboids!




Perhaps this is another dialectic thing--as I had understood it, the scientific term would be "cannabinoids."

I honestly wouldn't know the general-use term. I've never smoked _anything_ in my life. Heck, I live in one of the most liberal, pot-smoking cities in the US and I don't have the _foggiest_ idea where one would go to acquire, shall we say, "non-medical" varieties.


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## JWO (Jun 26, 2015)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> I've also heard "bollocks" from Brits in generally the same usage.  I'm not certain -- is that bovine in origin, and thus of the same extraction of the common US "bull(suffix)"?






Morrus said:


> No, you're confusing bollocks with bullocks. It's not a grandma friendly thing to explain, though. I think you'll have to look that one up off EN World.




Bollocks = Rubbish, nonsense, etc.

The dog's bollocks = The very best!


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## Scott DeWar (Jun 26, 2015)

EzekielRaiden said:


> Perhaps this is another dialectic thing--as I had understood it, the scientific term would be "cannabinoids."
> 
> I honestly wouldn't know the general-use term. I've never smoked _anything_ in my life. Heck, I live in one of the most liberal, pot-smoking cities in the US and I don't have the _foggiest_ idea where one would go to acquire, shall we say, "non-medical" varieties.




When I take a drug test, it gets listed as cannabinoids. That is where I get the term


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## Jan van Leyden (Jun 30, 2015)

One question came up in the context of the thread reagarding funerals: what's the difference between a casket and a coffin?


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## tuxgeo (Jun 30, 2015)

Synonyms. In the US, "casket" and "coffin" mean roughly the same thing. 

The words do have different etymologies, with "casket" coming from French "casse," and with "coffin" coming from Ancient Greek through Latin "cophinus" (which was the Latin _borrow-word_ form).


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## Ryujin (Jun 30, 2015)

Generally speaking a coffin is a plain ol' wooden box whut you'd bury someone in, cowboy style. A casket is a fancy box fer buryin' rich folk.


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