For example, switching out the word ‘boot’ for ‘trunk’, or ditching the word ‘rubbish’ for ‘garbage’.
This is something I’ve noticed my 6 year old does pretty regularly. We went through a stage where ‘sweets’ became ‘candy’, ‘holiday’ became ‘vacation’ and ‘courgette’ became ‘zucchini’.
That last one didn’t happen but if you’re still reading you’ve got my respect, or as the Americans might say ‘…mad props’.
I noticed in Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Gromit cares for a vegetable in his garden that they either call a ‘marrow’ in British English or ‘melon’ in the localized American export of the film.
“How’s that marrow/melon of yours coming on?” -Wallace
Become Canadian. We have poutine.
I’m already half way there being a big NHL fan.
Any nation who makes cheesy chips and gravy their national dish is a friend and ally in my book
I use often use “movies” and “TV shows” instead of “films” and “telly series” and I am mildily disappointed with myself.
I feel I should use the Old English Fall instead of the French Autumn but it seems a step too far. Perhaps I could use Harvest.
I seem to use movie when describing the blockbuster/B-movie end of the scale, and film when talking about a quality bit of cinema. But I also am more likely to call a US flick a movie and a Brit one a film.
I like the sound of the word autumn, and particularly autumnal. I can see those reds and browns and feel the crisp air. Fall does give more opportunity for puns and easier rhymes, I guess.
American here, I tend to spell words the British way because they make more sense, and I’ve done it since I was a teenager, for some reason it pisses off my older brother lol.
Examples:
- Grey
- Defence
- Offence
- Theatre
- Customisation
- Analyse
- Flavour
etc. etc.
Cancelled has 2 Ls and I will die on this hill
I’ve always spelt it with two Ls and just found after your comment that American English doesn’t 🤢
Gray is the superior grey.
Funny… in my head, “grey” refers to a light gray (e.g., dove gray) whereas “gray” is more like when it’s overcast.
I’m hellbent on being a relic. Currently railing against the proliferation of “store”. SHOP ffs. I look forward to everyone going storing.
“Shop” seems to mean buy. “Shop affordable easter instore” = “buy cheap chocolate in our shop”.
Do your shopping at the shops.
I said “gen zed” the other day and everybody frowned and said “Don’t you mean gen zee?”. NO I FUCKING DON’T. Still fighting the good fight in pronouncing schedule with a soft sh but I think I’m in a small minority these days. I’ve given up trying to call it an aubergine emoji, we may as well accept it’s an eggplant now 🍆
Schedule, yes! We’re very much in the minority on that one, but I’ll keep on using it the right way, even if it doesn’t seem to make sense when looking at other words like school.
English is my second language and I despise zee, it gets confused with cee. Zed is objectively superior
Expat in the US. I met a guy called “Z” the other day - I didn’t want to be a cunt and pronounce his name wrong, so I went along with it.
I do pronounce Aaron correctly and not call them “Erin” though.
You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard an American say “Gen Z” before, and it literally never occured to me that they were pronouncing it “Gen Zee”. Obvious now you mention it, but I’ve just been assuming that every time I see it written down it’s “Gen Zed” by default.
My friends were the opposite, they accepted that Z is pronounced Zed, but they said that gen zee was different, because “it’s like ZZ Top”. I argued back that it’s not like ZZ Top, it’s just a letter assigned to a generation. They were so used to hearing it said by Americans on TikTok, they refused to even accept that a normal person would say gen zed. “It’s just gen zee though! Nobody says gen zed!”. I’m angry again thinking about it!
I’d argue it’s a proper noun which happens to be a letter long rather than a letter assigned to a generation
That said I believe the correct term is Zoomer which resolves this issue
Lol zed zed top
I used to call him this.
Boy did I get the puss taken out of me
I was gonna say, no self-respecting six-year-old wants to even consider zucchini.
That’s pure bullshit, my three boys all like them. 8, 5 & 2
Teach me!
Grow your own, let them help. Then they are eating “their” zucchinis, it helps a lot.
Eat them small and sweet ~15cm (6in) long. Lightly steamed (add a very small amount of salt)/stir fried (last in once everything else cooked).
Over cooking turns them into terrible tasting mush.
“Are you in a rental?” That turns up so much that I’m struggling with the proper way. Do you rent? Are you a tenant? Do you have a landlord?
“Do you rent?” is usually the way people say it in the US.
I don’t speak Bastardized English
It’s “bastardised”
Oxford spelling is “bastardized”, actually.
Yeah, but the OED is basically the only British dictionary that thinks that way.
Well… could you just hold these reins while I climb down off my high horse?
<3
Why.
-ize comes from the Greek root ‑izo, using -ise is a Fr*nch imposition.
English(simplified)
English (modern)
English (free for all)
How do you pronounce courgette?
Is it a hard g like get or a soft g like giraffe?
This is one British word I had no idea existed.
Here you go: https://youtu.be/py11JV8mLh4
It’s the /ʒ/ sound like the s in measure, vision, or the J in the French Jack. So the word is /koːʒɛ́t/ It’s from the French word courge.
French also has courgette, which also designates zucchinis 😁
Well the word itself does look french when looking at it so just by that going with the french way of pronouncing it makes a lot of sense.
I quite like shop in the sense of workshop, and I also rather like y’all.
I also often refer to whisky as scotch, though I feel like that is as much about making myself understood.
Y’all is great, but I can’t use it without sounding like I’m taking the piss.
Aren’t scotch and whiskey two different things? In a rectangle/square sense
Scotch is whisky from Scotland (shockingly).
That’s not an Americanism really; people call it Scotch in British English too. It’s just that because 99% of the whisky in the UK is Scotch anyway you don’t really need to specify. Whereas because most whisky consumed in the US is bourbon, they tend to specify when they mean Scotch.
The same is presumably true in reverse, i.e. Brits using “bourbon” more than Americans because of the need to specify.
Personally I’m not bothered by the whisky/whiskey distinction. Whisky was traditionally Scottish and whiskey Irish, with the Americans going the Irish way and other countries (like Japan) going the Scottish way. But it’s a bit of a meme to nitpick at this point; they’re indisputably just two spellings of the same thing.
That’s more along the lines of what I was thinking. I could never tell the difference between the taste of any distinctions
Once you’ve got your eye in, scotch and bourbon are quite different. Many (although not all) scotch whiskies have peat in their flavour profile (a kind of smoky, salty, earthy flavour which is very distinctive), while bourbons never do. Bourbon is almost always quite a lot sweeter than scotch.
They’re also made quite differently. Bourbon is mostly corn, and often has lots of rye and wheat in the mix, whereas scotch is mostly made of barley. Bourbon is always aged in new oak barrels, whereas scotch is mostly aged in second-fill barrels (which might previously have been used for bourbon, wine, sherry, port, cider etc.).
Whisky and whiskey are two different things.
“Scotch” is American for whisky but not for whiskey.
Guess I’m even more ignorant to booze culture than I thought
I’m not even sure if I’m honest. NW England, my shits a mix of English, Cumbrian, Yorkshire, Scottish, Madeupish … No doubt some American words in there that have snuck in like a bad smell.
I’m American but would really appreciate it if aubergine caught on here across the pond. I know it’s French (and from prior languages) but I commend the UK for sticking with it. In contrast, eggplant sounds so crude and unappetizing. If you’ve Americanized this one, please stop.
Also, we should all bring back a few Old English terms.
Call it what you like, it’s an F tier veggie
No way man, it’s a great vehicle for flavor. Soak the slices in a basil balsamic garlic marinade a for an hour then roast them in the oven, simple and delicious.
To each their own garbage
Rubbish*
What I hate about “eggplant” is that none of the varieties that anybody actually eats look ever remotely like an egg. It’s a massive purple banana-shape. They also don’t taste like eggs, smell like eggs, or get used like eggs.
It’d be like calling cucumbers “cheesefruit” or something. It’s just destined to baffle.
It looks like eggs in an early stage of development, but aubergine is a way better word nonetheless
I use loads of americanisms and their spelling for words like color, the way I see it most the world is using English so least we can do is meet them 0 001% of the way on cresting a global odious language
Does your wee one watch a lot of American-voiced videos on YouTube or similar?
She used to. We’ve put a stop to YouTube though because she turns into a little demon after watching it.
