Be Excellent To Each Other

I quite like American words.

Some of them are charmingly old-fashioned. 'Turnpike' and 'faucet' come to mind as two of my particular favourites. I also like 'cell phone' rather than 'mobile' too, for some reason.

Heh.

I can't always remember which of those two is the courgette and which is the aubergine.

Also, who the hell calls peppers 'capsicums'?? It sounds more like a fetish where you become sexually aroused by boats overturning.

Zucchini is what everyone else in the world calls a courgette. The UK is very much the odd one out on that one (so far as I've seen, anyway).

I very nearly asked you, actually.

Actually, the zucchini is a large family of fruits related to squashes, of which what we call a courgette is just one variety.

/food nerd.

My fact is still correct though. I'm prepared to declare this "we both win."

Except you wrote 'UK' instead of 'US'. So I'm having this one.

There's an awful lot of American English which is more orginal than the British English. Examples include the "-ize" ending and the spelling of "aluminum". And a lot of their imported words are often more authentically pronounced; Danielle thinks our word "fillet" is ridiculous. Americans only have "filet" and they pronounce it as the French do (fil-ey) rather than "fill-et", and they say "pita" rather than "pitta", which is also closer to the Greek word, apparently.

Me too. As someone who worked in the industry, you talk about "cell tower", "cell mast", "cell azimuth", so "cell phone" fits in fine. And "mobile phone" doesn't make a whole lot of sense as a term anyway.

I can't read them differently. HLP PLZ

Do they use that as a verb, too? Because then if you 'Filet a fish', you sound like you're at McDonalds.

Oh, god - and you'd do it with a fileting knife. Eugh.

Pee-ta instead of Pitt-ah

Apparently, people living in the backwoods of Georgia until the 1930's, spoke English that was much, much closer to the English spoken in England in the 1700's than was spoken in England at the time. They had been sort of cut off up in the Appalachians and the language hadn't evolved in the same way.

I've re-read Bill Bryson's excellent book on US English ('Made in America') several times. a fun romp through the history of their language.

I managed to fail to order a strawberry malt in a fantastic 50s style drugstore/cafe. I just couldn't get the 'a' hard enough. My mate had to chip in and translate. Excellent place; felt like I'd stepped into an 'Archie' comic.


(I then observed that it was very nice and tasted like maltteasers, before it dawned on me why this should be the case)

"Pee-ta" rather than our "rhymes with patter" pronounciation.

Good question. I've emailed her to ask.

Food is one of the main areas of divergence of terms, and it fascinates me somewhat. I put significant hours of research in, mainly involving Iron Chef, because it's the best thing on TV.

Fucking HERBS.

Whilst my attitude to American English's divergences from British has softened in recent months (funny that), and I've lost a few arguments because it's turned out it's British English that is less correct, I still agree: fucking

But that's accent, rather than dialect.

Who gives a damn about 'correct'.

If they wanted their own language, they should've said, 234 years ago.

Fuck me, it's just like being at home in here today.

It smells? You're naked?

Rampant sex?

/wishful

Well, I was rather thinking of the British/American language discussion, but you never know.

If it progresses to Aitch Vs Haitch, it'll be my house, except I suspect this time I won't be the only one defending the former.

People can't seem to get past the hurdle of ‘Just because you generally pronounce an H in a hard way, the pronunciation of the letter doesn't need to start with that letter itself.’ Lelle, Feffe, Sess, Mem, Nen, Rar, Wouble-you, Xex. No! So why Haitch?

Yes. Filet is also verb and you can filet a fish.
::waving hello from the couch while coughing her lungs out::

I agree with filet. Not rowsowtow though. Bro.

You fillay a fish?

Hmm. I remain unconvinced.

Have you managed to come over here and become ill? That's Wales for you. Damp.

Oh a filet of fish is just enough to give Gaywood a treat.

The French wouldn't say, 'I want you to fillet my fish', they would use fillet as a noun and say, 'prepare the fillet.'

Indeed - French doesn't appear to have the word as a verb.

Of course, American English has the horrorshow of "nitch" and "click" rather than "niche" and "clique", which is my ace-in-the-hole during all language arguments.

Is that woolly or scaly?

That's a very good point. Have you had the kebab/kebob and twat/twot argument yet?

I hear British people saying those. It annoys me.

edit: actually, what annoys me more is the American pronunciation of Notre Dame.

Thick English people, surely? And unpatriotic, to abuse the mother tongue so.

They've gotten a bunch of English people to use those words?!

Worse: they say 'rout' rather than 'route', so traffic reports sound like a defeat.

I don't understand your distinction.

Is that from the French, then?

We had an Australian working for us a while ago, and they use the same americanism's. I wanted to beat him every time he said database (dartabase).

Mind you, that's probably because he was saying something stupid about it, now I give it some thought.

You have to pretend to be Canadian and say "root-ay"

Did he end every sentence? With that lilting uplift? That makes a statement? Sound like a question?

That's the Kiwis isn't it, Dimmers?

Best fun with them is to get them to say "6" as much as possible.

And pronounce 'router' and 'router' the same way, the sillies.

Ask them to say plethora.

I was just aboot to mention that.

How do they pronounce that?

Pl'-thora? Pleth'r-a? Pleth-or-a?