The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US

Post by UncleSlacky » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 1:50 PM UTC

ryukoposting wrote: post #200

rconti wrote: post #89

For many people of my rough age and hobbies (cars/motorsport), Top Gear and other British motoring shows and podcasts have had a massive impact. We had virtually nothing good in the way of TV shows about cars in the 90s/2000s, which meant that anyone watching World Rally Championship and F1 were downloading clips or torrents of them. That, in turn, led straight into finalgear.com in the mid 2000s, before the BBC fina…

Likewise. I didn't even know that several phrases I picked up from Top Gear were distinctively British, until my wife pointed one out recently. There are a few figures of speech I never adopted from the show, though. Ex: Is "oh cock" a British-ism, or just a James May-ism? I don't think I've ever heard that anywhere else. There's also the simple nature of being online at 6 AM. What other English-speaking country is a…

Post by UncleSlacky » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 1:51 PM UTC

tbrownaw wrote: post #121

rikroots wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Note that my HN name is the same as my real name, without the space). On my first (and only) visit to Australia I got stopped at passport control. The security bloke took my passport and looked at it. Then kept looking at it, in silence. His face was straight and sour, but his shoulders were ... twitching. This went on for more than a couple of minutes until, finally, he looked up from the passport, stared into my e…

> the Wombat Joke The search engines tell me that there are lots of wombat jokes, but don't seem to know any that stand out enough to deserve a "the" in front.

Post by wlll » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 2:05 PM UTC

itohihiyt wrote: post #169

My favourite thing that Americans say that means something very different in the UK is: fanny. "Fanny pack" makes me smile every time I hear it. One of my favourite Scottish colloquialisms is: fannybaws.

Post by nprateem » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 2:59 PM UTC

ccppurcell wrote: post #39

card_zero wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was early in April in the year ’83 that I woke one morning to find Sherlock Holmes standing, fully dressed, by the side of my bed. “Very sorry to knock you up, Watson,” said he, “but it’s the common lot this morning. Mrs. Hudson has been knocked up, she retorted upon me, and I on you.”

See also: "ejaculation" used to be synonymous with "exclamation" and it's used heavily all across the Sherlock stories eg "The ejaculation had been drawn from my companion by the fact that our door had been suddenly dashed open, and that a huge man had framed himself in the aperture." For a list see https://thetaleofsirbob.blogspot.com/2013/07/watson-and-othe... If you mentally insert some commas some of them are rea…

Post by justin66 » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 3:13 PM UTC

changing1999 wrote: post #117

Anon1096 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colour and realise I suspect most American readers would be able to understand just fine. But you start writing tyre, kerb, and gaol, and there will be real reading comprehension issues that start arising. We have standardized spellings for a reason and that's what schools are there to teach. And this is just spelling, not even going into words that have different meanings in the US vs UK like pants and lemonade.

Interestingly, recently there is a push in the US to normalize African-American (for the lack of a better name) grammar and spelling, e.g. using "do" in place of "does". Wonder if this includes normalizing the usage of British spelling as well.