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The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US

theguardian.com

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Re: The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US

#91

Post by marky1991 »

gerdesj wrote: post #75
lupusreal wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what a tired dog does.

No, they only pant. ----------------- OK, at this point I really need to explain what on earth is going on here: "what does "pants" refer to?" - pants refers to trousers and pants refers to underpants and of course pants refers to pants as a noun. Pants also refers to heavy breathing as a verb. I have absolutely no idea how we ended up with this situation, where pant(s) is a noun and a verb and really odd. I'm going…

"will pant" uses the infinitive, it's not conjugated at all. "He/she/it pants" is the third person singular conjugation.

Re: The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US

#92

Post by rgblambda »

dekhn wrote: post #3

I once was talking wit some british people whilst in california and said "oh you can throw that garbage in the trash". They laughed and said it sounded really coarse, what did you do with it after? "It goes into a truck which takes it to the dump. Why, what do you say?" "We say you put your rubbish in the bin and the lorry takes it to the tip" which did sound more pleasant.

I'm fairly certain "dump" is the more commonly used word in the UK. There's the classic children's novel "Stig of the Dump" published in 1963.

There's definitely cases where UK English has adopted a new word but American English hasn't. I was surprised to see the word "coupon" used in old UK literature. "Voucher" is the more common word nowadays. People would accuse you of being Americanised if you said coupon.

Re: The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US

#93

Post by jgalt212 »

Starlevel004 wrote: post #66

Am I going insane? I've seen this posted before in the last week and some of the comments here are identical to the comments from last time. In fact algolia search shows this was first posted 3 days ago: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Don't get your knickers in a twist.

Re: The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US

#94

Post by GauntletWizard »

Starlevel004 wrote: post #66

Am I going insane? I've seen this posted before in the last week and some of the comments here are identical to the comments from last time. In fact algolia search shows this was first posted 3 days ago: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Dang has been resurfacing threads that got limited engagement, but that either have a second posting that's doing better or that he simply manually resets the timer on. The process by which he does this also resets the time on comments, too, for some reason; I don't really know except that I've noticed it happen to threads I had open or threads I had commented on.

Re: The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US

#95

Post by kragen »

yarg wrote: post #83

> Children who in the US would be deemed “smart” or “bright” or “gifted” are called clever in the UK. It's interesting the way that words sometimes seem to have nuance that doesn't seem to be strictly within the definition. For no reason I can remotely explain, I'd divide these into clever/bright and smart/gifted. I've met several autists that I would readily describe as smart or even gifted, but I wouldn't describe…

In the US, the word is generally "asshole", although not, for example, in my grandfather's rural West Texas dialect.

Re: The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US

#96

Post by yarg »

kragen wrote: post #95
yarg wrote: post #83

> Children who in the US would be deemed “smart” or “bright” or “gifted” are called clever in the UK. It's interesting the way that words sometimes seem to have nuance that doesn't seem to be strictly within the definition. For no reason I can remotely explain, I'd divide these into clever/bright and smart/gifted. I've met several autists that I would readily describe as smart or even gifted, but I wouldn't describe…

In the US, the word is generally "asshole", although not, for example, in my grandfather's rural West Texas dialect.

I know that - the only time I use the American spelling is when I use it as a suffix.

(I often consider it shorthand for "I'm not an American".)

Re: The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US

#98

Post by pimlottc »

mikestew wrote: post #88
ajb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess it was popularised by "Crocodile Dundee" in the 80s, so that's long enough to feel native to a lot of people.

On top of Outback Steakhouse’s (fake-Australian U.S. restaurant chain) old tag line: “no worries, just right.”

It was actually “no rules, just right”

Re: The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US

#99

Post by alberth »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #94
Starlevel004 wrote: post #66

Am I going insane? I've seen this posted before in the last week and some of the comments here are identical to the comments from last time. In fact algolia search shows this was first posted 3 days ago: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Dang has been resurfacing threads that got limited engagement, but that either have a second posting that's doing better or that he simply manually resets the timer on. The process by which he does this also resets the time on comments, too, for some reason; I don't really know except that I've noticed it happen to threads I had open or threads I had commented on.

You mean /invited

https://news.ycombinator.com/invited

Invited: Overlooked links, invited to repost

Re: The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US

#100

Post by twic »

siquick wrote: post #79
TheBruceHimself wrote: post #25

Brit living in the US here. Despite being here 7 years now i'll every so often have an American point out how odd something I say is. Recently it was me saying "I'll need to head home and get my swimming costume before heading to the pool". To which the response was "wow wow wow, "swimming costume"? Really? A costume. Not a uniform but a costume; something you wear for halloween? OMG that's adorable" Turns out Americ…

I’ve lived in Australia for nearly 15 years and still say “swimming costume” - the locals ridicule me and call me for posh for not saying “bathers”.

You mean your budgie smugglers?
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