Analyzing the American language............. (page 2)

Englishman

Oh, and by the way, the word is "aluminum", pronounced the same as it is spelled, not alyoomineum

Oh really? Aluminum or aluminium?

Har har har........!

The early bird catches the worm whilst all the Yanks are fast a bye-byes.

Englishman.

Angharad

Congradulations ???? (makes me cringe)

It's congraTulations !!!

OMG!!! I am laughing my butt off! There are some GREAT examples on here! I may print these for the further amusement of my friends.............I have always said that JWD should go on the road.............we have some great comic relief here! I especially LOVED DTM's ZED ZED TOP!! LMAO!!!!!

More!!! I want MORE examples!!! LOL!

LittleToe

Aluminium is a personal favourite (that and the distinct lack of "u"s in favourite, colour, etc.).
How do you get Aloo from Alum?

It's bumper, not fender, and bumbag, not fannypack (which could be mistaken for "Tampon".).

Also, what's with the elongated eeee in deeeefense?
Overexcited commentators?

Sunnygal41

Actually, sometimes here in the States, WE have quite a difficulty with agreeing on the word for an object.........a perfect example my mom (not mum) shared with me one time is when my Grandma came to visit us from upstate New York to Connecticut. She had bought some gifts and wanted them wrapped, so she saw a "Package Store" and thought she had struck pay dirt! LMAO! Imagine her chagrin as she walked thru the door to find she had walked into a "Liquor Store"!!!! And, to further confuse things..........in New York, you can't buy beer, you will only find liquor. If you want beer, you go to the grocery store! Then we have the different names for paper bags: sack, poke, etc.............and, the same word, but pronounced differently: Vase..........it can be pronounced either VAHZ...........or VA(long A)S.........same thing with the word aunt..........it can be ANT...........or AHNT...........

DanTheMan

Englishman, just because that atrocious misspelling of the word has become so commonly used over there that it is an acceptable alternate spelling is no excuse.

Englishman

Englishman, just because that atrocious misspelling of the word has become so commonly used over there that it is an acceptable alternate spelling is no excuse.

Hmm, I don't think so.

Aluminium is a metal, right?

Ending in "ium", just like plutonium, rhodium, uranium etc.

Englishman.

Hey! I've gone blue!

DanTheMan

I understand that the British find it pretty hilarious when they meet an American bloke named "Randy".

My sister used to work for a company that brought British semi-professional soccer players over to the States and had them conduct soccer clinics for kids, the program was called British Soccer.

Whenever they would find that one of the kids on the clinic roster was named "Randy" they would always have a good bit of fun - "OK, which one of you is Randy?!" *snicker, chuckle*

Sunnygal, I found an online British>American dictionary, it's not very navigable but has lots of interesting entries:

accumulator n :

car battery, storage battery/cell (rechargeable electric cell).

humpty csl euph adj :

serious illness, ?things are a bit humpty with him?.

scrump cf v :

steal fruit from orchards, ?let?s go scrumping?, ?I think I saw the scrumper in the hedge?.

in the club adj :

in the pudding club, pregnant

Leolaia

hehehe, as a member of the American Dialect Society, I find this thread to be quite amusing.

My personal favorite British word is "hire" in the sense Americans would say "rent". In American English, "hire" is restricted to only having semantically animate, or even only human, objects. That is, hiring a laborer, hiring a plumber to fix the sink, etc. But on the other side of the pond, you can hire cars, appliances, and so forth. When I first visited England, I almost died laughing at the thought of hiring a car. Partly because in American English, you always pay the one you hire. So it gave me a mental image of a car as an animate being that I would have to pay for driving me around in Britain.

At least now, I understand what the line in that Bruce Springsteen song meant. I didn't as a kid.

Princess

Congradulations ???? (makes me cringe)
It's congraTulations !!!

Absolutely Angharad. That's just a spelling error that drives me nuts as well.

Analyzing the American language.............

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