American phrases that make Brits crazy:
46. I hear more and more people pronouncing the letter Z as “zee”. Not happy about it! Ross, London
Gee, they’re starting to act like the French. Two people separated by a common language.
[Via Geek Press]
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Given the Brits’ fondness for slang, they need to lighten up.
14. I caught myself saying “shopping cart” instead of shopping trolley today and was thoroughly disgusted with myself. I’ve never lived nor been to the US either. Graham Nicholson, Glasgow
So, you call it a shopping trolley and we call it a shopping cart. BFD. That doesn’t mean you’re right and we’re wrong, it just means we use different words to describe the same thing.
Yank: “It’s not a ‘lift,’ it’s an elevator. We Americans invented it!”
Brit: “Yes, but we British invented the language.”
22. Train station. My teeth are on edge every time I hear it. Who started it? Have they been punished? Chris Capewell, Queens Park, London
I’ll have to plead ignorance here, but what do Brits call it then?
While I agree with some of them (mostly the business buzz-words that have accidentally leaked into regular usage), most of those are just whiny. I’m actually surprised no one was complaining about us not adding extra “u”s to words, though.
Well, I have to admit that “my bad” always sets my teeth on edge, too.
But I would turn the tables on “one and a half million”, which is arguably 500,001, if “a million and a half” is 1,000,000.5. Most Americans, I think, are more inclined to the laconic “one point five million”.
And when people complain when I say I’m part “Scotch-Irish” instead of “Scots-Irish”, I carefully explain that my great-great-great-great-grandfather David Beard was a captain under George Washington and he kicked British ass at Yorktown so that we wouldn’t have to put up with that kind of foppish nonsense.
6. To “wait on” instead of “wait for” when you’re not a waiter – once read a friend’s comment about being in a station waiting on a train. For him, the train had yet to arrive – I would have thought rather that it had got stuck at the station with the friend on board.
Uh, I thought this was a Britishism. Where the hell did it come from, then?
“I’m good” for “I’m well”. That’ll do for a start.
Also, this is a teutonicism, and very regional, or at least it used to be. “Ich bin gut”, ja?
25. “Normalcy” instead of “normality” really irritates me.
Hey, blame Warren G. Harding. Although I’m not sure I’ve seen this recently, it may be falling out of usage. And frankly, I like the sound of “normalcy”, that ringing terminal “cee” lends it a certain euphony which makes it a sweeter-sounding word than the flat, dull “normality”.
29. I’m a Brit living in New York. The one that always gets me is the American need to use the word bi-weekly when fortnightly would suffice just fine.
Yeah, except bi-weekly is self-explanatory while fortnightly is archaic and gnomic. It confused me whenever I encountered it in fiction as a child – for years I thought a fortnight was twenty days, I have no idea where I picked up this misapprehension.
36. Surely the most irritating is: “You do the Math.” Math? It’s MATHS.
Imbecilic. “Math” is an abbreviation of “mathematics”. The various British dialects seem to have a collective issue with the collective singular.
38. My worst horror is expiration, as in “expiration date”. Whatever happened to expiry?
It expired.
44. My brother now uses the term “season” for a TV series. Hideous.
But, somehow, more informative than the British insistence on conflating the two terms into the same noun.
I see that the majority of these peeves are illustrated with examples drawn from sports commentary. Not exactly the most literary bunch, are they?
I think people who read newspapers need to loosen up a bit. Drink some Ale, brew, beer, scotch, bourbon, whisky, whiskey, gin and relax. If this is the stuff that gets your feathers ruffled, then you apparently don’t have much worry. You should relish it rather than get worked up by it.
American attitude towards British having different words for somethings: “So, the car trunk is a ‘boot’ and the windshield is a ‘windscreen’ and a…” etc.
British attitude towards Americans doing any damn thing that isn’t just like what they’ve always done in their own little corner of Blighty for 2,000 years: “Aaarghh! It’s different! Make it stop! Foreign! Colonists! Bad! Yuck! Where’s my tea…”
PS: to Americans, the word “trolley” for anything that is pushed by hand sounds faggy. This is just something we “know” — we can’t explain it. Then again, British English is faggy.
Yeah, except bi-weekly is self-explanatory while fortnightly is archaic and gnomic. It confused me whenever I encountered it in fiction as a child – for years I thought a fortnight was twenty days, I have no idea where I picked up this misapprehension.
Fortnight is as archic as the use of “stones” to describe a person’s weight as I’ve seen in British news articles.
again, British English is faggy.
IIRC, in British slang, a fag is a cigarette. WTF?
Despite what the original article said, there are also a large number of Briticisms that have crept into American English, or are at least widely understood, over the past 40 years, thanks to media product interpenetration, particularly in music. And our real-estate developers love to use “Centre” and “Harbour” in development project titles, which usually signals at least a 20% price differential over more prosaically-titled projects.
But no worries. In a few decades Indian English will probably be the most visible influence in both countries in any event. Then we can complain about that.
What you say!
A few of the Brits’ complaints are about US regionalisms that other Americans complain about, such as “waiting on”. Others of these comparisons are in the who cares category.
“No worries” is now common in the US, perhaps because it has less of an edge than “no problem” does.
I have noticed a lot more (American) people using “no worries” recently, which I had always thought was a Britishism. Of course, a friend of mine from Oregon who got her physics PhD in London always signs off her emails with “Cheers.”
6. To “wait on” instead of “wait for” when you’re not a waiter – once read a friend’s comment about being in a station waiting on a train. For him, the train had yet to arrive – I would have thought rather that it had got stuck at the station with the friend on board.
Uh, I thought this was a Britishism. Where the hell did it come from, then?
New York, I think. It’s like “waiting on line” — to me, “on line” has an altogether different meaning.
I cringe at the NASAism “on orbit” …
Railway Station. Trains got to the railway station.
You catch Tubes at a Tube Station.
Simple.
It’s not just spelling its pronouciation. I can’t say “zee” it annoys me too much, but I have to ask for a T-ooo- na sandwich instead of a TUNE – ER, and ask them to hold the TOM – ATE – TO, rather than the TOM – AH – TO, and ask for a glass of WART-ER rather than my more usual WAR – TER.
Very vexing.
And I like to queue too rather than ‘wait in line’.
Oh and I prefer keeping Aluminium in line with the other metals, and think that we should also change to Platinium, which I think sounds nicer too.
I have noticed a lot more (American) people using “no worries” recently, which I had always thought was a Britishism.
It’s actually Australian – I don’t recall hearing it in British use before I visited Australia for the first time in 1986, but by the 90s it had become very common. I suspect, but have no basis for this, the rise of the Australian soap operas on British TV in the late 80s and the arrival of the likes of Kylie Minogue and Guy Pearce and Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee) probably imported it then.
Andrea wins the comments! Example, was in a business meeting last week, and the Brit I was dealing with used the word “fluffy” to mean vague or “fuzzy.” As in the “schedule (pronounced she-dule vice ske-dule of course) is fluffy…” How can any male with an ounce of testosterone use the word “fluffy” when not referring to his kid’s cat? He’s going to be over here for a while, so we’re working on him.
It goes the other way, too. I started noticing back in the Eighties that management types were affecting the Brit pronunciation “pree-zentation” …
And regarding the snob appeal of real estate developers affecting the British superfluous u, I recall a tract in San Diego called “Harbour Pointe.” *shudder*
@larry: most people my age and older (40s) are only just moving off Stones to Kilos. I suspect you’ll find that archaic or not most people still know their weight in Stones (14lbs to a stone)…
Of course, imperial measures make SOOOOO much more sense than metric….
It’s actually Australian
You’re probably right. But it’s definitely not home grown here.
Oh and I prefer keeping Aluminium in line with the other metals, and think that we should also change to Platinium, which I think sounds nicer too.
Well aluminum is what Sir Humphrey Davy, its British discoverer, named it! Aluminium was an affectation that the Brits took up shortly after Davey announced the element’s discovery, because aluminum didn’t sound “classical” enough.
(Davy originally was going to call it alumium, but he changed his mind.)
Pap-reek-a or Pap-rick-a
Well, two I do know:
HER – Bs
and
OR – RE – GArn – O, after all, the people in the state next door don’t seem to live in OR – REG – ON…
I like the idea of the classical touch, so we keep Sodium, and not Sodum, and Lithium and so forth.
“fluffy” – is actually a quite sarcastic way of describing something, so they were probably having a joke at somebodies expense.
And for goodness sake, if he tables something, he thinks you’re going to discuss it.
Mitch H.: “British dialects seem to have a collective issue with the collective singular”
Agree completely. Drives me nuts when I hear a singular noun w/ a plural verb just cause there are many parts to the noun.
ex. The jury are deliberating.
I’ve even hear/read (paraphrasing) “France are voting against the resolution.”
WTF! Seriously, WTF!
OTOH: I never hear people get so anal as when discussing correct wording/grammar.
“I like the idea of the classical touch, so we keep Sodium, and not Sodum, and Lithium and so forth.”
Where in the world did you hear that? I’ve never heard that.
Eddie Izzard has one of the best routines about the differences in ‘Dressed to Kill’.
Rather uppity for people who drive on the wrong side of the road…
I once heard a Brit comedian explain that the most frightened he’d ever been was when he stopped at a convenience store in the Arkansas boondocks and (forgetting which continent he was on) asked for a pack of fags.
He did, however, say that he jsut loved the signs in Wilmington, NC evening clubs, advertising shagging lessons…
Yeah, except bi-weekly is self-explanatory while fortnightly is archaic and gnomic.
Not really, bi-weekly could mean twice a week or every two weeks.
“Not really, bi-weekly could mean twice a week or every two weeks.”
Actually, only in the UK does bi-weekly mean “twice a week”. Semiweekly is the more common term.
” Surely the most irritating is: “You do the Math.” Math? It’s MATHS.”
Isn’t the Internets entertaining?
Oh, they have their fair share of chavs over there who find plenty of ways to thoroughly mutilate the English language. Listen to a couple of songs of Dizzee Rascal to hear a guy that even has lots of UKers scratching their head wondering what the hell he is saying. I think it’s a relatively new form of slang born on the streets of East London; they call it ‘Jafaican’ or something.
I believe the Brits use “programme” in place of what we call “series.”
Rather uppity for people who drive on the wrong side of the road…
Hey, we’ve got a LOT more people than you think on our side for that one. Japan, India, most of Africa, Australasia…
The cases of Jury and France are interesting ones because, they’re technically plural nouns. While you might have a single jury, a jury is not an individual. Likewise a country is made up of lots of bits.
Grammar on a Friday afternoon. Quelle fun.
I kind of like the variation in language but JagUar just irratates me no end.
On the subject of fags, I remember a rather severe faux pas by Peter Cook while being interviewed on the Tonight Show. Apparently, he fidgeted pretty well throughout the show and Johnny Carson eventually asked him why. The various bleep machines and so on were not connected. He got the immortal reply “I just don’t feel right without a fag in my mouth.”. 🙂