50 Americanisms That Brits Apparently Hate

[Hazard12]

Most of them are very harmless. But the whole thing's just having fun really; it's fun to get together over a similarity and grumble about something different.

Some of them are stupid though. Personally I find the annoyance about 'oftentimes' funny. Now I don't like it because it seems unnecessary, but it's not even an Americanism. I'm pretty damn sure it's been floating around, especially in literary English, for centuries. In this bracket see: Fall. I like the word, but it seems to attract annoyance as being 'wrong'. Which is interesting as it was used in Britain and in America, then at some point after the split Britain got all poncy (us? Quelle surprise) and went back to the Latinate Autumn. I'm not saying the bridge in language and especially pronunciation can't grate on me, but only in a superficial way that's fun to indulge, and I'm sure/would hope works the other way in some way as well.

 

[Heartcafe]

"Gotten" is a real word though? It's the past participial of got.

38. My worst horror is expiration, as in "expiration date". Whatever happened to expiry?
This made me die of laughter. I facepalm'd myself when I read this. They mean the same thing but different ways of saying it. (Right? I hope.)

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Some were hilarious, others were kind of pointless overreactions on the British side. Meh.

 

[TheEggplant]

While I agree with a few of these, this is all just peevey bitching.
I can't stand the phrase "touch base" either, but if I complain to someone who uses it frequently I'm just an douche. Also to anyone who agrees with this list "fortnight", "expiry", and "takeaway (in reference to take-out)" are not ever going to be used in the U.S. Get comfortable with them.

 

[Itsatwap]

Oh for fuck's sake, I put in for "Have a nice day", how the hell does that not make the top 50? It's fucking nauseating. In English, if you're rude enough to say it, then you at least have the decency not to abbreviate it; you'd just hit them with the full "I don't give a fuck whether you have a nice day or not".

"You do the math" is pretty terrible. Apart from anything else, why not skip the "You"? In any other context it makes you sound like Mr. Kobayashi or some stereotypical Hollywood immigrant-with-a-poor-grasp-of-the-language. "You stop here please, driver.". "You get down and you give me twenty, soldier". "You take it all, *****."

 

[Fbuh]

Hating some of these is just stupid, as most of them have to do with pronunciation or a difference in terminology. For instance, shopping cart vs. shopping trolley? Who the fuck cares what it's called. To me, a trolley isa big damn metal thing that runs on rails. A cart is a wire basket. Car seems more applicable, even if it does have wheels. As a person who takes a keen interest in language, I can honestly say that this list annoys me. It's like comparing Mandarin Chinese to a rural dialect.

 

[Atobe-sama]

Wow that was fun. Not only do half of those not exist, but Britain still loses for inventing the word "burgle." Try explaining that one.

 

[KennardKId5]

They are pretty funny. But as it stands, I have been on many planes in my life, and I have never heard "deplane".

 

[Ozzythecat]

Most of that seems like whiny bitching, also are some of those really "Americanisms" some seem like difference in dialect...

 

[Treeinthewoods]

That is pretty hilarious actually. Who the crap says "deplane?" Must be something that doesn't come up in conversation for me.

Shopping trolley my ass! I hope that old man gets trucked by a lorry!

Oh wow, that brings up an Americanism the list has missed...

Anybody notice we use the term "trucked" to imply getting smashed/run over instead of to imply being conveyed by a truck? Does that drive you crazy? I never even thought about it, the phrase has been prevalent since I was in grade school.

 

[chromewarriorXIII]

There were only a couple of these that I agreed with and I'm American. For example, winningest. That's not even a word. Who actually says that?

I deal with a variety of people on a regular basis working as a cashier and I don't even hear some of the things these people are complaining about.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Some of them I actually agree with, because they're grammatical errors (regardless of the region). The rest, though, is more "It's OUR language, they should have to talk like us!".

I think we stopped using "fortnight" over here in the US by the end of the 19th century; the same as "score" (twenty). And "maths"? Isn't that a plural?

 

[BlazedWithPower]

Shopping trolly? I thought a trolly was sort of like a train or a subway sort of thing.

And if there are no train stations in England where do the trains stop? Or don't they for lack of a proper noun to use for describing a place for a train to stop?

I also noticed a lot of these complaints are even about improper use of English. I don't like it when I have to explain to a British family that in America biscuits are soft flaky portions of overly buttered bread and not sweet crunchy deserts. Which we call cookies. Something I'm sure disturbs them greatly. We don't have scones because advertising a sweet that sound a lot like the word 'stone' is impossible.

Oh well, if I were to go to Europe England would be the last country on the list of places to go. Every one there seems way to up tight for me.

 

[lowkey_jotunn]

Yeah well ... I don't like that they weasel an extra letter into aluminum.

And Favourite or Colour ... and those last few extra letters on the end of through. They put those there. They cheat at scrabble

(with apologies to Eddie Izzard)

 

[Loop Stricken]

I agree with MOST of then, except for train station and season for TV programs. I've come to accept that a series is an entire run of a particular program when a season is... well, a series.

It's... yeah. What?

 

[teebeeohh]

most of them are either complaining about bad grammar or bitching about the disuse of older words and phrases and those being replaced by others. There also seem to be elements of the British public that blame the US alone for everything they see as wrong with the English language.
so haters gonna hate.

 

[Harrowdown]

As a Brit, I find most of these complaints petty and dumb.

 

[peter337]

I get the feeling many commenters here have been mislead by the thread's title; the article is quite clearly 50 different people, some of whom aren't even British, each giving 1 point - how that's meant to represent the whole of Britain, I'm not quite sure.

 

[PleasantAsAHeadcrab]

...What the hell do they call train stations in Britain, then?

AND HOW THE HELL DO THEY PRONOUNCE 'Z'.

 

[Death_Korps_Kommissar]

Erm..... I'm just gonna take the serious road and say this is just a classic example of British/European elitism over American's (not that I'm fond of the place.)
It just amazes me how worked up people get over retarded things like saying 24/7. Same goes for people who moan about grammatical errors in shops, just find a tall building and throw yourself of it.