50 Americanisms That Brits Apparently Hate
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Well it's pretty much only the British that say lef-tenant, so that'll be why. I, myself, say loo-tenant, simply because it's easier to say lolJaceArveduin said:
Well, according to a friend of mine who showed me an episode of Top Gear regarding that letter, it's actually pronounced "zed" by others.Tomster595 said:
It makes the Vette sound funny, instead of Zee R, it kind of rushes together to become Zeddar.
Next they should complain about french people speaking french, you know cause it's not like British english.
Seriously, American English is a dialect with different rules of grammar that was intentionally seperated from british english when we declared independence.
Seriously, American English is a dialect with different rules of grammar that was intentionally seperated from british english when we declared independence.
TBH, I don't see why most of the things on the list would annoy people, everyone speaks differently, not just Americans. Like there's a culture in the UK (particularly England and London) to say "Free" when meaning the number "Three", like "I'll take 'free' apples please", I hate that.
A-hem. I eat crumpets, so do many people I know. They're pretty tasty, actually, dripping with butter and honey. In fact, I've got ten of them sitting in my fridge right now, and another ten in the freezer for when I run out. Who doesn't love a bit o' crumpet? ;Dcrop52 said:
Here's an American word that bugs me: Airplane. It's bloody aeroplane, not airplane.
Zed.Tomster595 said:
It's been explained about seventeen times thus far.
We do. Have you not met the British?AdumbroDeus said:
So what I'm gathering is "They speak differently, from us, and so they must be punished"...
This comes to mind.
This comes to mind.
Honey makes almost everything taste good, not sure what exactly a crumpet is, but I'm guessing it's a type of bread/pastry (bah, fancy biscuit), so that it would taste great.lithium.jelly said:
They probably say airplane because the word "aero" is practically non-existant, at least where I live.
A lot of them I agree with, but others are just logical progression of words.
-blank-y is an adjective. "That's a bit too racy". "Too easy, mate." "Oh, how lovely." Thus, you do not say "expiry date" because "expiry" triggers the thought of "expire" as an adjective. "Oh, don't touch that salmon. It's pretty expiry."
What's wrong with transport is that it's a verb. "We are going to transport 5 trucks from point A to point B."
Train station: We call them trains, saving a syllable all the time.
Period instead of full stop? I shudder to think that the conductor trying to tell his apprentice to put the brakes on was instead interpreted as "bring the train to that bit of punctuation!"
12. He left. How do you pronounce "left"? l-eh-ff-t. Follow some consistency in your spelling/pronounciation. If you wanted it pronounced "leehverage", you should have spelt it "leeverage." This is exactly the sort of false trick that would fail a spelling bee mastermind. You brits are, of course, free to start saying "Leeft/Right".
20. Half hour complaints? This from the inventors of the half-penny? I will accept that as soon as you start calling it a "half a penny".
40. Sure, "That'll learn you" makes your ears boil. But you know where I first heard it? The Wind in the Willows.
46. I will pronounce it "zed" as soon as you show me the letter D in the letter Z. All other letters have followed a recognizable pattern; a sound, and a vowel to help ease your tongue into it.
48. Sure, call it "I got it free" as soon as you say "I got it $12." Cycle downwards. "I got it for $3." "I got it for "$1." What comes after that? "I got it for $0." But that sounds stupid, so we say free.
-blank-y is an adjective. "That's a bit too racy". "Too easy, mate." "Oh, how lovely." Thus, you do not say "expiry date" because "expiry" triggers the thought of "expire" as an adjective. "Oh, don't touch that salmon. It's pretty expiry."
What's wrong with transport is that it's a verb. "We are going to transport 5 trucks from point A to point B."
Train station: We call them trains, saving a syllable all the time.
Period instead of full stop? I shudder to think that the conductor trying to tell his apprentice to put the brakes on was instead interpreted as "bring the train to that bit of punctuation!"
12. He left. How do you pronounce "left"? l-eh-ff-t. Follow some consistency in your spelling/pronounciation. If you wanted it pronounced "leehverage", you should have spelt it "leeverage." This is exactly the sort of false trick that would fail a spelling bee mastermind. You brits are, of course, free to start saying "Leeft/Right".
20. Half hour complaints? This from the inventors of the half-penny? I will accept that as soon as you start calling it a "half a penny".
40. Sure, "That'll learn you" makes your ears boil. But you know where I first heard it? The Wind in the Willows.
46. I will pronounce it "zed" as soon as you show me the letter D in the letter Z. All other letters have followed a recognizable pattern; a sound, and a vowel to help ease your tongue into it.
48. Sure, call it "I got it free" as soon as you say "I got it $12." Cycle downwards. "I got it for $3." "I got it for "$1." What comes after that? "I got it for $0." But that sounds stupid, so we say free.
Might it be German rather than French, since the French way of saying it sounds like Lieu-Teh-nanMr. Brightside said:
Actually from Wiki:
Etymology
The word lieutenant derives from French; the lieu meaning "in place" as in a position (cf. in lieu of); and tenant meaning "holding" as in "holding a position"; thus a "lieutenant" is somebody who holds a position in the absence of his or her superior (compare the Latin locum tenens). Similar words in other languages include the Arabic mulāzim (Arabic: ملازم‎
, meaning "holding a place", and the Hebrew word segen (Hebrew: סגן‎, meaning "deputy" or "second to".In the 19th century, British writers who either considered this word an imposition on the English language, or difficult for common soldiers and sailors, argued for it to be replaced by the calque "steadholder." However, their efforts failed, and the French word is still used, along with its many variations, (e.g. lieutenant colonel, lieutenant general, lieutenant commander, flight lieutenant, second lieutenant and many non-English-language examples), in both the Old and the New World.
[edit] Pronunciation
Pronunciation of lieutenant is generally split between the forms /lɛfˈtɛnənt/ (lef-ten-ənt) and /ljuːˈtɛnənt/ ( listen) (lew-ten-ənt), with the former generally associated with the United Kingdom, Ireland and Commonwealth countries, and the latter generally associated with the United States.[1] The earlier history of the pronunciation is unclear; Middle English spellings suggest that the /l(j)uː-/ and /lɛf-/ pronunciations existed even then.[2] The rare Old French variant spelling luef for Modern French lieu ('place') supports the suggestion that a final [w] of the Old French word was in certain environments perceived as an [f].[2]
In Royal Naval tradition?and other English-speaking navies outside the United States?the intermediate pronunciation /ləˈtɛnənt/ was preserved. This is not recognized as current by the OED, however, and by 1954 the Royal Canadian Navy, at least, regarded it as "obsolescent" even while regarding "the army's 'LEF-tenant'" to be "a corruption of the worst sort".[3]
So actually we're both kind of right.
Honestly most of those things don't bother me. Say it however you want just have a brain in your head, thats all I ask for in a conversation partner. I think people who get overly hung up on grammar tend to be trying to look smarter than thay actually are.
Well, considering that the Merriam-Webster Dictionary's etymology for the word is as close as makes no difference the exact same as the first part of the OED etymology, I would say so, in this case. Unless, of course, you'd like to throw the OED under the bus, which would make me laugh, to be frank.Mr. Brightside said:
This series of posts gave me a chuckle. See, in Canada we're supposed to pronounce it zed, as they do in Britain. So yeah, you're right on this one but I was surprised to see people were unsure of the alternate pronunciations of a letter.(For the record I say zee because it actually does seem to make more sense)JaceArveduin said:
Regardless, this list actually kind of made me angry to be honest. Just seeing they way a lot of these comments were written about phrases that often make more sense than their "proper" British equivalents... and this is even coming from someone who lives in a country that's stuck right in between trying to use British English and trying not to piss off the Americans.
Some of those annoy me too, as they are screwed up forms of English grammar. Others are phrases that I simply scratch my head at and wonder why they annoy the British. Okay, they don't like the fact that we say "zee" instead of "zed" (I must admit, every time I hear it said 'zed' I hear Captain Price in my head). It bothers me that they spell color with a 'u'. Doesn't mean it's wrong.
Can we make a list now of fifty phrases that bother us?
Can we make a list now of fifty phrases that bother us?
I've never heard half of the things in here, and half of the others I literally can not imagine why they "hate," such as train station. What the fuck do you 'proper' folk call it over there in high horse England?